Google or meta ads? Which is better for a new brand?

Read time: 3 minutes

In my 9 years of Digital marketing experience, one of the most common questions or dilemmas I have faced is this:

Should a new brand spend more money on Facebook/Instagram or Google ads?

There are 100s of campaigns that I have tried along with the help from my team and performance marketing agencies to arrive at the right answer.

In a few cases, there is not a straight answer to this question however there is a pattern that I have observed in this.

Before I talk about this pattern understand the fundamentals of Facebook and Google platforms first. You will understand the logic in the pattern better.

Google is simply the best platform when it comes to showing your ads to an audience that is already in the zone of buying.

Maybe they are researching a product, maybe they are reading reviews or maybe they are close to conversion now.

But the good news is that on Google you target audiences based on the search they do, based on the intent they already have.

Hence the quality of traffic or leads is not too much to worry about with Google.

However, the common challenge with Google search in specific is that all the brands compete for the top 5 ad spots.

Hence it gets really competitive and more often than not, it also gets expensive (especially if you are a new brand and do not have much account history).

Today, Google has many new campaign types as well like performance max or Discovery for brands to venture outside the 5 spots of search ads.

But do these ads really perform for a new brand?

In my experience, 7 out of 10 times they do not.

They are expensive, they get you irrelevant leads and also increase the bounce rate of your website.

The reason why this happens is simple: Google is a machine and the machine needs intelligence, it gets intelligence with the actions user take on your ad and on your website.

The more actions user take on your ad and website, the smarter Google machine becomes and starts to perform better.

Google also uses account history and pixel data to prospect the right audiences for you and drive sales or leads.

While with Facebook (and Instagram) the scenario is a little different:

On facebook, people do not really search for specific products (unless they have discovered the product already on facebook/instagram or Google or anywhere else).

Facebook is primarily an interest-driven platform, it understands its users more on the basis of interests, behaviour and demographics and tries to serve them relevant content or ad.

Hence Facebook knows about the audience’s interest in almost real-time and serves them relevant ads.

The discoverability of a product or service is better done on Facebook.

This discoverability leads to consideration which can happen in the form of following your brand account and website traffic or add to carts (in the case of e-commerce) and later this consideration leads to conversion which can happen from any user touchpoint including- Google ads, SEO, facebook ads, Direct traffic, emails, Whatsapp nudge etc.

If you are a new brand, my suggestion would be to look to create discoverability about your brand and product first on social. It is comparatively cheap, leads to brand followership and then eventually conversions.

If you are a new brand and you belong to a hugely competitive category like fashion, retail, grocery, decor, SaaS and any of such cluttered categories, you will have to compete with the likes of Amazon and other deep-pocket players and because yours is a new account with limited intelligence, in all likelihood Google will turn out to be an expensive affair initially.

While Google is a platform where there is demand for the product you sell but there is also huge competition and limited placement options.

And if your brand has not created awareness yet then the audience will most likely click on the ad of a known brand on search and shop from your competition. Even if yours is a commoditised product or service.

Brand recall matters.

Hence one of the most sort after approaches when it comes to choosing between Facebook and Google ads for a new brand is:

Create discoverability and followership of yourself on Facebook and convert the users who discover your brand on facebook for initial 4-6 months and thereafter active Google platform when audience in your niche has at least heard your name and sees you as a player in this category.

Otherwise in most of the categories, offers or a catchy ad copy does not help beyond a point.

The logical explanation for this approach is:

If a user has not heard of your brand at all and they see your search ad in parallel to a known brand, they will click on the competition ad, reducing your ad CTRs, which in turn will reduce your Quality scores and eventually increase CPCs.

You may still see some conversions happening from Google if you run ads on Google from day 1 for a new brand but those ads will be expensive and will take its own time to optimise and reduce CPAs.

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That’s it for today folks.

Have an awesome day ahead.

Cheers,

Apurv