If you are new to ad marketing and on the fence about whether to use Google Ads or Facebook Ads as your platform for advertising, this blog post will be helpful to you.
You have many options for advertising your business, including:
- Social media
- Paid search
- Display advertising
What Is Ad Marketing?
First, let us talk about ad marketing. Ad marketing is how you reach out to your target audience through paid advertising. When using ad marketing, you create your brand’s message to your target audience to make them take action that you want them to take.
Whether you want your audience to sign up for a webinar or buy your services, you should be using a targeted message to entice them to start interacting with your business.
To make the most out of your ad marketing campaigns, follow the below tips:
Know Your Target Audience
Identify your target audience, the segment of consumers that is interested in your business, and make sure that you spend your advertising budget only for this consumer segment.
To be displaying your ads to people who are not interested in your business is absurd and will only waste your money. Google Ads are effective in capturing only the consumers that have an interest in your products and have high intent to buy.
With Google Ads, you can use keywords that your target audience uses when searching for products that you offer.
Set a Budget
Budgeting is vital to your ad marketing campaign. It is the part that will ensure you have the funds needed to keep your ads running.
Concerning paid ad budgeting, there is no minimum amount of money required. Platforms like Google Ads will work with you no matter how much you have allocated for ad marketing.
Thus, you can start advertising with just $500 or thousands of dollars. The amount you set is purely self-discretionary. The higher the amount that you set for ad marketing, the higher the chance for you to get valuable leads.
Use Retargeting Ads
There will be times that your target audience will see your ads, but will take no action to buy your products or engage with your business. That does not automatically mean that these people will never ever deal with your business or buy your products.
The important thing is they have already seen your business and therefore are aware of the existence of your business. This opportunity opens up a possibility of future interaction.
The trick is to re-engage with them by the method called ad marketing retargeting and hope for the best that they will convert to your business.
Such a marketing method is also called remarketing. By running retargeted ads, you can make people think about your business and start buying your products or services.
Focus more on consumer benefits rather than highlighting your company – Do not focus too much on telling your target audience the positive things about your company. People are not so interested in those things as much as they want to know how your products and services can benefit them.
Thus, when you create your ads and landing pages, highlight consumer benefits. People want to know how your business can fulfill their needs or solve their pain points. That approach will keep your target market engaged with your business.
Google Ads: How it works
Google paid search advertising, or PPC marketing is as simple as paying money for your ads to be featured on Google SERPs or search engine results pages. When using paid search, you use particular keywords, and, based on these keywords, your ads will be shown on SERPs.
So, you start by identifying keywords that rank the highest for your business. You can also use competitor analysis to identify the keywords that work successfully for your competition.
Google Ads for Small Business
If you are not a volume seller and are only after 50 to 70 deals per year or a notch higher than that, you can use Google Ads to trigger awareness for your brand and target your audience at the different points of the buyer’s journey.
High Intent to Buy
Your biggest advantage when using Google ads for marketing is that you have keywords to leverage because ads are displayed on search results based on the intent of the user.
Thus, the ads that get displayed on Google search results pages align with the intent of the searcher. The platform allows entering the interest of your target audience in the form of phrases or keywords that represent your ideal client.
Such an approach will let you reach consumers who are likely to purchase your products or services. The system works for targeting consumers based on their behavior and activities when searching online for the product you offer.
Audience Segment Targeting
Google Ads users can do audience segment targeting on its platform. Thus, with Google Ads, you can reach your audience based on:
- Who your audience is
- Audience habits and interests
- What your audience is actively researching
- How your target market has engaged with your business in the past.
Audience segment targeting can help boost the performance of your campaign by engaging with your target market while they browse websites, use apps, or watch YouTube videos.
Control Your Expense and Boost Your ROI
When it comes to Google Ads PPC campaigns, ROI and expense are the main issues of concern. Thus, it is vital that you choose the platform that can help you identify where your audience is present. Google Ads is one great platform that can best meet your marketing objectives.
How to Set up and Use Google Ads
Google Ads operates on a pay-per-click (PPC) model. Once you open an account with this platform, you can start bidding on keywords. You only pay Google when your advertisements get clicked by interested product searchers.
Every time a user initiates a search, Google browses through a pool of advertisers and picks a group of winners that it will show in the ad space on Google search results pages.
Follow the steps below in using Google Ads:
- Go to ads.google.com. Click “Start Now.”
- Select your campaign type – Available campaign types are “search campaign,” “video campaign,” “smart campaign,” “display campaign,” and “app campaign.”
- Select the option on the results you want to get from Google Ads. You have to choose one of the three options: app downloads, phone calls, and website visits.
- Choose your ad settings – location, languages, and audience settings.
- Budget and bidding. You can choose to run your campaign on select days or all the days of the month.
- Set up keywords and ad groups.
- Create your ads.
- Set up your billing – Google gives you the option to pay via a debit or credit card. You may also choose your bank account to pay for the service. If you have a promo code from Google, you can also use it for payment.
Advantages of Google Ads
Google Ads benefits advertisers by showing their ads to the right audience, on the right platform, and at the right time. Additional benefits include:
Highly-targeted Ads
Google Ads is a way to make highly targeted ads to consumers relevant to your business. You can specify what kind of targeting approach you want the platform to do for you. Your options include:
- Keywords
- Ad location
- Age
- Language
- Days, time, and frequency
- Device type – You can choose the device that your ads will appear on.
Ability to Control Your Expenses
There are no minimum budget requirements. You can also choose how much you want to spend on PPC advertising – per month, per day, or per ad piece.
Ability to Monitor Your Ad Performance
You will know when someone does something valuable to your business – product purchase, app download, or call to order. You can track all of these with Google Ads.
Ability to Manage Your Campaigns
Google allows you to use tools for managing and monitoring your account on the Google Ads platform. First, you have the tool called My Client Center or MCC, which is a tool for managing multiple accounts in a single location.
Do you need to make changes to your Google Ads account? The tool for that is the Google Ads Editor. With this tool, you can edit your ad campaigns offline and then upload the changes you want on Google ads later. The app also allows you to view and manage multiple accounts simultaneously.
More details on Google Ads from this link.
Minor Downsides of Google Ads
Like Other Advertising Platforms, Google Ads Can Only Do So Much
Your website's landing pages and its content will be the deciding factors that ultimately convince people to get your services, not your ads.
Ensure That Every Cent Counts, as Cost per Click Is Really Costly
Set up your account well and make sure that you target the days and hours when your advertisements are more productive.
Running Google Ads Can Be Time-Consuming
Sometimes, it is less expensive and time-consuming if you hire a Google Ads agency to do all the dirty work.
Google Ads Has Too Many Options for Settings
These settings can be cumbersome, but they are necessary for optimization. You will have to spend time learning the system to know how best it can work for you.
Google Ads Is Not for Marketers Who Are Unfamiliar With Keyword Intent and How It Works
For Google Ads to work successfully, understand how your target market searches for the products they need and the important features they look for in products.
Not understanding these key advertising factors will only make you pay the Google Ads service for clicks that do not generate conversions.
Many business owners stopped Google Ads advertising in the middle of the game when the costs start to overwhelm them.
That should not be the case with you because that will drastically limit your potential to attract traffic to your website, not to mention that you have already spent thousands of dollars to keep your ad marketing campaign running.
Facebook Ads: How It Works
Facebook Ads allows users to set up advertising campaigns based on the target audience’s interest and geographical location. Facebook also uses the same PPC model that Google Ads uses.
That means ads are paid on a per-click basis, and you only pay Facebook for every click your ads get. Facebook will show you many bidding rate options, so you have the freedom to set your own budget based on your available funds.
Does the Facebook Ads platform work for businesses? Yes, it does. However, you need to take the time to learn how to make it work for your business. That is most especially applicable to the aspect of targeting and segmenting your target market.
Facebook considers the information they have about its users, and they use this information to determine the products that they think its audiences will find relevant to their lives. So, with Facebook Ads, only the ads that are relevant to your audience will be shown to them.
Your ads essentially work as a commercial like the way a paid 30-second commercial for Super Bowl works. When you do Facebook, think of it as a paid commercial for Super Bowl.
Thus, always make your ads engaging and entertaining. Most of all, try to get your audience to click your ads.
Advantages of Facebook Ads
Targeting only people interested in your business makes Facebook Ads effective in generating brand awareness. As long as you select the right people to target, you will not be wasting your resources building brand awareness that might generate revenues in the long run.
Also, the Facebook advertising platform has been evolving through the years. Today, Facebook Ads users can optimize their best-performing ads and get valuable information about the type of ad content that works for their business and what does not.
Perhaps the best advantage of Facebook Ads over Google Ads is the lower cost of advertising.
Disadvantages of Facebook Ads
With the advantages of lower cost and highly-targeted marketing, Facebook Ads also has its weak spots, including:
Increasing Rates
As Facebook Ads continues to evolve and offers more premium services, it is also increasing in cost. Increasing costs can drive away small businesses with a small budget.
Although Google Ads costs slightly higher than Facebook Ads, Google Ads has a higher potential for conversion and sales. It is because Google Ads target consumers with high intent to buy. On the other hand, Facebook is more on the side of building brand awareness rather than conversion and sales.
Thus, it is a little bit costlier to use Google Ads, but it is guaranteed that your business gets higher revenue fast from people who have a high intent to buy.
Low Sales Conversion
By default, Facebook is a platform for connecting with friends and family, and its interface is not designed for marketing and sales processes.
Hence, Facebook struggles a lot in terms of conversions for businesses. No matter how well you set up your advertisements, many people who will see your ads will skip them.
Less Organic Reach
The organic reach of Facebook Ads has been decreasing recently, so it is highly likely that your posts will not reach a fresh, new audience but only those who have already viewed your content before.
What you need is a steady stream of new clients who will do business with you.
You Only Reach Facebook Users
It may be the case that your target audience may not be using Facebook. In that case, your opportunity to capture the right audience is limited.
Too Much Competition
Due to the immense popularity of Facebook, many businesses all over the world use this platform to advertise their products and services.
These days, the business competition has become too stiff that everybody is trying to use every platform available to attract potential clients, and Facebook is no exception.
So, every time you post a new ad, it is likely that your target audience has seen similar ads posted by your competitors. Thus, you must produce outstanding ads that can truly capture your target audience’s attention on Facebook.
Facebook Ads vs. Google Ads: Which Should You Be Using
Both Google Ads and Facebook Ads are great platforms for advertising a business, with their own strengths and weaknesses.
If your dental, chiropractor, or HVAC business is still small, you need to generate sales to see significant growth in the next few years. So, target consumers who are ready to buy.
The problem with Facebook Ads is that you can target people who might get interested in what your business offers. However, most of these people have no intent to buy at the time your ads are shown to them.
The disadvantage with Google Ads is it is more expensive than Facebook Ads, so you will have to spend more money doing Google Ads.
However, Google Ads is a better income-generating machine for businesses because ads are shown to people looking for products or services they need to buy at the moment they search via the Google search engine.
If you would like to talk to me about which might be better for you and your business, feel free to reach out!
