If you are planning to invest in online advertising and you want to know which platform is better, whether Google Ads or Facebook Ads, you are in the right place. In this article, you will find a detailed review of the characteristics, attributes, and benefits of each one. We provide you with the necessary information to help you choose the one that best suits your needs.
There is no doubt that today the presence of any business on the Internet or Social Networks is almost mandatory. The digital transformation has opened the doors so that any startup, no matter how small, can position itself among major brands, attract new audiences and increase sales.
Google Ads and Facebook Ads are two powerful advertising tools that can help you run organized, powerful and effective campaigns. The versatility they offer will allow you to create original ads that reach the right people, at the right time.
One of the great benefits of both tools is the possibility of adapting to all types of companies and, therefore, to different budgets.
Discover in this article what are the main benefits of each platform and discover how to optimize your campaigns to get the best return on your advertising investments.
Google Ads and Facebook Ads: Importance of Online Advertising
Currently, the greatest advertising competition is in the digital field. Gone are the times where the only way to reach wide audiences was by investing big bucks in mass media.
These days, you can create fantastic campaigns with such incredible targeting capabilities that they help you budget for every penny. Purchases and forms of consumption have been radically transformed and are carried out digitally through the web and social networks.
Faced with this change, Facebook and Google, platforms that began with an essence of entertainment or information search, have created advertising platforms that, if used well, can have incredible precision to achieve objectives.
Since the appearance of computers, but more strongly since the appearance of smartphones, people spend a large part of the day connected to some digital platform, with Facebook and Google being the most visited in the world.
Thus, from the continuous and massive use of these tools, methodologies have been born around them such as Inbound Marketing, an evolution of traditional marketing focused on the digital environment. For a good inbound strategy, today it is inevitable that you have Google Ads and Facebook Ads as allies.
Google Ads and Facebook Ads: Which One Should You Invest In?
Both platforms have a high level of effectiveness but they work differently and, although they share objectives, they have several differences that you have to take into account when choosing which one to advertise on.
Business Objectives
You can create campaigns in Google Ads with various specific objectives. This will help you improve the performance of your ads and reach your target audience effectively.
Among the main objectives proposed by Google Ads are:
In addition, Google has its campaign styles, which are classified as follows:
Google has specific predesigned notices for each type of objective and campaign, in which you only have to add information, images, or video without many complications.
In the case of Facebook, the objectives are similar and other complementary ones have been added that start from the fact that it is a social network.
CPC
The CPC is the final cost charged for a click. In terms of payment methods, both platforms are similar. With Google Ads, you can pay for effective clicks (CPC) or you can do it with the CPM option, which is the cost per thousand impressions.
Facebook Ads also work the same way. You can make payments for clicks or views.
CPM is recommended for companies looking to achieve brand recognition with branding campaigns, for example. CPC is an option that allows you to optimize costs and is usually the most effective option for conversion campaigns.
Scope of the Campaign
In Facebook Ads, your campaigns are displayed to people who match the profile you determine and according to their online behavior.
This system has more benefits than Google Ads. People will see your ad even if they haven’t shown any related interest. Facebook’s reach captures many people who are in the discovery stage of the sales funnel.
Google Ads, meanwhile, reaches people who are searching for keywords in your ad. While more specific, this results in a much higher conversion compared to Facebook Ads. This happens because the ads that are displayed are aligned with what the user is looking for and needs at the moment.
The problem is that if users don’t search for your keywords, they will never see your ads in Google Ads. There may be many people who do not know that they need your product or service and Google Ads is not the best way to make them known.
Purchase Cycle
Although both advertising platforms are designed to cover all phases of the purchase process, we consider Facebook Ads to be much more effective for the discovery phase. Users are more likely to discover on networks that they have a need or problem.
For the more advanced phases, Google Ads is more effective since once the need or problem is discovered, the user is ready to investigate the available options and this is where their search on Google begins.
ROI (Return on Investment)
The ROI is one of the issues that most concern advertisers. ROI is a way of verifying the performance of your advertising investments and the profits they generate.
It is important to note that it is not always a direct or immediate relationship, both in Google Ads and in Facebook Ads.
You can get a lead to enter your sales funnel, but it may take months for that person to decide to make a purchase. However, even in that case, your ads generate value for your business.
The most important thing to calculate ROI with these advertising platforms is to plan campaigns based on specific objectives, also called SMART objectives.
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The SMART goals are those that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timely. These are concrete goals that allow you to evaluate the performance of both your marketing and advertising efforts.
When you define a SMART objective, it is necessary to choose KPIs that allow you to measure the results. Once you carry out your campaigns with specific objectives, it will be much easier to discover if you have a good ROI or, on the contrary, you need to optimize and improve your ads.
An ad focused on generating sales will be optimized differently than an ad focused on generating brand awareness.
How to Optimize Facebook Ads and Google Ads?
Now that you know the essence of Facebook Ads and Google Ads, we will analyze below what are the key factors that you must take into account to get the most out of it.
Google Ads
Learn about all the optimization aspects that you must take into account in Google Ads to create effective advertising campaigns.
Quality Score
To optimize your Google Ads campaigns you must take into account the Quality Score. It is a quality score made up of three items: CTR, relevance, and quality of the redirect page.
Keywords
Keyword selection is another essential factor for successful campaigns and requires meticulous work. Very broad words have very high competition, which means your CPC will be higher.
It is recommended to use more specific words and also those called “long-tail”, which are made up of several terms. These have fewer searches but being more specific there is a much higher probability of conversion.
Redirection
It is very common to find ads that end up redirecting to the official page of the site. While it can increase traffic and yield certain results, there are ways to further exploit the potential of your ads.
One of these ways is by redirecting the user to a landing page, where you can obtain more information and generate a lead before the user starts to browse your website.
Analysis Metrics
A fundamental action to keep track of your campaigns is that you link Google Ads with Google Analytics. This will allow you to monitor relevant indicators and test your ads.
Facebook Ads
Here are the key optimization factors for Facebook Ads.
A / B test
Facebook Ads allows you to perform A / B tests easily. There are so many options that it offers of combinations of image, title, and text, that you can end up doing too much testing. That is why we advise organizing well-defined ad groups.
Campaign Design
In Facebook Ads, optimization goes through two factors:
On the other hand, you can create exclusive ads for computers or mobile devices that adapt automatically.
Analysis Metrics
Facebook has its resource for evaluating ad performance called the Facebook Pixel.
However, we also recommend linking Google Analytics to Facebook Ads as Pixel does not provide information on how the ads interact with your website’s metrics.
Google Ads and Facebook Ads: Which One is Best for Your Marketing Plan?
It is common to hear about competition between Facebook Ads and Google Ads. However, as experts in marketing campaigns and PPC campaigns, we can assure you that both platforms are useful and that they can (or should) be used together to obtain successful results.
Using both tools in a parallel and complementary way can increase the visibility of your brand, increase its reach, generate leads, and produce conversions that generate sales.
Conclusion
Facebook Ads or Google Ads? You do not need to choose one, as both tools meet different objectives, we recommend that you use both channels and enhance your advertising campaigns in this way.
Facebook is the ideal place to gain visibility and generate interest in the early stages of the sales funnel. For its part, Google is the quintessential tool that people use to search for recommendations and compare products in the last stages of the funnel.
If your budget allows it, use both platforms. Because, in short, why choose between two options that can complement each other very well in the search for better results.
