With Valentine’s Day approaching, you’re probably in one of two camps. You’re either in the camp of the heart-shaped box of chocolates or the camp of the solo pint of ice cream. The camp of late-night Casablanca-for-two or the camp of gently sobbing Narcos-binge. You can either get gnocchi in an old Italian neighbourhood or get thrown out of a Buffalo Wild Wings. There is nothing wrong with either option. It’s the nature of the beast.
The same goes for digital advertisements. Every marketer has a favourite. And, among viable channels, Google and Facebook are perennial heavyweights. But, whether you’re on Team Google or Team Facebook, if you don’t get the two platforms to work together, you risk creating a funnel that’s stunted, neglected, and haemorrhages leads.
The wholesome union of Google Ads and Facebook Ads is one we here at WordStream can get behind. That’s why this month, we’re hosting a webinar to discuss just how perfect Google and Facebook are together – and just how important it is to use both in your marketing strategy. Tune in to the webinar on Feb 12, and take a look at the preview below to get started.
Increase reach and brand awareness
Making Use of Facebook Ads
Because of the Reach and Brand Awareness campaign types, cost per thousand impressions (CPM) bidding and optimization, and a plethora of placement options (including Instagram), Facebook provides advertisers with an unrivalled ability to drive brand awareness – and, as a result, fill the top of their funnels with net-new prospects.
Advertisers can use Facebook to drive ad delivery to prospects who will not only see but remember their brands for the first time. Establishing ad recall is critical when establishing relationships with prospects, and relationships are essential in ultimately driving conversions.
Using Google Ads
Google Ads provides a variety of campaign types and placements to assist you in expanding your reach and increasing brand awareness. Depending on your marketing objective, you can select from the following campaign types: search, display, video, discovery, shopping, and universal app. Each campaign type and placement ensures that you can capture reach and brand awareness where it makes sense for your business.
Make use of audiences to engage prospects with a variety of intents
Using Facebook Ads
Facebook is comparable to the Display Network. Users on these networks do not have the same level of commercial intent as users on the Search Network because they are not actively searching for the solution your company provides. That is not to say that Facebook is worse for engaging prospects; it simply means that the prospects you engage on Facebook will have a different level of intent than the prospects you engage on Google. Both are important, and you can use Custom and Lookalike Audiences in Facebook Ads to create a large, cost-effective prospect pool that you can convert directly from the platform or remarket to in Google Ads.
Making Use of Google Ads
We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: Google audiences are becoming increasingly important for your Google Ads strategy, particularly on the Search Network. On the Display Network, the days of targeting audiences solely through keywords and topics are long gone. You now have a plethora of options for precisely targeting or observing new and existing audiences across your Google Ads campaigns. You can use these audiences to customise your offer, message, and bid in order to maximise your return on ad spend.
Prospects should flow smoothly through your funnel
Making Use of Facebook Ads
Facebook offers advertisers an excellent opportunity to capture new prospects and move existing leads through your marketing funnel. Beginning with the campaign objective, advertisers can target each stage of the traditional marketing funnel: awareness, consideration, and conversion. You can take this cross-funnel strategy a step further by matching the appropriate account structure, audience targeting, and campaign settings to each stage of your funnel.
Making Use of Google Ads
Not only does Google provide advertisers with a broad reach, but it also allows advertisers to drive traffic, convert leads, and close new business. You can mirror your marketing funnel using the various campaign types provided by Google. Consider the following example:
First, create an in-market audience on YouTube to drive brand awareness at a low CPM. Create a remarketing list of video viewers and remarket to them via a Display campaign with a top-of-the-funnel offer. You can now create an audience for the conversions who came from this campaign and remarket to them with a product-centric offer. While these campaigns are in effect,
You can include your target audiences as observations in relevant search campaigns. This allows you to bid more aggressively and better understand the relationship between campaign types and the search network for that audience.
Your campaigns have now achieved reach, awareness, engagement, and conversions using three different tactics. You’ve effectively moved potential prospects from the top to the bottom of your funnel. That is just one example of how you can use Google as a cross-funnel channel to achieve your marketing objectives.
Produce a large number of high-quality leads
Use of Facebook Ads
Facebook allows you to convert a large number of leads at a low cost. Facebook converts at a much higher rate than Google (9.21 per cent vs. 3.75 per cent), and Facebook lead ads, in particular, allow lead gen advertisers to convert leads at an even higher rate. An internal review of Rankzoid customer data revealed a 12.54 per cent conversion rate, compared to just 10.47 per cent when using Conversion campaigns to send prospects to a landing page to fill out a form.
Therein lies the feature that makes Facebook lead ads so effective—when your prospect engages with the ad, a lead form opens up within the Facebook app. Thus, your prospect doesn’t need to navigate to a new browser window and wait for a new page to load before submitting his information. Facebook lead ads are a highly valuable lead gen tool.
Using Google Ads
Not much can beat the quality that comes with search intent. If a prospect is searching, it means they are actively looking for an answer or help with their query. This makes them a better prospect for your business to engage than a more passive prospect. You can balance your ad spend through a range of campaign types on Google to bring in the top-notch quality while reaching your quantitative goals.
Using Facebook Ads
Align Your Brand
Facebook and Instagram are ideal platforms for showcasing your brand’s most visually appealing aspects. Story ads, in particular, allow you to reach prospects in the formats in which they are most likely to be comfortable consuming content: full-screen, vertical, and on mobile devices. If you’re going to use Facebook to boost brand awareness or reach, and then use Google to convert prospects later (when they’re near the bottom of the funnel), Facebook is the perfect place to set the tone with compelling visual assets that you can then call back to with consistent messaging in your search ads.
Use of Google Ads
Your prospect’s experience can be made or broken by brand alignment. If you reach them across Google networks with inconsistent messaging, creative, or brand value, you risk causing confusion and losing the prospect’s trust. As a result, it’s critical to implement your cross-funnel strategy with ads that send a consistent message and adhere to your brand guidelines. This way, you can provide prospects with an experience that impresses and delights them at every touchpoint.
