Online advertising is crucial in maintaining a business’s success. There’s no better way to get the word out that your business is the one people are looking for. But with all the different ways of promoting your business and so many different social media platforms, it’s hard to know which ones you should be using. If you want to reach the widest audience possible, two of the best platforms to use are Facebook and Google. Both of which have adopted a PPC (pay per click) model that allows you to effectively promote your business to the right people.

 

Google

 

Google is the biggest search engine in the world, with about 40,000 searches every second and over 3.5 billion searches a day. This daily user-base makes it appealing for businesses to advertise on Google.

 

You can bid on keywords that best associate with those words or phrases people search for when looking for a product or service. Certain keywords may cost more to bid on than others depending on the demand in that industry. So, you must be strategic in considering which keywords you want to bid on to reach your target audience. 

 

Google also has a wide variety of ad formats that make up for the fact that most of the advertising is text-based, there are a ton of visual features that you can put in that are perfect for businesses like hotels, airlines, retailers, and vehicle manufacturers. You can add additional information and functionality like user reviews, location targeting, carousels, and other extensions to create the ad that’s perfect for your business.

 

Facebook

 

Facebook has been around for years, gathering its audience from the early 2000’s and still growing today. Facebook’s advertising methods differ from Google’s in that instead of trying to reach the widest audience possible (while loosely gauging them with certain keywords), Facebook promotes your business to people who would best be interested in it.

 

What advertisers can do is upload customer information from their own database to Facebook which then takes that information and finds new people who match the information on the platform. You could promote your business by targeting people who would most likely be interested in your company by targeting keywords that match the interests of people. Ads show up during a Facebook user’s regular activity and not just when someone searches with keywords.

 

Another difference from Google is that Facebook ads aren’t targeted to get immediate conversions and clicks. Since Facebook is a more visual platform, ads for businesses can be a lot more creative and engaging. Facebook has instant feedback if your ad gains traction, lots of likes, lots of comments, and will then be shown to more people thus generating even more traffic.

 

Looking at both of them

 

Both Google and Facebook have a PPC (pay per click) model that advertisers pay for certain keywords that dictate the audience they are promoting to, with some keywords being more popular and costing more to bid on. Both platforms are good for reaching the widest audience possible by taking advantage of a large daily user-base.

 

In comparison however, it all comes down to what your objectives are in creating ads. Both of these advertising platforms are effective, and they could also be used together in order to reach the widest audience possible. Though both platforms have a large overlap in their user-bases, the audiences still differ in how they interact with each platform. So, where are your customers at in their buying journey? How are your ads on Google and/or Facebook moving them closer to buying your service or product?