Google Adwords or Facebook Ads ? This is one of the most recurring questions from our clients. Both are great options for any business. However, each one acts at different times in the purchase cycle and it is important that you know this detail to manage your investment intelligently.

Below we explain the advantages and disadvantages of Facebook Ads and Google Adwords so that you can optimize your marketing strategy and use the channel that best suits your brand’s objectives. The team at Pay per Click Management Co will help you come up with the best advertising strategy for your business.

How does Facebook Ads work?

Facebook is the most popular social network in Peru with more than 23 million accounts (Comscore, 2019). For this reason, it is the ideal platform to promote products and services. Although in recent years other channels have gained prominence, Facebook has a long history and stable functionality.

You probably know Facebook Ads, Facebook’s promotion and advertising system, which allows you to increase the reach of your publications with investment. The basic premise of this tool is to show your content to the audience that is interested in the type of product or service you offer. This match is possible thanks to the audience segmentation in each campaign.

For example: a school starts its admissions campaign and chooses mothers with children up to 10 years old and people with educational interests as its target audience. The algorithm will group all the people with these characteristics, according to the information they have provided to Facebook and also to all the times they interacted with content related to education.

Advantages:  the ads reach a good number of qualified consumers, which automatically multiplies the acquisition of potential clients.

Disadvantages:  the campaign reaches the consumer when they are not looking for the product. It is possible that you have already found a school for your children or that you are not interested at that moment. We work with the surprise factor and this forces us to invest more and more to reach a larger audience.

In which campaigns should you use Facebook Ads?

• ✔ Brand recognition
• ✔ Brand recall
• ✔ Lead generation on short-term dates
• ✔ Increase engagement
• ✔ Promote events
• ✔ Increase web traffic
• ✔ Attraction of leads by offers.

If your goal is only to win customers, relying only on Facebook will not help you. In other words, if you will have sales, but with the risk that your acquisition costs are high.

In this guide we explain how to use Facebook ADS from scratch.

How does Google Ads work? 

Continuing with this comparison between Google Ads and Facebook Ads, we will show you what are the advantages and disadvantages of using Adwords.

Google Adwords is Google’s advertising platform, it works with a keyword bidding system. The company that offers the most investment for certain keywords appears first in Google search results.

Do you know what that means? We explain it to you with figures:

• ✔ 90% of the world market share uses Google as the default browser ( Statista )
• ✔ Google’s first result takes 60% of clicks. Second place 15% and third place 7%.
• ✔ 94% of Peruvian digital consumers search on Google before buying ( El Comercio )

In the digital market, appearing in the top positions of Google is the effective way to generate more sales opportunities. And this is possible in two ways: applying SEO, which are highly profitable organic positioning techniques, but which take time; or using Google Adwords.

As with Facebook Ads, segmentation is very important in Google Adwords. For example: if a veterinary clinic pays for an advertisement: should you promote yourself to a million people without knowing if they have a pet or invest in 400 petlover users ?

Advantages:  Ads reach people when they are ready to buy. This is possible thanks to the fact that Google allows you to configure who your ad will show according to the words they use for their searches. A search engine optimization specialist can detect which keywords generate the most transactions and manage the budget efficiently.

Disadvantages: You need to maintain the investment and adjust to the level of the bid for Keyword or the campaigns will not be shown to your target audience. Furthermore, Adwords is not ideal for promoting content, generating brand awareness or improving engagement.

In which campaigns should Google Adwords be used?

• ✔ Generation of qualified leads
• ✔ Attraction of traffic to landing pages
• ✔ Youtube campaigns
• ✔ Campaigns for the display network
• ✔ Increase sales in Ecommerce

Google Adwords channels

Red Display 

These types of ads are found on various web, blog and news pages. They can be segmented by: keyword, location and remarketing, with these steps you will get potential users to consider your products and make a purchase. They appear in:

• ✔ Gmail: With personalized announcements that enter the inbox.
• ✔ Text: It is similar to a banner but contains a text box with the name of the brand and a brief description
• ✔ Banner: These are graphic ads such as images or videos that attract views and generate engagement.
• ✔ Applications: These are located especially in apps.

Youtube Campaigns

Youtube campaigns show video ads within the same channel’s ad network or on the Google Display network. Within this we find the following formats:

TrueView in Stream: These appear before, during or after traditional Youtube videos, however, they can appear at the same time in immersed websites. In this content, the viewer has the ability to skip the ad reaching 5 seconds, so creatives have the obligation to create short advertising that draws the user’s attention.

Out-stream : This advertising is focused on generating interaction with users from their mobiles and tablets because it is easy to “click with the hand” and play the video. In addition, this technique allows the brand to reach beyond Youtube and generate value.

TrueView video discovery: This advertisement is only shown on YouTube, it is shown to users who are discovering content. Also, the format and size vary according to the publisher, when the viewer clicks on the ad it will take them to the main channel.

Bumper: Contrary to the TrueView in-Sream ads, the one mentioned cannot be skipped and its format is much smaller than the previous ones. The video lasts 6 seconds and the main objective is to impact the audience with an understandable, interesting and effective message in short seconds. Learn more about video ad formats here

Search network

These ads appear when the user does a search on Google. They appear in the first positions with the label “Advertisement”. You can reach people who are looking for specific products and you only pay for each click. That is, you only invest when a user pressed your ad to view it, this is one of the cost-benefit advantages.

When carrying out a campaign, you must decide whether the ad will be text or image, segment the public and choose the network where it will be published, these are the search and display networks.

The ads in the search engines will be activated when the user enters the keyword and appears before the list of organic content, occupying the top positions.

App Ads

App advertising facilitates the promotion process because Google includes or shows them within its searches, Google Play, YouTube and the Display Network. The difference of the aforementioned campaigns is that individual designs are not created within this campaign, but rather, it includes elements from the Play Store file to be inserted in advertisements with different formats.

To be successful in the downloads, Google is in charge of automating the search orientation of what you want to achieve. In this campaign, ads are rotated and bids are adjusted in order to get more downloads. This option allows the system to evaluate the ad more effectively and display it more frequently.

Conclusions

Before choosing which channel to use, define the objectives of your campaign. If your purpose is lead acquisition, you probably should use Google Adwords. But if you want to increase traffic to your blogs, increase your engagement or generate brand awareness, Facebook Ads is your best option.

It is also important that your marketing strategy combines the best of both tools. If you only focus on selling, you will never consolidate a loyal community and you will always depend on the investment in your campaign to attract potential clients. On the contrary, if you only work the connection, your actions will stop being profitable.

A marketer must balance immediate profitability with long-term goals. It is the best way to improve investment management over time.