Google Adwords or Facebook Ads - Choose Wisely

Before you prepare to launch an online advertising campaign using Google Adwords or on Facebook, ask yourself one question.  “What do I hope to accomplish by advertising using Facebook or Google Adwords?”  Your answer will determine which tool is best for you.  Both platforms have the potential to produce great results for a company that understands the right way to use them.

If you don’t remember anything else, set this to memory: If the goal of your online campaign is to sell something, Google Adwords is your tool of choice.  If you wish to build brand awareness and visibility for a particular product or service, then Facebook ads may be the better too for you.  This is because, consumers on Facebook are generally not in the mindset to purchase anything when presented an ad. 

According to blogger Alexis Thompson, Google AdWords responds to the demands of consumers as the platform allows businesses to advertise to people who are already looking for a specific product or service.  In most cases, customers have become familiar with a particular product or business and are looking for it by name.  Google’s ad system serves up ads that will likely match their query with high probability.  Then they are likely to click on it.  Consumers primarily use search engines because they are looking for something in particular.  To ensure that they see your ad, all you have to do is meet that demand by bidding on the right keywords.

According to data from Google, AdWords serves an average of almost 30 billion impressions per day - 29,741,270,774 impressions per day to be exact.

 

On the flipside, Facebook ads are presented within the environment of the social media site.  During a consumers’ session on Facebook, they are likely to be presented ads for products or services that they aren’t exactly looking for but could be interested in.  This hopefully leads to a position within the consideration set.  As Thompson describes, in this case the demand is created by the ad instead of the consumer unlike with Google Adwords.

According to statistics presented by Cara Pring, “89 percent of marketing agencies said they would use Facebook to advertise for their clients in 2012 – either by purchasing ads, creating pages, or other methods of engagement.”

Despite the major difference of how you plan to use advertising through Google Adwords or on Facebook, the usability of the two platforms is actually quite easy and accommodating.  Both platforms come with capabilities including:

·         Geographic targeting:  Both allow advertisers to pinpoint down to the city level the target audience they hope to reach.

·         Start and stop any time:  Begin a new campaign and suspend the advertising activity at your convenience.

·         Pay per click:  Pay for performance when the ad drives traffic to a specific destination.  (Executives love this!)

·         Real time analytics

·         Set a daily budget.  No need to worry about exceeding a set marketing budget.

·         Direct traffic to website or landing page

 

Final thoughts... “How could Google Adwords or Facebook ads have helped?”

Since Facebook ads rely on the data provided in their members’ profiles to target the ads we create, I immediately thought about affinity marketing.  There is a great deal of data that a marketer can use to pinpoint a specific target including hometown, gender, university attended, employer, and interests.  Let’s say that my company wanted to market to the female alumni of a certain university, but only those who live in Texas.  Facebook ads would allow us to present ads to this distinct target audience.  There is some real potential in using Facebook ads to engage and build awareness among affinity groups.  It could be an easy alternative to purchasing a direct mail list.

Give me your feedback and let me know, “how could Google Adwords or Facebook ads have helped” you with a past marketing strategy.