What are the differences between Google Ads and other advertising systems?
While SEO is often contrasted with SEA, it’s worth remembering that Google Ads is not the only one offering advertising on the internet! In recent years, social network advertising has developed to the point where it has become an indispensable part of an acquisition strategy. These are linked to SMO (Search Media Optimization), which is distinct from SEA. While SMO remains focused solely on social networks, SEA makes it possible to reach a very large part of the web. With Google Ads, there are even several types of campaigns and different ad formats. You can position yourself on keywords, run campaigns on the Google display network, Google shopping, on Youtube and on many websites. So Google Ads or Social Media Ads?
Paid advertising on social networks: Social Media Ads
Facebook Ads
Today, to generate awareness and be visible on Facebook, it is essential to advertise online via Facebook Ads to reach your target. Advertising on Facebook has many advantages as it is the most used network in the world, with 40 million active users per month. There are several advertising formats to choose from, so you can choose the ones that suit your purpose. With Facebook Ads, you can not only increase your e-reputation by reaching a large audience, but also encourage users to convert on your website, by registering for an event or filling out a contact form for example. Targeting allows you to target users based on several criteria: age, gender, geographical area, interests, etc. However, all the settings and broadcasts are limited to Facebook, whereas Google can reach all search engine users on many platforms. The two advertising tools can be perfectly complementary to reach a specific audience and achieve your goals.
Advertising on Instagram
From the same company as Facebook and with the same “Business Manager” management tool, you can run sponsored ads on Instagram. Instagram’s social ads strategy is mainly based on visuals and branding. Here, you will need to focus on your most beautiful pictures, the most impactful videos and messages that match your image. In Instagram stories or on the News Feed, it is possible to create real awareness campaigns to promote your product or service. While Facebook reaches a wide audience, with Instagram you can mainly target people aged 18 to 35. Google Ads and Instagram advertising can be used in two different ways in an SEO strategy, but can also be complementary. With Instagram, you are going to make your product known to make people want to use it: you have to reach out to potential customers by making yourself known. With an Adwords campaign, especially with text ads, it is the internet user who meets a need, types his request in Google and sees your ad: the customer comes to your paid ad.
Advertising on Linkedin
As any community manager knows, Linkedin is a professional network mainly oriented towards B2B. For advertising, it is exactly the same. If you have an activity aimed at B2C, individuals, turn away from this network which will not really be adapted to your needs. On the other hand, for professionals, setting up Linkedin advertising campaigns in addition to Google Ads can be very interesting. Linkedin offers very precise B2B targeting, with characteristics such as profession, company size, skills, level of education, etc. On the other hand, unlike the latest social media presented, Linkedin is not used to sell products and create conversions. In fact, it will be most useful to reinforce your reputation in the professional world and to bring you inbound leads, notably event registrations, but above all to obtain contacts. On this social network, it is contacts that are worth their weight in gold and that can bring you new clients! Although not all sectors of activity are yet fully present on the social network, it is growing year by year and Linkedin advertisements will become more and more interesting. The main advantage of Google Ads on Linkedin will be to be able to target professionals while creating sponsored links that convert.
Advertising on Tiktok
Tiktok is the new social network in vogue among young people, so it is also possible to make social ads on this new media! However, the advertising formats here are far from the classic schemes. The objective here is to make yourself known and above all to create links with your community! By putting forward a hashtag challenge of a brand to be followed, where users will have to complete the challenge launched by the advertiser or simply by appearing in the Tiktok feed, the goal is mainly to gain notoriety and proximity with its users in order to build loyalty. The main audience of this network is between 16 and 25 years old, it is the ideal channel to reach the youngest! As you will have understood, the advertisements broadcast on Tiktok do not, however, directly increase visits or sales, unlike Google Ads, which also offers much more choice in advertising formats.
The difference between Google Ads and Social Media Ads
Purchase intention
The major strength of Google Ads compared to social media lies in the Google search by keyword. Indeed, the Internet user will type his need in the search engine bar. Whether it’s “red heel shoe” or “estimate a house”, all these queries respond to a need that must be satisfied immediately. From then on, you can display your ads on relevant keywords. This will generate qualified traffic to your landing page with a high chance of conversion or lead and therefore increase your return on investment. While some social media can also bring conversion and leads, they work the other way around. That is to say, the user decides to convert because he has seen the ad and not because he had the need first. So the choice of whether to use Google Ads or social media Ads will depend mainly on your digital marketing strategy and your conversion tunnel. But again, the two strategies can work very well together! In both cases, it is important to be accompanied by a specialised web agency to create optimised and profitable ads.
Targeting
Some networks have very specific targeting, such as Linkedin, which only targets the professional sphere, or Tiktok, which has a mainly very young community. Also, the targeting criteria are different from one platform to another. They are essentially based on the information acquired by the network’s algorithm. This may, for example, concern the accounts and pages followed by the target, the centres of interest according to the posts and videos liked, commented on and shared. Beyond the knowledge of the targets, Google also bases itself on their online behaviour, in particular targeting by intention as we have seen previously. As Google knows the entire search path of an Internet user, it knows their habits and how they will buy online. It is therefore a particularly formidable tool for converting, but only if you know how to set up your campaigns properly. Choosing your SEO agency wisely will allow you to make full use of the power of Google Ads!
How it works and the tool
The main difference between Google Ads and the social media ads interfaces is the precision of the proposed settings. In order to offer tools within the reach of all types of businesses, social media advertising platforms limit the number of settings to obtain a more accessible interface. This accessibility does not mean that the tool is easier to use! Because in order to optimise campaigns and obtain effective ads, it is also essential in social media ads to have skills and expertise in this field. On the other hand, these tools do not allow you to be as precise in the choice of ad formats, in the optimisation of ads or in the choice of budget expenditure. On the other hand, all of these platforms have centralised their functionalities allowing you to manage your campaigns, from creation to distribution, including the monitoring of statistics. These data also vary from one tool to another, with the networks focusing more on the number of impressions, the interaction rate, the number of likes and shares etc. Whereas for Google Ads we look more at the click-through rate or the conversion rate.
The budget
Each platform offers different budget management, depending on the selected advertising formats. Here again, several bidding systems are proposed on Google Ads in order to spend your adwords budget in the best way, whatever the type of campaign chosen. Conversely, social networks will only offer you one type of billing, depending on the ad format selected. Fortunately, regardless of the platforms on which you wish to invest, the budget is always fully controlled, you know how much you will spend per day and/or per month. Several criteria should be taken into account when managing your budget. For social networks, the budget will vary mainly according to the number of people you want to reach. For Google Ads, the budget will change according to the price per keyword, competing advertisers and therefore your sector of activity. Optimising your budget is surely one of the most important elements to take into account when managing advertising campaigns. Whether it is on the networks or on Google, you should be accompanied by a specialised webmarketing agency that will know how to broadcast your ads to obtain excellent results while saving a maximum of budget!
Everything you need to know to get started with Google Ads :
What are the different types of Google Ads campaigns and formats?
What are the differences between Google Ads and Google Ads Express?