Meta ads vs Google Ads: which is right for your business?

Google Ads is for customers who are already looking for you, and Meta is for customers who don't yet know they need you. That settles most of the decision. For a lot of businesses the answer ends up being one first and then both, and which one comes first depends on how your customers buy.

The difference in one line

Google search ads catch demand that already exists. Someone types what they want, and your ad appears next to the answer.

Meta ads create demand. Someone is scrolling Facebook or Instagram, not looking for anything in particular, and your ad interrupts them with something they didn't know they wanted.

Almost everything else follows from that.

Side by side

On Google you pay per click, and often less than the most you said you'd pay. On Meta, what you're charged for depends on the goal you choose for the campaign. Either way, the money that goes to the platform is separate from any fee for managing the ads.

When Google tends to suit you

• People already search for what you sell. If you can write down the words your customers type, you can bid on them.
• The need is urgent or specific. Nobody scrolls Instagram hoping to find an emergency electrician. They search for one.
• You serve a defined area. Google lets you target by location, and local searches often include the place name.
• You sell something people think about before buying. Anyone comparing suppliers searches, reads and comes back, so it matters that you're there while they compare.

Check what people actually search for before you commit. Google's Keyword Planner, which sits inside a Google Ads account, shows how often the terms you type in get searched, and Google Search Console shows the searches your site already appears for.

When Meta tends to suit you

• Your product is visual, or better shown than described. Think of food, interiors, fashion, events, or anything with a before and after.
• People don't know they need it yet. Nobody searches for a new kind of product or service until they know it exists.
• You sell to consumers and can describe them. Age, location, interests and life stage are what Meta is good at.
• You can keep making new images and video. Ads lose their effect as the same people see them again and again, so you need a steady supply of fresh pictures, videos and angles.

What each one asks of you

This part is easy to overlook, and for a small or medium business it often decides the whole thing.

Google asks for good pages, and patience with detail. The ad itself is mostly words, and the page it sends people to has to match what they searched for. The account also needs regular attention to the search terms report, your negative keywords and your bids, and each of those comes up when you look at why Google Ads aren't working.

Meta asks for pictures and video, and plenty of them. Its targeting has become more automatic, which means the image or the video now does more of the work of finding the right people. If you can't produce something new every few weeks, Meta is harder to keep going.

Both ask for proper tracking. Until enquiries are being recorded, neither platform can tell which clicks were worth paying for, and nor can you. For Google, that means the Google tag or Google Tag Manager. For Meta, it means the Meta Pixel, Meta's own tracking code, recording the same enquiries or sales.

Using both

Used in the right order, the two work well together. Meta introduces people to you, and Google catches them when they search for you later. Retargeting, which means showing ads to people who have already visited your site, ties the two together.

In the UK, retargeting depends on consent. The cookies and tags it relies on aren't strictly necessary for your website to work, and the Information Commissioner's Office guidance on cookies says anything that isn't strictly necessary needs the visitor's consent. So if your consent banner is set up properly, your retargeting audiences are built only from the visitors who accepted. Plan for smaller audiences than the platforms' own figures suggest.

Where to start

If the budget is tight, start where people are closest to buying, and prove one channel before you add another. Before you begin, do the sums on whether Google Ads are worth it for your business.

1. Work out what you can afford to pay for a customer, from your own margins rather than from a benchmark. It's the same method you'd use to decide how much to spend on marketing.
2. Check whether people search for what you sell. If they do, Google search is usually the first test for a service business. If they don't, or your product sells on how it looks, Meta usually is.
3. Set up something to count enquiries before you spend anything.
4. Run the test long enough to judge it, with a budget you can afford to lose, and decide in advance what would count as success.
5. Compare the cost per customer, not the cost per click. A cheap click that never becomes a customer is the most expensive kind.
6. Add the second channel once the first is working, then watch whether having both brings the cost per customer down.

Mistakes to avoid on each platform

On Google:

• Leaving the location setting as you found it, without checking who it actually reaches.
• Never reading the search terms report, so the budget goes on searches that were never going to turn into anything.
• Counting page views, or clicks on an email address, as enquiries.

On Meta:

• Judging it on likes and reach rather than on enquiries or sales.
• Sending people from an ad on their phone to a page that's slow or awkward to use on a phone.

A quick way to decide

Answer these honestly. Mostly yes: start with Google. Mostly no: start with Meta.

• People regularly search for what we sell, in words we could list.

  YesNo
  How to tell

  Try writing down five searches a customer would type to find you. If you can, and Keyword Planner shows people making them, this is a yes.

  Takes twenty minutes in Keyword Planner. Covered in What Google Ads cost in the UK.

• Customers usually need us for a specific, often urgent, reason.

  YesNo
  How to tell

  This is a yes if people come to you with a problem to solve now, such as a leak, a deadline or something broken, rather than something they might like one day.

  Covered in full above.

• We serve a defined local area.

  YesNo
  How to tell

  This is a yes if you only take customers within a certain distance, or you could draw your patch on a map.

  Covered in Local SEO for UK businesses: the complete checklist.

• Our product or service is hard to show in a picture or short video.

  YesNo
  How to tell

  Imagine a ten-second video of what you sell. If it would not show why anyone should buy, as with most accountancy or insurance, this is a yes.

  Covered in full above.

• We could not easily produce new images or videos every few weeks.

  YesNo
  How to tell

  This is a yes if nobody in the business has the time or the material to make fresh images or short videos every few weeks.

  Covered in full above.

If you'd like help with either, our paid ads service covers both platforms, with builds and launches from £2,500 to £6,000. The Google Ads launch is a fixed £2,500 and includes 30 days of changes afterwards.