Choosing Advertising Venues: Google, Facebook … or both?

Strict business decisions often result from employing an either/or strategy. Either you will build a storefront location and sell online, or you won’t. Either you will accept returns or you won’t.

But when it comes to advertising online, consider an alternative here and ponder the wisdom of both. When ecommerce merchants decide where to direct their ad dollars, they tend to study their options and choose one of the top two sales platforms. Facebook and GoogleAds, behemoths in marketing, searching, and advertising combined, offer similar yet slightly different approaches. Regardless of your favored business model, there is no hard and fast rule requiring you to pick one over the other.
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Search marketing firm WordStream has studied the relative efficacy of both platforms, showing the strengths and weaknesses of each. Recently it has reached the conclusion that using both in combination is your best bet.

Understanding at the outset that GoogleAds nets active shoppers who use a search engine to find a product, and that Facebook draws in passive shoppers enjoying a social media experience, it should become clear why targeting both groups is a winning strategy.
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For the better part of two decades, the King of Search Engines has become a fixture in computer users’ daily habits. Even light users in the market for a product have learned to type a phrase into a window and reap results. Many merchants think it’s the gold standard and opt to direct ad dollars there instead of the hit-and-miss venue of Facebook. That may be a mistake.

The above graphic from WordStream offers a nice illustration of our point. While the 3 percent difference in success rates looks negligible, remember that Facebook ads are cheap. Yes, they don’t offer the audience, customization, and other hot properties GoogleAds can provide. But if you’re paying $50 for a spot that reaches 10,000 people, why would you balk?

Envision a prospective client happening upon your ad, and eager to know more about the offering. Instead of clicking directly through, many will jump over to Google to execute a more in-depth search. This is most effective when you advertise your company or brand instead of a single product, unless that product is proprietary.

The trick is to employ your brand name in the keyword element of your search campaigns, and make sure your corresponding Facebook ad matches the messaging. Target your Facebook ad title as a keyword string in GoogleAds. Make it as seamless as possible to match.

While social media in general, and Facebook in specific, aren’t in business to optimize advertising, they do offer a respectable range of choices to tailor an audience. This blog post offers a great start on how to make sure your (very reasonably priced) Facebook ad returns maximum results.

Another underrated benefit of Facebook ads lies in the nature of social media. It’s social. That means if users like what they see but don’t have a personal need for it, they are very likely to share it with friends who do.
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Choosing where to spend valuable advertising dollars is always a difficult undertaking, especially if your budget is low. Learning how to maximize your return by taking advantage of unique benefits of multiple channels can only be a smart move, and if you choose to do it, you should consider yourself an insightful, proactive seller.