Budgeting for Facebook and Google Ads | Simply Clear Marketing

One of the most common questions our clients ask when expanding their paid media presence is: where should I spend my advertising dollars? With the influx of digital marketing in our increasingly digital environment, it’s important to ask this question and understand that the answer is complex.

When it comes to online advertising, Facebook Ads and Google Ads are dominating the industry. Which one is better for your business? Is one platform better than the other? These are the questions you should be asking and as marketing experts, we want to help you answer them.

Online Advertising: What’s the point?

Online advertising is an essential element for your business’ success. Consumers want quick answers and the internet provides an easily accessible way to get them. To help customers find your business, you need to be easily accessible and in our digital world. Online advertising is one of the best ways to communicate and connect with consumers.

There are so many benefits to online advertising:

Building brand awareness
Driving consumer behavior
Improvements in your conversion rate
Targeting ideal customers
Adjustable and cost-effective strategies to market your business
And more!

Where do you start?

There’s one very important question you should begin with when navigating online advertising: What is my budget?

Answering this question is essential to the success of your marketing strategies. Understanding your starting point is going to be beneficial in helping you answer all of these questions. Once you determine your budget, the next step is to determine which platform is best suited for marketing your business.

The simple answer is: there is no clear formula. There are many factors involved in online marketing strategies, so deciding how to market yourself is going to be unique to you and your business. However, there are a few overall factors that are important to keep in mind while determining your budget:

How many people are in your region
What region(s) you want to target
The interests of the region(s); and
How many people are searching

Understanding these factors will assist you in developing the best strategy.

Facebook Advertising

With over one billion monthly active users, Facebook is one of the largest and most powerful online platforms. It’s an excellent resource for marketing purposes, but understanding how to take advantage of Facebook for your small business can be more challenging and complex than expected.

When it comes to Facebook ads, there are a few important factors to keep in mind. First, it’s important to decide what region(s) you’re interested in targeting. Targeting consumers in San Luis Obispo County is going to look very different than targeting consumers across all of California.

Facebook’s has a wide variety of targeting options, which can be beneficial for your marketing strategies. Facebook is one of the best platforms to reach a highly targeted audience and reach a higher amount of people with a lower budget.

Some of the factors you can target on Facebook include:

Location
Demographics such as age and gender
Specific interests related to your industry
Lookalike audiences, which takes existing customer data from your CRM and finds similar people to your past and present customers

It’s important to remember that you don’t want to get too specific with your target audience. These factors will affect the frequency of your advertisements, and we all know how annoying repetitive ads can get! Using Facebook can be a great way to reach a more targeted audience, but finding the balance of how specific to get with your strategy is going to be very important to the success of your advertisements on Facebook.

Google Advertising

Google is the largest search engine in the world. Approximately 3.5 billion Google searches are made every day. Advertising your business on Google can be an excellent way to take advantage of the benefits of online advertising.

Just like with Facebook, there are important factors to be aware of when considering how to advertise your business on Google. One of the most important factors to be aware of is the significance of keywords. Keywords need to be triggered for your advertisements to pop up on Google, so locating relevant keywords for your business is going to be very important. Keywords also vary in price. Some are going to be more expensive than others, so factoring in your keywords when trying to develop your budget is a very important step.

There are other factors that Google utilizes to recommend a budget tailored to your business’ needs, such as targeting requests, location size, and demographics. Unlike with Facebook, you only pay when consumers click on your Google Search advertisement. This can make budgeting a little more complicated. Monitoring your clicks is going to ensure that you’re staying within your budget. We know how many other responsibilities come along with running a business, so bringing on an expert to monitor your Google advertising can help to ensure that you stay on budget.

Final Thoughts

Online advertising is a crucial part of any business. Facebook and Google are two of the best platforms you can use to access your consumer audience and engage with them. We know marketing strategies can be complex, but taking the time to find the best strategy is going to be extremely beneficial to getting your business recognized online and to get consumers to interact with your business.

Hiring a marketing agency to take care of your marketing strategies can be an excellent way to take one more responsibility off your list. If you’re interested in exploring the best marketing strategies for your business with marketing experts, contact us today at (805) 543-6397!