Here’s a typical scenario. You’ve worked tirelessly and spent hard earned savings on a business that is now finally starting to come off the ground. The bad news is, there is hardly anything left for advertisement. And on top of that, traditional advertising are both expensive and difficult to measure, unlike digital marketing methods.
Luckily, the evolution of the internet gave way to the birth of sophisticated yet tangible digital marketing opportunities, revolutionizing the advertising world. Two of the most popular Pay Per Click (PPC) marketing platforms are Google AdWords and Facebook advertising. The following are easily digestible summaries of both platforms that you can read and mull over before deciding which strategy to invest in.
Google AdWords
Google advertising is a pay per click advertising, meaning you don’t pay for people who view your ads but you do pay when they click on it. Every aspect of AdWords advertising is measurable, from the number of impressions to the number of clicks, to how many calls were made through the ad and to the business and much much more. To advertise on AdWords does not mean you must flesh out a large sum of money to compete, for this platform, ad quality directly affects how much you pay per keyword. Quality and high relevancy effects every metric on the platform. For example, a keyword you bid on simply must be relevant to the ad you want to be shown to users, and if the keyword you are bidding on is also mentioned in the ad, then that signals to Google, your ad is relevant therefore worthy of a higher quality ranking. But ad quality doesn’t rely on keywords and ads only; it also takes into account the landing page. When a user clicks on your ad which takes them to your landing page, and the user doesn’t like what he/she sees and leaves immediately, then you ad is deemed deceptive, and a low-quality score is given to it, meaning you’ll be paying more to have the same ad shown.
In short, if you are looking to target users actively looking for products or services you are offering, then AdWords is perfect for you. Be very vigilant when setting up your campaign and choosing the right targeting method because if you miss the mark on the high-level campaigns settings, then you could very well be missing your campaign objective entirely and wasting money in the process.
Facebook Advertising
As we all know, Facebook is one of the most popular social media platforms in existence today. According to Suzanne Shaw Consulting, 64% of the Irish population have a Facebook account, making conglomerate’s database a vital resource to tap into. That’s why we recommend it to many our clients. So what’s our top tip concerning Facebook advertising? Harness the power of lookalike audience targeting. We can’t stress it enough how useful this feature is. What this feature does, is allow you to target consumers who closely match your persona (a feature not available in Adwords). In doing so, you can target new potential customers bearing similarities to your current clients.
If you are interested, you can read more about A/B split testing on Facebook in our older blog post. And that’s not all because there are so many different ways for Facebook to track and monitor engagement within its site, there are seemingly endless amounts of demographics to choose from. This allows for granular audience targeting. Some of the most common demographics that are used are age, location, family, income, and what content a user is interested in.
The biggest difference when compared to AdWords? Facebook advertising does not rely on active user searched but rather on interests and demographics.
How is Facebook Advertising budget conscious? Well, due to the high level of granularity the service offers, you can start off your campaign with a minimal budget, assess ROI, and gradually increase the budget as you see fit. It’s as clear as that, no vagueness whatsoever.
All in all, it would be near impossible for us to recommend one platform over the other as both Adwords and Facebook have very compelling features. At first glance, this platform might seem complicated to get started on, but they’re not that complicated. Facebook and Google are perfecting the art of intuitive user experience every day.
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