When we think about online advertisement, even though we have many options, the first sites in which we want to invest are the biggest: Facebook and Google. Each one of these sites has positive characteristics when compared to the other. On this post I want to talk about these points, so that you take them into account as an entrepreneur when you are deciding where to put your money. When I talk about Google, I am referring to their search engine and not to their content network.
Let’s start with the nature of advertisement in each one. Remember that Google’s advertisement appears to people that are actually searching for the term in which you are interested to appear. Therefore we know that they are interested in our offer because they are searching for the term. On the other hand Facebook’s nature doesn’t help us to make this exact match but we can infer the type of people that can be interested in our product by their characteristics, and show them our ads. For example if I sell color nail polish, my marketing strategy on Facebook will take into account women teens and young adults, that even if they haven’t told me explicitly they want to buy nail polish they might be interested.
The other point we have to take into account is the cost of advertisement in each media. According to the country one of this might tend to be cheaper than the other. This also depends on the type of words and the segmentation we are looking for in each one. This definitely can be a decision factor because if for example Google is twice more effective but 5 times more expensive, maybe we will prefer investing more in Facebook.
Other subject we must consider when we talk about Facebook is that day after day it is much more difficult to take our message to our customers, if we don’t pay. In Google, even if we have one of the first positions in the organic search, the other competitors will try to take our place or maybe a change in the algorithm may take us to a worst position. Therefore we have to think that in both sites we might pay if we want to be seen by our customers.
My take on this subject, as in everything related to Internet, is that there doesn’t exist a golden rule that says which one is better. The last ones are points that have to be evaluated and taken into account when we are designing our strategy. However I think that what is going to give us more information is to test constantly and reevaluate our actions according to the results.
Image taken from Flickr.com