Dipping your toe into the world of online marketing can be daunting, and often is difficult to know where to start and what strategy to focus on for your business model.
Paid ads are a huge part of any strong marketing mix, and can be the most effective way to reach your target audiences and get in front of potential customers!
There are so many ad platforms to choose from…the main ones being Linkedin ads, Google ads, Instagram ads, and Facebook advertising.
There are some other lesser-known/used advertising platforms that can be effective depending on your niche, for example, bing ads can be worthwhile if you feel you’ve exhausted the demand with Google ads for your products. Or, maybe you feel your products would lend themselves to Pinterest ads?
At Snowball Creations we’ve managed 100s of ad campaigns across Google ads, Facebook ads, and LinkedIn ads over the years. So, we’ve taken that experience in countless niches and created a quick 5 question quiz to find the best online advertising platforms for YOUR business!!
Why Use Google Ads?
Google is one of the most popular advertising platforms for a reason! When it comes to search ads, Google reigns supreme. It is THE most popular search engine (obviously).
Over the years, we’ve found Google ads to be the most reliable in terms of delivering consistent results! Some of the other platforms like Facebook & Instagram ads, or LinkedIn can be much more up and down and hard to predict. But from our experience, once you find the keywords that convert for you on Google, it consistently performs.
Google is perfect for that bottom 20% of the market actively searching for what you’re offering. There is built-in demand with Google ads. Unlike the other platforms, the people seeing your ads are literally searching for your product or service at that moment.
Reasons to use Google Ads:
Low-hanging fruit (High buying intent).
Google has a search monopoly (86% of online searches are through Google).
Paid ads dominance (46% of clicks go to the top three paid ads in search results).
Google Analytics is the best data tracking platform out there for any advertising platform in our opinion. We even use it to track our Facebook ads.
Google Ads can be suitable for both B2B and B2C companies, and you can take advantage of video ads, search ads, Google shopping campaigns or even ads across the internet with Google’s display network.
Why Use Facebook Ads?
Facebook and Instagram are one of the biggest platforms when it comes to online ads. With a user base of over 3.9 billion, Facebook and Instagram dominate our time spent online as individuals.
Compared to something like Google, Facebook and Instagram ads rely far more on a visual element and are perfect for getting impulse/inspiration purchases from your target audience!
But is Facebook the right ad platform for your business? From our experience running an ad agency, Facebook is an integral part of digital marketing that shouldn’t be neglected, especially if you’re business has a visual element.
Reasons to run Facebook Advertising:
Strong re-marketing possibilities! (The FB Portal and Facebook pixel deliver unparalleled standards in targeting).
The largest user base out there to get in front of your target audience!
Facebook and Instagram are especially relevant if you want to build strong brand awareness and a dedicated community around your brand.
You can be much more creative, taking advantage of images, videos, or an Instagram story ad campaign for example to create compelling ads.
Facebook Ads can be suitable for both B2B and B2C companies too but lend themselves more to the eCommerce world.
You can link to a landing page, or use native ads.
Why Use LinkedIn Ads?
Google and Facebook might be the first names to pop into your mind when you think of online advertising platforms, but you shouldn’t discount LinkedIn if you operate in the business to business world.
The likelihood is you’re probably already using LinkedIn for networking, organic content marketing, and maybe you’ve even taken advantage of automated messaging techniques on the platform – BUT, have you reaped the rewards of a paid LinkedIn advertising campaign before??
LinkedIn is the number one B2B advertising platform. Unlike Facebook, you give so much business-specific data about your career when you sign up, and you continue to add to it as the years go on.
As an agency, we personally get over 70% of our leads from LinkedIn, and we work with countless B2B clients in industries like corporate gifting, utilities, digital marketing, and consulting to fill their sales funnel with hot leads.
Reasons to run LinkedIn Advertising:
It’s one of the fastest-growing ad platforms with 800m+ potential customers in your target audience to reach.
It’s business/career-specific data is unrivalled.
Strong tracking software (LinkedIn has its own version of the Facebook pixel called the ‘Insight Tag’).
Opportunity to insert a more personal approach to your marketing, as LinkedIn is all about business and career journeys.
You can specifically target decision-markers in companies.
You can link to a landing page, or use native ads.
Should You Combine More Than One Ad platform?
Depending on your ad budget, it might make sense to invest in more than one of the advertising platforms I’ve covered in this article.
As digital marketers ourselves we like to consider ourselves ‘multi-channel masters’! Our expertise working across LinkedIn, Facebook/Instagram and Google means we’re always able to take learnings from the different ad platforms, and spot where the best opportunity lies for a business.
It can be tempting to try it all and see what works when first starting to advertise online. If you do have a limited budget, then I’d recommend focusing on nailing one platform first instead of trying to spread your ad budget too thinly across multiple.
If your budget does allow it, however, a multi-channel approach can be highly effective!
For example, you might be running Google search ads which, with the right ad engagement, will be boosting your website traffic. Then, you could create a structured re-marketing campaign across Facebook targeting anyone who has visited your website in the last 30 days.
This way you’re following your target audience across the internet, and creating many more touch-points for them to find and engage with you. Also, by running ads on multiple channels, you might be able to learn the right platform for your business quicker!
Which Advertising Platform Do We Prefer?
You can read in more detail about why we use each of these three channels and find out what our unique ‘snowball effect’ approach is on our channel page.
Our founder Max has also filmed a video for each, summarising what to expect when running ads on Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn to help you find the right ad platform.