By Evan Galvin

CEO, Ping Marketing

One of the most frequent questions we get from ISP owners is which ad platform they should invest their marketing dollars into - Facebook or Google? In this article, we will answer that question and give specific suggestions on how much you should expect to spend on each platform.

Facebook Ads

Facebook Ads is the most easily accessible ad platform for small business owners in this day in age. Facebook (now Meta) has put a lot of effort into creating a system where anybody can quickly and easily boost a post for as little as $10.

Unfortunately, if you don’t know what you are doing, Facebook Ads can very easily become a money pit. Facebook is also very good at showing you lots of fancy numbers that make it look like your ads and boosted posts are performing well, even if they are not.

Many people assume that lots of comments and messages means that their content is doing well, but if it is not generating a real, positive, attributable return on your investment, it is often a waste of money. In fact, this illusion can actually end up costing your company a lot more money than you even realize by wasting your team’s time responding to comments and messages that were never going to lead to actual customers.

Real success with Facebook ads is complex, time consuming, and fairly difficult to master. We’re not saying that nobody can get a positive ROI on a boosted post - in fact, we’ve seen many ISPs that have done this quite successfully. But the kind of consistent success that is critical to the long-term growth and stability of your company requires a lot more education and effort.

What happens a lot of the time is that someone will boost a post and see a huge flood of orders come in. They’ll pat themselves on the back and convince themselves that Facebook is just a spigot of new customers that they can turn on and off whenever they want. However, as we mentioned earlier, Facebook is very skilled at generating quick showy results. Their algorithms are very complex, and they are experts at hitting the lowest hanging fruit first. Once you burn through this batch of potential customers, however, it becomes increasingly complex and expensive to generate results past that. That’s where education and experience comes into play.

If you are determined to do it yourself, Facebook is a good option for an occasional temporary boost. If you want to generate good results consistently over a long period of time however, you’ll need to invest in either a marketing agency (preferably one that specializes in your industry) or a full-time marketing employee with relevant experience (this option is typically much more expensive than an agency).

Google AdWords

Google AdWords works quite a bit differently than Facebook Ads. Instead of inserting interactive social media posts in front of viewers that are not actively searching for you, Google AdWords is essentially paying to have your company show up higher on search results when people look for internet service in your area.

What this means is that leads generated through Google AdWords are typically much more interested in your service. While Facebook leads generally require a lot of work to close because they weren’t actively looking for your services when they reached out to you, Google AdWords leads are typically much closer to normal leads - a lot more like taking orders at a drive-thru.

Google AdWords also has a lot more options for their ads in terms of how leads can be generated. They have the option to embed click-to-call buttons as well as have multiple links to different parts of your website or even promote your Google Business listing (Which can be a very powerful tool if you have a lot of positive Google reviews).

The downside to Google AdWords is that their targeting options are not nearly as precise as Facebook. However, recent changes to Facebook’s targeting algorithm due to public scrutiny of their privacy practices have somewhat leveled the playing field in this respect.

Google AdWords leads also tend to be much more expensive - often 2-5 times as much as Facebook Ads. The higher lead quality can compensate for this, but this is the main reason why Google AdWords aren’t for everyone. If your team is skilled at closing leads from Facebook, you will probably see a better return on your investment there due to the high lead cost on Google.

Conclusion

So, which platform should you choose for your ads?

The answer to that depends on your business goals and your existing team. If your sales team is skilled at closing outbound leads (warm and low-intent leads), then Facebook could be a gold mine for you. If you only have one salesperson (or less) and they are not comfortable being aggressive and following up with the same person 10-20 times, then you would probably profit more from Google AdWords.

Ultimately, if your company is committed to rapid and/or long-term growth, the best option is always going to be a multi-pronged approach, where you invest in both platforms. The key is to make sure that you are putting that investment in the hands of someone with extensive experience both with those platforms and in your industry. An inexperienced person will not only cost you the labor required to get everything running, but will also generate much more expensive leads, costing you a lot more money in the long run.

Hire an experienced and professional digital marketing agency that specializes in working with internet service providers - book a demo today!