It’s a question that most of our clients have, when they have a budget for digital advertising:

Where should we spend our digital ad budget? Where is our audience?

That’s a simple question that demands a detailed answer. But, here are the basics:

Figure out where they are in “the funnel”

Choosing Where to Market: Be Where Your Audiences Are

First, you need to define your audience. That’s a really big, detailed question – so for the sake of answering our #1 question (when to use Google vs Facebook) – we’ll focus on “the average consumer” in the United States.

There is no truly average consumer, but when viewed in bulk, we know the majority of the audiences that an agency like ours, who deals in equal parts consumer and business-to-business brands, are 

Another defining characteristic of “the average consumer” is that they use both Google and Facebook or Instagram on the regular – nearly all Americans use one or the other daily – and here are the numbers that back that up:

According to Hootsuite, 68% of Americans use Facebook daily, 35% use Instagram daily

68% of Americans do a search in a month, and the average searcher searches Google 3-4 times a day (at least as of 2016) 

is why we are focused on Google vs Facebook today. There are plenty of other platforms – such as Twitter, Pinterest, Snapchat and YouTube that all offer ad platforms but they also tend to break differently among demographic lines – age, gender, etc. However – that is a far more expansive and detailed conversation (and frankly, why “strategy” exists!).

Last year, we held a day-long workshop for the 

 – talking with an amazing group of leaders and marketers for non-profit groups. Their questions surrounding digital advertising spurred the article you are reading, and I put together a quick illustration to help guide the conversation.

If you are reading this, you probably have some sort of familiarity with the “marketing funnel” – but if not, it’s a fairly straightforward idea. The funnel is a visual representation of a consumer’s journey with your organization. We’re attempting to get consumers down our funnel, and at the bottom is whatever makes them a customer of ours – probably a product sale but could also be a membership, donation or a sales lead.

Each level of the funnel directly corresponds to a different user situation. At the 

 stage, customers are just finding out about your product or service. We draw them in with content and info. Being where the consumer is searching is key during the AWARENESS phase. 

 is next – consumers are looking at numerous options, comparing and contrasting, as well as considering if what you are offering has the right value to them. All of a sudden, the conversions has become far more individualized and personal during CONSIDERATION. After considering your offerings, the next (and hardest) step is 

. Intensely personal, this step is where the deal is sealed. The consumer’s trust that they are making the right decision must be high.

The funnel is a map – and you have to think about how many of your audience are in what step of the funnel. If you are a new brand, product or service – most of your audience will be in the Awareness step. If you are an established brand, most of them will be in the consideration step – but you can’t ignore that pipeline of new consumers in awareness.

Our observation is also that at the top of the funnel, there is a HUGE audience, but your impact is going to be small – value-wise. Nearer the conversion point, the audience gets smaller, but each “touch” you have with the consumer has more and more value. That balance between size of audience and value of impact are critical concepts when it comes to assigning budget.

The Strengths and Weakness of Google vs Facebook

Google is for finding things out and Facebook is for … well we aren’t sure but you look at it a million times a day and it knows a LOT about you.

I’m going to generalize here to give an example of the thought process: let’s assume that you are an established product or service, but just haven’t spent a lot of time or effort marketing. People know you and have visited your website (you do have a website, right?).

Google Search works by you “bidding” on keywords that directly or indirectly match the search terms of the consumer. Facebook works by serving ads targeted (demographically, geographically, by “affinity” or by their engagement with your page or website) to the consumer – who has given up some of that info in exchange for access to Facebook.

Both are valid approaches – but both fit into different levels of the funnel.

Google Search tends to favor the “awareness” level of the funnel

 – broad awareness as we can easily bid on keywords that are similar to our product (e.g. “running shoes”), and when the consumer types in “best shoes for running”, our ad is likely to appear. In this way, we have access to a 

 of potential consumers who have shown an intent towards our product.

Facebook tends to favor those further down the funnel – in “consideration”, but only because they aren’t there to search.

 Remarketing (targeting consumers that have previously visited your website) is one of the most powerful tools Facebook offers. Since we know they’ve shown an intent toward our product, we can offer them more information to help them seal the deal (in the form of an ad or a post). That’s not to say that people don’t use Facebook intentionally to research – they do – but not quite as intentionally as Google Search. Few people type in “running shoes” into Facebook and click on what pops up. However, they might see an ad for “New Balance” elsewhere, and then search for “New Balance” and land on their Facebook page.

Intentional vs Unintentional and Frequency of Use

Now, let’s shift perspective to that of the consumer. When consumers use Google Search, they are most often 

. When consumers use Facebook or Instagram, they are most often not – they are looking for updates from friends – and you could generally argue that scrolling through a feed is 

. Generally speaking most people will spend FAR more time in Facebook or Instagram than in Google Search – but as we just mentioned, the time spent on Google Search is far more focused and intentional. However, users may skip a day or more between intentional searches. People will go back to Facebook multiple times a day.

Now that we understand that a bit better – we can understand when we should use Google Search Ads and when we should use Facebook and Instagram.

We tend to use Google Search for acquiring new potential customers by keying off of intentional searches related to our product.

We tend to use Facebook because the frequency of use is HIGH and the ability to directly target consumers that have engaged with us previously is so easy.

How much should you spend, then? Well, generally any amount, no matter how small – is going to get you invaluable data. We tend to start small and then recommend bigger budgets as we see results and can make decisions about targeting, and see tangible results.

Google Search Ad costs vary on the search traffic (it’s a bidding market, remember!) of the keywords you desire. Facebook is strictly cost-per-click, assuming your targeting is not so narrow you have no audience to show your ads to.

Generally most of our marketing plans for similar situations end up like this:

There’s a lot of variables in that math, so the above is a ballpark. However, Google tends to cost a little more BUT is also a major driver of building audience awareness. I can’t say one is more important than the other – but to begin building a thriving marketing audience, Google Search is critical.

The Next Level: Remarketing and Audience Building

Both Google and Facebook allow you to “tag” your website and build audiences of recent visitors – and this is hands-down the most effective way to spend your ad dollars. Facebook also allows for the uploading of prior customers / subscribers and the creation of demographically similar “Lookalike” audiences.

Once those remarketing audiences are in place, you can start to shift more of your budget to discretely targeted audiences inside of Facebook or Instagram, and ratchet down your Google Search Ads spend.

As I mentioned at the top of the article, we’ve made some pretty broad assumptions based upon data and generalities – and that can help you 

 a digital marketing plan. But as you get closer to the conversion point for a consumer, your job becomes harder and harder – and you must be more nuanced and understanding of them for them to feel comfortable with you. And that … is where detailed digital marketing strategy pays off.

So, for now – spend a little $$ to get started with both Google Ads and Facebook, and learn, iterate and analyze. And if you don’t have the time, patience or interest in doing so – we’ll be glad to help! 

41 Facebook Stats That Matter to Marketers in 2019 – Hootsuite

The State of Searcher Behavior Revealed Through 23 Remarkable Statistics – Moz

Digital Marketing Optimization

Marketing Campaigns

Research

When to use Google Search Ads (Adwords) vs Facebook and Instagram Ads?

Back in the day, most websites were served over HTTP web protocol. HTTPS, which adds a secure layer on top of HTTP, was generally only used for sites where you logged in, managed money, or anything else that would necessitate a secure, encrypted connection between the server and the client. In the last few years several technology companies have started campaigning to 

. One of the steps outlined is to abandon HTTP in favor of HTTPS.

This is not without reason. The web has changed and it is not only “hackers” who take advantage of unencrypted traffic. Amongst other concerns, companies like Verizon have started injecting tracking headers into unencrypted traffic so that they can sell your data. Governing bodies around the world, too, have taken advantage of insecure web traffic for surveillance.

Furthermore, browsers are holding non-secure sites more accountable. Google Chrome now flags any non-secure pages with a form as “Not Secure” and Firefox flags them with a lock with a red slash through it. Eventually, the Chrome team plans to flag all pages served over HTTP as not secure.

SSL/TSL certificates, which allow secure communications between the server and client, have traditionally cost extra money in addition to hosting. With the launch of 

 in 2016 you can now serve your site over HTTPS for no additional cost. How to set this up is based on where your site is hosted. We’ll run through two hosting scenarios that we use here at VIA: WordPress Engine and manually adding to Rackspace.

Adding Let’s Encrypt to WP Engine is as simple as a few button clicks. Navigate to the install in your WP Engine management page and click on âSSL.’ Click the button that says “Add Certificates” and then “Get Let’s Encrypt.” Select the domains that you want and then request the certificate. It’s that simple!

While WordPress Engine has simplified the Let’s Encrypt certificate install process, there may come a time where you have to do it manually on your own server. Luckily, the 

There are instructions for using Certbot with a number of different web servers on most major Linux distros, but we’re going to focus on Ubuntu + Apache since it’s one of the more common ones. Ubuntu 16.0.x has packages available so you just need to do 

sudo apt-get install python-certbot-apache

Ubuntu <= 14.0.x doesn’t have packages but you can download the certbot-auto script which handles everything for you.

You’ll need to have your Apache VirtualHosts organized properly for Certbot to do its magic. That means one VirtualHost per config file and the config file should be named according to the VirtualHost domain.

. You need to put your > directive by itself in a file called 

 sudo a2ensite example.com && sudo apache2 reload

. This will allow Certbot to automatically detect the site.

Once certbot (or certbot-auto) is installed, just run 

. It will bring up a list of available sites to install certificates on. Simply select the sites you wish to encrypt and Certbot will do the rest.

Occasionally your site will depend on assets that you’re requesting from other places on the web, sometimes they’re being requested over HTTP. These will cause mixed content errors on your newly secured site and might cause some issues with its functionality. If the assets are coming from your code, simply switch where the assets are being requested from. If they’re coming from a third party plugin or library I would recommend contacting the plugin’s author and request that they call their assets either over HTTPS or without a protocol. This looks like this:

Additionally, you can use a Content Security Policy on your site to block all insecure requests, or (in some browsers) update the requests automatically to HTTPS. There’s even an option to receive reports when an insecure request is made.

Now that’s it’s free and easy to encrypt, there’s no reason not to do it!

Your Google ranking will improve and your users will appreciate the extra privacy.

Privacy & Compliance

SSL All the Sites!

Branding

Photography

Web Design

Websites

Treyton Oak Towers

Social Media & Audience Development

Ecommerce

Opal Nugget Ice Machine

Search Engine Optimization isn’t just a buzzword - it’s a mindset. We think strategically about how we write and develop our websites to provide useful, informative user-facing content that provides maximum search engine value. Using the latest analysis, tracking and reporting tools, we keep your website and its content ahead of the curve and atop the search rankings.

SEO

SEO: Case Studies

01

Treyton Oak Towers

02

Opal Nugget Ice Machine

SEO: Blog Posts

When to use Google Search Ads (Adwords) vs Facebook and Instagram Ads?

SSL All the Sites!