The digital marketing industry has exploded in the last few years, with a 10% growth rate in digital marketing budget spending across businesses between 2023 and 2024. Two of the most popular digital marketing strategies available at any brand's disposal are Google Ads and Social Media Ads. Both methods work towards similar goals and, through a similar strategy, can help brand owners make informed decisions about which platform is best to help increase website traffic, generate leads and improve online visibility. Let's talk a little bit about Google Ads Vs Social Media Ads!

What Are Google Ads?

Google Ads is like securing a huge billboard on the largest internet motorway. Google Ads allows brands and businesses to showcase their products, services and brands to potential customers right when they do related searches and are 'in the market' for whatever your business provides. 

With Google search ads, you can create eye-catching and persuasive text, display, video, and shopping ads, to name a few, that will appear in front of your target audience online, most likely when they make a search query. This digital advertising strategy requires in-depth research into who your target audience is, their search behaviours, and traits, and reaching them online at the right time. 

Google Ads works by setting up campaigns that focus on an area, product, or service. For example, if you own a B2C watch wear brand, you could have a summer campaign for your new, exclusive drop of summer watchwear. This could then be broken down into each watch subcategory of watch type. A B2B business that organises corporate gift baskets and hampers could focus its efforts within Google Ads in the run-up to events like Christmas to maximise sales and impact.

Using assets, headlines, and descriptions, your campaign will need an advertising budget, a list of keywords to target, and keywords for your ads to avoid targeting. Each time a user clicks on one of your ads, you pay a fee to Google; a process called 'bidding' will determine the cost of actually appearing on the SERPs (search engine results page).

So many ambitious brands and businesses opt for Google Ads because it offers immediate visibility on SERPs and flexibility to fit your current business needs. It also offers precise targeting options to showcase your ads to a particular audience by choosing age groups, interests or geographic areas. 

So, while social media ads are great for promoting your business to vast audiences on social media advertising platforms, Google Ads is a more direct line to reaching active users online via search engines.

What Are Social Media Ads?

Social Media Advertising is a digital marketing strategy that involves creating paid/sponsored posts on social media platforms to increase engagement, website traffic and, ultimately, conversions. Social media ads help marketers and business owners promote their brands and inspire sales while improving brand visibility. Research has shown that 26% of users who click on Facebook Ads end up buying the advertised product. 

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Social media advertising is pretty impactful as it allows brands and businesses like yours to deliver a message to your audience through the customer journey. Here is an example: say your B2C watch company is releasing a new solar watch. In this instance, you can run a brand awareness campaign to create a sense of excitement and urgency within your audience. A B2B organisation could use social media ads to retarget previously interested users to sell to previous customers or those who have previously shown interest. 

A successful social media marketing strategy involves outlining your campaign to understand the marketing objectives and KPIs. This is followed by understanding and choosing the right target audience for your social media advertising campaign. This includes understanding your audience, the type of content they are most receptive to and identifying the most common characteristics and traits across your audience.

 For more on social media advertising, see our recent blog post, ‘Why Use Paid Social Media Advertising?’

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Google Ads Vs Social Media Ads

To truly understand Google Ads vs Social Media Ads, look at the similarities and differences between both digital strategies. Although these remarkable strategies work towards similar advertising campaign goals in their respective platforms, they have a few minor differences. 

Targeting

Google Ads and Social Media Ads both offer demographic targeting. However, Google heavily relies on using specific search terms and key phrases to target the right audience via ads. However, social media uses actual user data to reach potential customers.

Ad Formats

Both social media advertising and Google Ads support a wide range of ad formats, but Google needs to be more modern. The search engine giants' most popular ad is a simple text ad, and their image ads don't allow marketers to inject much creativity and flair into them! On the other hand, social media ad formats are flexible and visually lead through attractive videos, single images, and carousels.

Research has shown that Google handles more than 5.8 billion searches daily, while Facebook has an estimated 1.73 billion active users daily, which means the potential reach is great. Other platforms also have a humongous reach for advertisements, such as Instagram (1.65 billion), TikTok (1 billion), and LinkedIn Ads (645 million). 

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Our Final Thoughts

Within the online digital marketing sphere, Google Ads and social media marketing are great opportunities for success within E-Commerce. Google Ads acts as a digital billboard capturing potential customers. It offers a high level of precision targeting to achieve instant, maximum impact on search engines, which makes it the go-to paid strategy for businesses. 

On the other hand, social media advertising can provide businesses with a more innovative approach which targets users as they move through the buying journey using creative visuals.

So, is it one or the other? Absolutely not! While Google Ads focuses on direct reach and excels in immediate, streamlined targeting for businesses, social media advertising is outstanding in generating brand engagement and creating loyal communities.

Our savvy social media specialists utilise dynamic social strategies to unlock exponential growth for ambitious E-Commerce brands. Check out our Paid Social Media Services today!

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