Facebook Ads vs Google Adwords 2018

Posted in FAQ

With all the recent news stories about Facebook ads, there has been an increased interest in this advertising platform, most particularly from business owners trying to figure out if they should advertise on Facebook or on Google so here are a few tips to help you make a choice.

Both Google Adwords and Facebook ads have their pros,  cons and should be used wisely based on what you are trying to advertise.

FACEBOOK

Facebook is the easiest, cheapest option and your best bet if you are new to online advertising. It covers both Facebook and Instagram. You can sponsor one of your posts in just a few minutes or create a more elaborate campaign where you can segment and target by geographical area and demographics including education, profession, interests, etc.

Facebook ads are particularly good for branding, getting likes + reshares, building mailing lists, selling small items such as T-shirts, shoes, jewelry, mugs, etc.

While it has plenty of pros, the main issue is that, despite its good targeting ability, it is way too broad and lacking the search intent Google Adwords offers. This means the leads you’re getting are generally lower quality because you advertise to everybody. Be ready to spend a good share of your budget on quite a few unqualified leads, curious clickers who might not be ready or interested in your services or products.

GOOGLE ADWORDS

Google Adwords is more complex and expensive but also more effective. It covers Google searches, the Google partner network (major sites showing their ads) and the display network (minor sites showing their ads). Google Adwords is more complicated to set up with a lot of strict rules to follow. While they do offer a simplified version of their ad platform, you should use its normal platform to unleash its power. With Google you bet on keywords people type in the search engines, directly answering their needs rather than advertising broadly to everybody, wasting budget in bad leads.

Google Adwords is best for delivering leads and sales with high ROI, whatever type of product or service you might be advertising.

While Google is very powerful and effective at getting you the high quality traffic you’ve been dreaming of, it requires constant monitoring due to high competition. To be frank, it isn’t that easy to set up and manage and requires professional Adwords set up and management if you want to get great results without wasting big $ – I can attest that most business owners running Adwords themselves screw up badly without even knowing it.

MY RECOMMENDATIONS

I’ve been managing Adwords and Facebook advertising accounts for more than 10 years in quite a lot of niches and I can tell you that Adwords pretty much always outperform Facebook when set up and managed professionally. Most of my clients are in niches where both Adwords and Facebook can be used and to be successful you need to have them complement each other rather than compete. I use 80% of my budgets on Adwords to get high quality sales and leads and the remaining 20% on Facebook to increase brand awareness, get likes and shares.