Do the giants of Facebook and Google play well together? Yes, if you’re balancing your media strategy with both. While they are competitors to each other, the dueling platforms provide dual opportunities for you to reach customers right where they are (which is often staring at a digital device).
Google AdWords is the most popular platform for paid search. If you want to reach an audience keying in search terms for the products and services you provide, Google AdWords serves that need. (Bing, the second largest search engine, has a similar ad platform.) You bid on keywords related to your contracting company – maybe that’s plumbing service, or air conditioning repair, or electrical outlets.
As prospects search for terms like these, your bid gives your ad the chance to show up in their results. With PPC (Pay-Per-Click) advertising, you get charged whenever a user clicks your ad. Yet, you get to set a budget in advance so you’re not surprised by unexpected costs.
Facebook Ads is your most popular “paid social” option, and the targetability is quite a benefit. Paid social advertising helps users find businesses based on their interests and online behavior. And the super cool thing here is that Facebook can help businesses get in front of “lookalike” audiences based on your own customer data.
Facebook advertising is also quite a deal in that you can set budgets for periods of time of your choosing. So, you can ignore the mind-boggling numbers of billions of marketing dollars spent to reach billions of users – and bring it down to earth. How about a few dollars a day to reach the people you actually want to reach?
It’s helpful to remember that search traffic is made up of people looking for products, services or information. Social users are scrolling through news feeds. If they’re not shopping for services at this moment, branding ads get them ready for when they are.