EP 28: FACEBOOK ADS VS GOOGLE ADS

When it comes to paid ads, there are two primary platforms that everyone needs to know about. Facebook ads and Google ads. Today, we’re going to be talking about the two platforms and when to use each.

Hey everybody, Jim Lastinger here. Welcome to another episode of Marketing in 10. Today, we’re going to talk all about paid ads. We’re going to talk a little bit more about Facebook ads than we have in the past.

If you run any paid ads at all, you already know about the two major networks out there, Facebook and Google ads. So, today I wanted to take a little bit of time and talk about Facebook ads and talk about how they’re different from Google ads. I talk Google ads all the time, so, hopefully you’ve got a good feel for those and how much I love them. And that’s primarily what I focus on in my day to day. But Facebook has lots of benefits too, there are lots of reasons and lots of different types of advertisers that need to be using Facebook ads religiously. Okay.

So, Facebook ads are inherently a different approach than Google ads. Google ads are intent based. They’re shown to people who are generally looking for something, and Facebook is the exact opposite. I call Facebook ads, interruption ads. Facebook ads interrupt your browsing activity. So, if you’re on Facebook or Instagram or any other Facebook platform, you can be scrolling through your feed or messages or anything. And you’ll see a bunch of ads that just are interspersed along with the feed. Some of the ads will be from brands that you visited or interacted with before and some will be brands that are targeting you because of your interests or what you’ve looked at before on Facebook. Then Facebook’s algorithm feels like you might be a good match based on your interests, buying behavior, demographics, anything like that.

So, it makes sense from a logical standpoint that you have to approach Facebook ads from a different mindset. You’re not trying to convince someone to choose your ad or product from a bunch of different ones on the screen, like you would with a Google ad. You’re simply trying to get someone to notice you enough to pay attention to your ads. Facebook ads are usually very visual. Unlike Google, the ads that tend to work there are video ads with some copy attached to it.

So, what are my favorite use cases for Facebook ads? I love using Facebook ads for retargeting, especially for e-commerce stores. If someone visits your store or interacts with your brand on social, then you need to be showing them ads, introducing them to your products or reminding them of individual products that they’ve looked at, showing them videos, showing them reviews. That’s a no brainer e-commerce stores and remarketing.

If you have a product or service with broad appeal, then you can directly target specific interests or geographic areas. Demographics such as age range. This is how the majority of Facebook ads work. They’re targeting large swaths of people that might not necessarily be interested in buying your product, but they have a good chance of being interested in your product.

If you have a brand new product, especially something that’s in a new market, or you’re creating a new market, then Facebook ads can work really well and it might be the best platform for you. They’re a great way to get in front of lots of people when you don’t know exactly who you need to be targeting, what types of interests or keywords to focus on. So, Facebook ads are really good for generic visibility and getting your product or service out in front of a lot of people quickly.

Facebook ads aren’t necessarily cheaper or more expensive than Google ads. You can control the costs, however you want to using a budget, just like you will with Google, but it does require more setup work to get a campaign up and running. And like I said before, videos, the preferred ad format here. So, taking time upfront to create quality video assets is what’s going to really pay dividends for you down the road. And over time, I plan to do several more episodes on Facebook ads in the coming months. So, stay tuned for those.

In the meantime, feel free to reach out to me with any questions you have about Facebook ads and I’ll do my best to help. That’s it for this week, everybody. I’ll be back soon with another episode of Marketing in 10. Until then take care, have a great day.