Facebook Ads Vs Google Ads Vs Instagram Ads Vs Linkedin Ads: Which will get you better ROI
It’s no news that Advertisement has a huge impact on sales. Digital Advertising has made it a lot faster, easier and cheaper to advertise your products.
With the number of internet users being on a steady rise at 11 users per second daily, online advertisement is now one of the biggest ways to promote your products and table your offers. It should definitely be part of your content promotion plan.
The bottleneck with Digital Advertisement is picking the right platform to use, one that would give you the best returns.
It would be refreshing to know the platform with the best ROI for your business.
Many Digital Marketing Experts have pounded on this, and after interviewing four digital marketing experts the answer still remains the same – it depends, not the answer you’re looking for but read on.
Picking the best platform for your business depends on a number of factors, like the kind of business, the goal of the business at that given time and your budget. This is because these applications were launched at different times, for different purposes and dissimilar consumer profiles.
In this article, we’ll make the task of choosing or not choosing a platform less daunting by giving you an actionable strategy to use when choosing an advertising channel and also by comparing Facebook, Google, Instagram, and Linkedin Advertising Platforms; based on their features, cons, pros, most expensive, the platform with the most views and benefits with respect to years of research and experience of Digital Marketing Gurus.
Comparing Facebook, Google, LinkedIn and Instagram Ads.
The Ad Formats
With Google Ads, you can target ads based on what users are searching for on Google, your ad can be in the form of text, image, video or call. You can also narrow who sees your ad by adding age, gender, demographics and country.
- Text: You can advertise your product or service by targeting search keywords and phrases. For instance; if you’re a legal lawyer in California looking to advertise your service on google. You target keywords such as “legal lawyers in California” or “I need a legal lawyer in California”. So when someone searches for the picked term your ad shows on the result page like so;
With google text ads choosing the right search term to target for is prime. You want a phrase with the right volume and audience for your business.
- Image: You can use static or interactive graphics or animated ads(.gif and flash format) to place your ads on businesses that partner with google on their website or app.
- Video: Google places your video ad on YouTube or across google’s video partner sites depending on your goal, settings, and type of content you want to promote.
- Call: Google drives phone calls to your business with ads that include your phone number. People can click on these ads and then call your business directly.
- Product cart Ads: Your Ad will be displayed to people shopping online for that product or related products.
With Facebook , You can target Facebook ads based on their age, gender, languages, activities they perform on the app, or lookalike audience (ie profiles that are identical to your existing customer profile.).With Facebook ads, you can showcase your ads using an image, video, carousel, slideshow, instant experience, and collection.
- Photo: Facebook allows you to show engaging photos on your targeted user’s feed, stories or even their Facebook messaging platform.
- Video: You can showcase a video ad to your target profile on their feed or story.
- Playables: Playable ads offer people an interactive preview on Facebook before they download an app.
- Instant Experiences: formerly known as Canvas, allow you to create a full-screen, fast-loading destination designed for mobile and add them to almost any ad format.
- Slideshow: Slideshow ads are video-like ads made of motion, sound, and text.
- Carousel: Carousel ads let you showcase up to ten images or videos in a single ad, each with its own link.
- Collection: Facebook collection ads are a mobile-only format, designed to maximize the mobile user experience. People who tap on collection ad are seamlessly taken to a fast-loading, full-screen experience to browse or learn more about the ad offer.
You can target LinkedIn ads based on location, company name, company industry, size, the school they went to, years of experience of a particular skill, gender, target groups, and age.
- Sponsored Content: This Ad type appears alongside content LinkedIn members curate for themselves. You can think of them as promoted posts, as they are essentially amplified versions of the links, media, or messaging you would normally share through your Company Page.
- Sponsored InMail: You can use this feature for sending personalized messages to highly targeted recipients. Sponsored InMail only delivers to active LinkedIn members, there is no need to worry about messages bouncing or landing in abandoned inboxes. You can tailor your content directly to the audience, and a responsive design ensures that your CTA button is always visible on any device.
- Text Ads: Linkedln displays this ad on the side rail or inline. It is only shown to desktop LinkedIn users.
Instagram ads are identical to Facebook ads. You are able to target profiles based on demographics, gender, interest, behavior, lookalike audience, custom audience(people you know by inputting their email or phone number), automated targeting(they create a profile based on people they think would be interested in your product by their activities on the app). Their Ad format is the same as Facebook. Using Images and Videos on feed or story, Carousel, etc except for instant messaging instead they offer “ explore ads”.
- Explore Ad: Showing ad Videos or images to people when they are on their Instagram explore page.
Average Cost.
The Average Cost depends on how much you are willing to spend. You have the ability to set a limit on the amount you want to use and see the result it will get you then decide if you need to invest more money or not.
Google: The average cost-per-click (CPC) on Google Ads is $1 to $2 for the Google Search Network and less than $1 for the Google Display Network(Advertising with google partners).
Facebook: If you’re measuring cost per click (CPC) Facebook advertising costs on average about $0.27 per click. If you’re measuring cost per thousand impressions (CPM), Facebook advertising costs about $7.19 CPM.
LinkedIn: On average, businesses pay $5.26 per click and $6.59 per 1000 impressions, as well as $0.80 per send for Sponsored InMail campaigns.
Instagram: On average, Instagram advertising costs between $0.20 to $6.70. For CPC or cost-per-click, advertisers pay $0.20 to $2 per click. For CPM or cost-per-impressions, advertisers pay $6.70 per 1000 impressions.
Audience Volume and Views.
Knowing the user volume and average views of an advertising platform is not so important. This is because their volume and views do not determine their user engagement rate with your ad.
I mean you won’t want to advertise on a platform with 0 views but even if a platform has 20,000 views and another has 200,000, your decision should still be based on if these views include your target audience because if not, you are advertising to people who are not interested in your product or service. In other words, you are wasting your time. You can advertise on a platform with 200,000 views and your conversion rate will be 0.1% and on a platform with 20,000, your conversion can be 2% depending on your customer profile.
Google: Google now processes over 40,000 search queries every second on average which translates to over 3.5 billion searches per day and 1.2 trillion searches per year worldwide.
Facebook: Facebook has a total of 2.5 billion monthly active users and 500 million Story viewers.
LinkedIn: LinkedIn has 627 million monthly users and 40% of monthly active users use LinkedIn daily.
Instagram: Instagram has 1billion monthly active users, 500 million+ story views daily and 4.2 billion photo likes per day.
Average Conversion Rate.
The conversion rate is the number of conversions divided by the total number of visitors. For example, if a site receives 200 visitors in a month and has 50 sales, the conversion rate would be 50 divided by 200, or 25%.
Facebook: Facebook has a conversion rate of around 9.21%, which is very high with respect to the number of users they have monthly.
Google: Google’s average conversion rate hovers around 3.48% for search ads, and .72% on the display network. Display ads, therefore, are really best suited for strong campaigns.
Linkedln: Linkedln has a conversion rate of 6.1% for sponsored posts, 3.48% for text ad and 2.5% for Inmail ads.
Instagram: Instagram has a conversion rate of 1.08%.
Average Click-through Rate.
Click-through rate is the rate at which your ads are clicked. This number is the percentage of people who view your ad (impressions) and then actually go on to click the ad (clicks). The formula for CTR looks like this:
(Total Clicks on Ad) / (Total Impressions) = Click-Through Rate
Google: Currently, the average click-through rate for search ads on Google is 1.91%. Whereas the average click-through rate for Google’s display network(Google partner websites, videos, and apps) is 0.35%.
Facebook: The average click-through rate for Facebook is 0.9%
LinkedIn: Presently, the average click-through rate for search ads on LinkedIn is 4.1% for text ads and 0.39% for sponsored content. LinkedIn is improving rapidly, hence the ctr is subject to constant change.
Instagram: The current average click-through rate for Instagram ads is 0.52%
Audience Type.
Google: Google’s audience type varies, old, young people all “google it”. Before advertising with google, the one time you ought to do is check the search term with the best ROI for you. This guide can help you.
Facebook: Facebook is actively used by individuals between 29-65 years, mostly college graduates. It’s a good place for B2B advertising, eCommerce and service-based ads.
Linkedln: Linkedin comprises majorly by individuals looking for job opportunities and others offering jobs and rarely for personal use, with their ages between 20- 50 years. It’s best for B2B content, Finance and it wouldn’t be so good for eCommerce.
Instagram: Instagram is used majorly by a younger audience, focused on small scale businesses, eCommerce and lifestyle.
Usability.
Ease of use is subjective and shouldn’t discourage you from using any advertising platform before using it yourself. According to reviews and digital experts; Facebook ads are the easiest to set up followed by Instagram, then google and finally Linkedin. Below are youtube videos on how to easily navigate and set up Ads on these platforms by Gurus in each field. Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Linkedin Ads and Instagram Ads.
Customer Support.
This is important because anything can happen and it’s paramount that you are able to get reliable and fast support when it’s needed.
Google: Google has a customer support number which makes it very fast and you can also fill out their customer support forum to leave a message on their ad forum.
Facebook: You receive help from Facebook by visiting their help center where they have FAQs and also leave a message on their Facebook help community.
Instagram: You are able to reach Instagram by visiting their help center where they have FAQs and also leave a message in their support forum.
Linkedin: You can contact LinkedIn by going to their help center for FAQs and also by leaving an email for them to respond to.
According to the data above, Google has the best customer support then Linkedin followed by Facebook and Instagram.
Retargeting.
Retargeting is a form of online advertising that can help you keep your brand in front of bounced traffic after they leave your website. For most websites, only 2% of web traffic converts on the first visit. Retargeting is a tool designed to help companies reach the 98% of users who don’t convert right away.
All the above-mentioned platforms (Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram) have the retargeting function. Giving you the ability to show an ad again to someone that took an action on the ad the previous time.
Here’s a simple strategy you can use to pick an online advertising platform.
- Using a Software Program like Opentracker, you are able to track where your existing customers/visitors are coming, you can also see the search keyword, word or phrases that drove them to your site.
- Using an eCommerce Teenage Thrift Store as an example;
- Know your Audience base: Having a customer profile and picking the right search term is very important here because it’s the base of everything that follows. Most thrifters are between the age of 13- 30 and mostly female.
- Have a business goal: Their goal at this point is to get more awareness and conversion.
- Check Each Platform for the one with the highest search volumes on multiple keywords for your company.
In addition: You also check for the click-through rate and conversion rate for your keyword and your company type on each platform.
- Pick one or two at first based on the highest search volume and the goal at that point: Based on the results above as the thrift store digital marketer I will run ads on Instagram because of the search volume and age brackets of Instagram users and I’ll also invest in google to see which one gives a better return. If it were a thrift store I’ll invest in Facebook, Google and/or Instagram and track the results depending on my ad budget.
- Get an Expert or self-study the platforms.
- Budget Wisely.
- Track the results.
Concluding Thoughts:
Deciding to utilize Online Advertising can make or break your business.
All platforms can give you high or no returns depending on how you use it.
Implementing the tips and strategy shown in this article would help you choose wisely.