When it comes to online advertising Facebook Ads and Google Ads dominate the industry hands down. Digitalisation has changed the way we get directions, the way we look for answers and consume information and of course the way we shop. The lockdowns of 2020/21 only escalated this, driving more and more businesses online and seeing rocketing online usage. Consumers are savvier than ever and competition is rife, so - in short - if you want to get in front of your customers online Ads are a no-brainer.

Both Google Ads and Facebook/Instagram Ads allow you to be an active part of the customer journey. They can help you inform, entertain and connect with your audience, build awareness, retarget interest and drive sales or sign ups.       

Google Ads put your business right in front of people who have intent to take action, they have searched for the very thing that you are selling. They want to find something at the click of a button, you can provide it, and Google Ads are the matchmaker. Facebook and Instagram Ads meet your customers a little further up the sales funnel, with Ads often presented to them when they have no intent, they’re not searching for you…but the targeting capabilities of the platform mean that that, done well, you can get your Ads in front of the very people who your product or service will resonate with perfectly initiating the start of a successful customer journey.

So faced with the (frequent) question “Should we be using Facebook Ads or Google Ads?” unfortunately there’s no one size fits all response – they both represent solutions to meeting your customers online, and managed well, (Ahem!) they will deliver scalable return on investment.

Too often though marketers will pit them against one another to see which works best, understandable from one view point but missing a huge trick from another. If you have the budget to use them both, then you’ll get more return on that Ad spend if you leverage the synergies of using the two together with having campaigns that intertwine and feed one another.

Pitching the case for cross-platform marketing here are a few ways that we use Google Ads and Facebook/Instagram Ads in tandem.

⁠1. GOOGLE ADS PROVIDING VALIDATION OF A FACEBOOK AD

Top of the funnel we're building more awareness and generating Interest with Facebook Ads. Then when potential customers head to Google to search for the item or brand and find out more, we snap up the opportunity to get in front of them again and hit them with a Google Ad. This adds credibility and social proof, helping move them through the buying funnel and ultimately closing the deal.⁠ Think of your customer journey and ensure you’re maximising the opportunities available.

2.  HEADLINE AND KEYWORD CROSSOVER

 If you have a snappy, memorable Headline for your Facebook Ads it may be more memorable to your customers than your company name, (think brand taglines or USP’s that you pride yourself on). With this in mind we set the headline as a keyword on Google Ads. It allows you to then answer that search term directly and as it's so specific to your company, the clicks won't have the same competition and will come in nice and cheap. It’s cross-platform magic like this that will give your Ads a leg up when you have competitors with deep pockets (…and lets face it every industry has those!)

3. USE THE AUDIENCE DATA

 Facebook targeting can be spookily and, for any advertiser wonderfully, granular. From honing on peoples likes, interests, habits, purchasing patterns and recent life events, to the ability to create lookalike audiences of your mailing list, website visitor or other seed audience. Google Ads doesn’t have that same functionality. However, we’re making use of the data collected from tested Facebook audiences to sculpt the audiences variables that are available in Google Ads, using the data from one platform to drive a informed campaign set up in the other.

4. FACEBOOK ADS TO RETARGET GOOGLE ADS

Hang on didn’t we just say that Facebook Ads are typically higher up the funnel than Google Ads?!? We did but the power in any online Ads is often retargeting people and moving them through a funnel.

So we're seeing great results retargeting our Google Ads hits with Facebook Ads. ⁠ By using a custom landing page we can capture and track the people who get to our clients website via a Google Ads click.⁠ Then a simple custom conversion campaign in Facebook to the audience who have visited that page (and not made a purchase) is a great cross-channel retarget.

In summary, buyer (with intent) searches on Google, clicks our Google Ad, visits our client's website. If they don't convert we are then retargeting them on Facebook with content reflecting their original search.⁠ ⁠ This approach really bolsters your bottom of funnel warm audience size in Facebook and increases conversions.

SUMMARY

Customer journeys are generally complex and multifaceted, you have to meet them along the way, and stay with them and nurture them – your customers are everything! So a multi-platform marketing strategy, designed to dovetail with the customer journey, will always yield better results than one with the platforms pitted against one another and get the best from whatever budget you are working with.

Let us know how you get on!

Nutshell manage multi-platform campaigns for e-commerce businesses. To find out how Google Ads and Facebook Ads could work together to improve your bottom line book in a call with us.