Ad spend $1,500: What’s better Facebook ads vs Google ads?

What's better, Facebook ads vs Google ads? Well, we're about to find out.

Hi there, and welcome back to Serendipity Marketing Blog. We're a digital marketing agency with the mission to help small and medium businesses grow by applying psychology to their marketing strategies.

Before we get started, please go ahead and follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook or Instagram.

This is what $1,500 gets you in website traffic, Facebook Ads versus Google Ads.

Facebook Ads spend reached $31.43 billion in 2020, despite COVID 19. In 2021, they did even better, and they continue to just keep growing. And they're poised to increase by a whopping 2022, according to eMarketer.

Facebook Ads and Google Ads are some of the most important ad platforms in the market today.

Not only because they have a huge number of people that you can reach, but it also drives results. We wouldn't be in business or digital marketers if we were spending a dollar to lose a dollar.

We’re in digital marketing because when we spend a dollar, we make more than a dollar. And there are a couple of reasons why digital marketing is so amazing.

It's because of your ability to segment your audiences and reach very specific groups of people in an almost instant timeframe.

You also have a lot of data to understand what's going on, what's not working, where you should invest more, where you should invest less because not everything's going to work out the way you want.

By the way, have you subscribed to our newsletter? That's the best way to stay up to date with the latest in small and medium business marketing. Be sure to do that here.

Now, let's say, you had $1,500 to spend on paid ads, how much traffic would you be able to generate?

Now, leave a comment below telling us how many visitors you think you'll be able to generate.

Well, there are a few things that'll influence your results.

First off, the industry you're in. If you're in things like going after cases, let's say, in like legal, or mesothelioma, or auto insurance, you're going to get a lot less visitors than if you're in, let's say e-commerce.

How many competitors are willing to pay for the clicks in your industry, also, affect how many visitors you're going to get.

Also, how well-crafted and targeted your ads are, are also affected. If your ads suck, people don't want to click on them, you're not going to get a lot of visitors and you're going to have to pay more for each click because it's costing these networks money to show up your ads.

Now, whether or not you're doing remarketing or retargeting, that's another question, because that can affect your cost.

Seasonality is a huge one. If you're selling Christmas trees, you could bet, if you're selling Christmas trees in February each year, probably not going to get any clicks. So, let's take a hypothetical business and start from there.

We're going to pretend that we're running a campaign for a realtor in Los Angeles, California.

Let's say, this realtor is targeting an area within Los Angeles called Burbank, and they want to generate leads for apartment rentals.

On Google Ads, this realtor is going to be targeting three keywords, apartments for rent in Burbank, California, Burbank apartments for rent, and Burbank apartment rentals.

When you check these keywords on Ubersuggest, they have a combined search volume of 5,100 searches a month.

Now, according to WordStream, in the real estate industry, the average clickthrough rate is 3.71%.

That means you get on average 189 visitors a month with an average cost per click of $2 and 25 cents, and this would cost you an average of $427. And it would take you roughly three months to spend all your budget. By the end, you have roughly 667 visitors.

Now, with Facebook Ads, it's hard to predict how many clicks you would get and in how much time. But based on the estimation costs from WordStream for the real estate industry, we can, at least, get a sense of how many visitors you would get and roughly at what cost per click.

According to WordStream, per click on Facebook Ads targeting real estate, it would be around a dollar and 81 cents.

If you take a budget of $1,005 and divide it by a dollar and 81 cents that will lead you to roughly 828 clicks. Now, We're not saying that these would be the actual numbers that you would see in real life in a campaign, but it gives you a pretty good idea and rough estimations based on previous data.

In theory, Facebook Ads will give you 161 visitors more than Google, but that would depend on how your ads are performing on both platforms. Now, here's the thing. Google will drive you fewer clicks, but what people don't really tell you is we see much higher conversion rates on Google than we do on Facebook.

Remember, when someone Googles apartments for rent in Burbank, California, they're looking for an apartment. On Facebook, you got to target people in Burbank or around Burbank that you think maybe looking for an apartment, but they may not be, and they click on your ad, and they're more of a look loo, and they may not even be interested. So, it doesn't convert as well.

So, what we've seen overall is Facebook is cheaper and you can tend to get more clicks, but they don't convert as well. Overall, for most businesses, we see them spending more money on Google because Google converts better. So, if we were you, we wouldn't just use Google or Facebook, I would use both.

If you need help with your digital marketing to grow your business in terms of visibility, engagement, and profit, contact us today and speak with one of our digital marketing experts to see how we can build the bridge between the point you’re standing at right now and your goals.