Asked which is better, Google Ads or Facebook ads, the honest answer is that both work, for different jobs. On a small budget the more useful questions are which job the business needs done first, and whether the budget can support two platforms at once. Often it cannot, and one platform run properly produces an answer sooner than two run thinly.
What each platform does
Google Search shows text ads to people who are searching for something right now. The demand already exists; the ad meets it. Someone typing "blocked drain plumber" has a problem today and is choosing who to call. Price is set per click, and it varies a great deal by industry: our cost-per-click data for 40 New Zealand industries shows the range.
Facebook and Instagram, both run through Meta Ads, show ads in people's feeds while they are doing something else. Nobody was searching. The ad has to catch attention and create the interest itself. Audiences are chosen by location, age, interests and similar signals, and the picture does much of the work.
Neither of these is a weakness. They are two different ways of reaching people, and businesses tend to fit one more naturally than the other.
When Google Search usually comes first
Search tends to suit a business when people already look for what it sells:
- Needs that arise suddenly. Plumbers, electricians, locksmiths, towing, urgent repairs.
- Services people research before buying. Accountants, lawyers, builders, mortgage advisers, clinics.
- Local services with clear search terms. "Cleaner in Henderson", "physio near me".
The test is whether there is search volume. If very few people search for the service in the area, there is little for a search ad to meet. The budget planner shows monthly search demand for each of the 40 industries it covers.
When Facebook and Instagram usually come first
Meta tends to suit a business when people buy on seeing something rather than searching for it:
- Products and services that sell on sight. Food, fashion, beauty, home and garden, fitness, events.
- Something new. A product nobody knows to search for yet.
- A local community. A café, a gym or a studio that wants the people nearby to know it exists.
The practical requirement is images. Ads on Facebook and Instagram are built from photos of the products, the work or the premises, and the quality of the photos makes a real difference.
Why splitting a small budget often produces no answer
Every platform needs a certain amount of data before anyone can tell what is working. Clicks, enquiries and sales have to accumulate to the point where a difference is a difference and not chance.
Split a small budget across two platforms and each half accumulates data at half the speed. At the end of the month neither has a readable result, and the conclusion is "still learning" on both. A business that cannot afford many months of that does better putting the whole budget behind one platform until it gives a clear answer.
That is how our Growth Blueprint approaches it. It first checks whether the budget is large enough to split. When it is not, the Blueprint recommends one main channel to start with. Our pricing follows the same logic: subscriptions are priced by the number of platforms, so starting with one costs less than starting with two.
A simple order
- Check whether people search for it. Search demand for the service and area is the first fact to establish.
- Pick the platform that fits. Demand that already exists points to Google Search. Interest that needs creating, or a product that sells on sight, points to Facebook and Instagram.
- Run one platform until it gives an answer. Enquiries at a cost the business can live with, or a clear sign that it is not working.
- Add the second when the first is worth building on. With one channel understood, the second has a baseline to be compared against.
Running both
Once both platforms are running, the question changes. It becomes how to split the budget between them, and when to move money from one to the other as results come in.
That decision has to be made from outside both platforms. Each platform's own tools are built to run that platform well, and do; neither is designed to say that the next dollar would do more somewhere else. We wrote about that in more detail in Google and Meta will run your ads for free. What that solves.
At Mmedia, campaigns on both platforms are planned from one strategy that covers all of a client's advertising. The day-to-day work on each is set out on the Google Ads management and Facebook and Instagram ads management pages. The free Growth Blueprint is where the first choice gets made, with the market data for the business in front of it.