Prior to this week, I had not given much thought to the
differences between advertising on Facebook and Google. Both platforms offer businesses
of all sizes affordable options to create highly targeted, adaptable
advertising campaigns. Both sites have a huge user-base and both primarily sell
pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. BUT the targeting strategy for each is very
unique.
The Chartered Institute of Marketing defines
marketing as “The management process
responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements
profitability.” Online platforms
like Google and Facebook use valuable data which helps in eliminating the
guesswork of identifying and anticipating your customer needs. By
delivering messages to a highly-targeted audience, Facebook and Google help you
to reach potential customers who are most likely to use your business. The
services also help to avoid what Marty Neumeier refers to as the “advertising
death spiral” during which consumers filter out advertising because it’s not
relevant to their current task. (Neumeier, 2007).
They both sound pretty great, but how do you choose the
right advertising platform for your business? Although there is no reason
(except for maybe budgetary) that you can’t experiment with both, choosing one
or the other comes down to the goals of your campaign. What’s more important?
Building awareness or converting traffic to sales? According to Larry Kim, CTO
of the online marketing firm WordStream, “because a Facebook session tends to last much longer than the typical
Google search, the former be a better match for building brand awareness or
getting a specific message across. But Kim notes that Facebook isn't strong in
pure Web searches; Google has the clear advantage there, and as a result could
be the better fit for driving actual clicks and conversions around specific
products. Google searchers typically have a much more specific goal.”
(Casey, 2011).
Below is a side-by-side comparison of some key features of
Facebook and Google AdWords advertising. Whichever you choose, both platforms
offer terrific opportunities to hone in on your target markets in ways
traditional advertising can’t match.
FEATURE
|
FACEBOOK
ADVERTISING
|
GOOGLE
ADWORDS
|
Budget
|
No minimum.
|
No minimum.
|
Targeting Criteria
|
Target based on profile data. User location, interests and demographics.
|
Target based on search (keyword) data, geography. Select keywords
that match ads to potential customers. Select words and phrases relative to
your business.
|
Number of Users
|
Nearly one billion.
|
Approx. one billion.
|
Audience Size
|
Target large or small audience.
|
Target large or small audience.
|
Pricing
|
Bid on cost-per-click or cost-per-impression. Set daily or (campaign) lifetime budget.
|
Cost-per-click. User bids to get ads higher on the page. Set daily
budget. Bid on specific search terms.
|
Adaptability
|
Change campaigns every few days – adjust based on results. Test
different options. Adjust campaign by modifying the target audience.
|
Make changes at any time. Start or stop ads at any time. Adjust
campaigns based on keywords which are proving more effective.
|
Tracking Features
|
Stats show impressions, clicks, click through rate (CTR), and spend.
|
Track the effectiveness (and conversion rates) of search terms.
|
Key
Strength
|
Brand building. (Users spend much more time on Facebook pages and
will have more exposure to your ads.)
|
Conversions. Click-through rates are as much as 1,000 higher on
Google campaigns as opposed to Facebook.
|
Definition of marketing. (n.d.). The Chartered Institute
of Marketing. Retrieved June 11, 2012, from http://www.cim.co.uk/resources/understandingmarket/definitionmkting.aspx
Neumeier, M. (2007). Zag: the number-one strategy of
high-performance brands : a whiteboard overview. Berkeley, California. AIGA.
Casey, K. (2011, September 28). How to Choose Between Google
AdWords and Facebook Ads. InformationWeek. Retrieved June 10, 2012, from
http://www.informationweek.com/news/smb/services/231602311
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