Wow, what a loaded question.... Like someone mentioned earlier, it's like picking a favorite child.
We're B2C, passenger ferry operation.
Facebook seems to work for leads and those general information seekers. Getting people to pull out their digital wallets is like trying to nail jello to a tree.
In the Google world again it's many children here. PPC is bread and butter. Display again, much like FB. Hard to get those wallets out and used. YouTube - We don't even bother. Tried it and what a waste of time and effort (for us and our market). If others are like me, I'm there to see something or search for something in particular. The ad's just get in the way and I can't wait for the 5 second timer to count down and click SKIP AD....
That's like asking a parent which one of their children they love more.
If you had to choose one, then I would choose Google Ads.
It delivers more consistent results, is less volatile to dramatic shifts in volume, needs less ongoing management and their machine learning is easier to understand and explain.
In some verticals you will get greater volume on Facebook but it will be like a roller coaster and events outside your control (e.g. election ad spend, covid items) will pollute the news feed, a lot.
If you run both, and you've set up your remarketing audiences correctly, you can definitely get uplift on both platforms, so they complement each other well (as do any other channels, like Microsoft Advertising, email, display)
If you understand how the Google Display Network, Google Shopping (for ecommerce clients) and YouTube ads work and make them work for you then the scale from "Google" can dwarf that of Facebook.
I am stunned how many agencies there are that are Facebook Ads only.
Jim BanksSetup, media buying and support for ecommerce merchants using Shopify who want to leverage the HubSpot Growth Stack. HubSpot Gold Partner
Like a lot of people I've been pulling away from Facebook lately. Between the quality of the service overall and the political problems I think the audience is shrinking and doesn't offer nearly as broad a base as Google does.
Also it depends on how you want to segment your audience. If you're looking for very specific/niche keywords or phrases Google will be your best option where a lifestyle brand like REI would have an easier time using groups and interests to cast a wider net while keeping it relevant.
Personally I stick with Google because the heart of their operations is data of all types (Assistant,Phones,Search,Chrome,Gmail etc) and gives you better options to drill down. (assuming you know how deep you want to go)
For most Noisy Little Monkey clients, we lean towards Google Ads rather than Facebook. Both are problematic both politically and in practical terms but here's the top 5 reasons that we look to Google as the lesser of two evils.
Google Retargeting with HubSpot delivers better ROI
For B2B service businesses, the ROI is better on Google Retargeting than Google Search Ads
In the B2B world buyers don't seen to want to be interrupted on Facebook
With Google Ads you can target Attract, Engage and Delight stages. We find Facebook is less good at attracting new buyers
A lot of stuff which gets shared on Facebook, particularly fake news, conspiracies and hateful content is against our ethos and that of our clients, so it makes sense to avoid until they've sorted this out!
In most cases it really comes down to audience and objectives. Both can be great in the right situation.
We primarily work with manufacturing companies here at protocol 80. In that world, Google Ads perform much better as we can really focus on the intent of the audience. This allows us to target individuals at various stages in the research and buying process.
Facebook can work for brand awareness in some cases, but we most often find the investment to be more impactful with Google (at least for our clients).
Josh
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Josh Curcio HubSpot support and inbound marketing for OEMs, contract manufacturers, and industrial suppliers. HubSpot Platinum Partner & HubSpot Certified Trainer
to be honest it totally depends on what your business and your goal is 😉 We are in B2C Market.
But here some figures from our Account this year:
Facebook: We created 953 Leads with our Ads, while each Lead was about 18,53 € (we had some internal Projects and are down to 11,58 € per Lead)
Google Ads: We created 2.270 LEads with our Ads, while each Lead was about 13,49 (we also had some Project here and are down to 9,53 € per Lead)
So for us, Google is working better, but we also have a different Strategy for Google Ads we don´t bring people to Landing Pages we bring them to our Blog and let them convert after we gave them the information they were searching for.