Facebook Ads V/s Google Adwords

Keying in the above headline on Google will return thousands of articles, posts, comments, links and videos on a topic that could decide the eventual winner in the great FB Vs Google battle. It could also define how big and how fast you can grow your business with a small marketing budget.

It is an interesting debate, especially as both Facebook Ads and Google’s Adwords have provided marketers never before access. Adwords is successful primarily because the ads are linked to keyword searches. So if the search term happens to be: “cannon autofocus camera, Mumbai” and you happen to be a dealer in Mumbai and have selected these keyword(s) your ad will show up. With the almost perfect mapping of intent to purchase and you, that is a match to die for. However, that is in theory. In practice, adwords’ incredible success could also be the cause of its downfall. Most popular keywords have been purchased at very high CPC rates, therefore your cost of buying the keyword gets more expensive every day. You could look to analyse the long tail and buy cheaper keywords…but that is a time consuming task best left to experts…in other words more cost.

Adwords began as a perfect solution for small businesses, but have since been swamped by multi-billion dollar budgets of the big corporates. In the example stated above, you could be competing for the same keywords with Canon, Nikon, Sony, Samsung, Croma…thereby increasing the cost. Still, Adwords unique ability to serve up relevant ads to its searchers and connect audiences with business is unprecedented. With over 60 billion searches happening everyday Adwords is not going away anytime soon.

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So where do Facebook Ads come in? Facebook offers another unique ability…that of narrow targeting. Because of all the information we provide Facebook–at the time we set up our profile–the company is able to offer unprecedented targeting options. Continuing our earlier example of the cameras, if you want to target 20+ something professionals in Mumbai, male or female, you can exactly get your target audience. This level of targeting has not been available before, and is the USP for Facebook ads.

But you are reaching a passive audience. They might not be in the market for a digital camera. Another drawback with Facebook ads, is the state of mind of the user. When we are facebooking, we might not be there to purchase a product or service, we are probably only socializing. An ad at that time will not achieve very high click through rates (CTRs). Facebook has partly solved the passive problem by providing both CPC and CPM ads. So if you are looking for camera buyers, the CPC option would ensure that only those seriously interested in your product will click…and therefore increase ROI. CPM ad world be more useful in a marketing campaign where visibility, not leads is a priority.

Another advantage of the Facebook ads is the fact that you can use the ad to build up fans to your company/product page. So if you have a page on FB, you could actually use the ads to increase the fan base. Why? Simple enough. A fan of your FB page is a long-term prospect. Getting one person to like your page also increases the potential of their friends circle becoming aware of your page…therefore increasing the networking impact. On the other hand, Google Adwords have no such impact. They will drive traffic when on and its back to square one when your campaign ends.

Eventually your ideal platform depends on your campaign objective and budget. While you’re working that out, one quick clue…Facebook ads are relatively new and therefore cheaper than Google adwords. But that could change very soon. So hurry.

Surajit Agarwal is the Managing Editor of Chip magazine and Compareindia.com.