Facebook vs Google Pay Per Click

Posted on the 11th July 2011

You’ve probably heard the buzz recently about how Facebook has overtaken Google and now gets more total page views. However, from a business owner perspective, the question still lingers as to which is the best place to spend your advertising dollars to acquire new clients?

Should you spend your money with Google or Facebook?

Both platforms are “Pay-Per-Click” (PPC), which means you only get charged when someone clicks on your ad. However, these platforms are very different, so let’s take a quick look at each, and discuss which may be the best fit for your business to advertise with.

The biggest benefit of advertising on Facebook is that you can be very specific in WHO you target.

Since Facebook has a lot of personal information about it’s users, their platform is great for targeting a specific gender, age group, likes and interests, and more. I mean you can really narrow your target down to…single people that like big dogs who live in the South East of London.

While Google does not have such targeted information about it’s users, it is still considered to be the most powerful source of advertising by many business owners.

The advantage that Google has over Facebook, is that Facebook users are typically not looking to fill an immediate need. Instead, your ad just appears on the side of their Facebook page because you targeted them. They did not ask for that ad to be there.

With Google on the other hand, users are actually typing in specific keywords to fill an immediate need that they have, and you’re ads then appear right there on the results page.

We have used both sources on our online shops and, I will say from my personal experience that Google leads tend to convert into CUSTOMERS at a much higher rate than Facebook leads in most cases.

My belief is that people on Facebook are looking to socialize and are not seeking out a need to fill. It’s almost as if you are “Cold Calling” (although it is a very targeted Cold Call).

Google on the other hand is like the person is searching you out and calling you. These are typically the hottest type of prospect.
Now even though I personally believe Google is still a better place to advertise, I do believe that Facebook is the second best, and that every business looking to generate new leads should test BOTH sources and measure their results with Google and Facebook before looking into other online advertising sources.