Getting started with online ads for UnscrewMe
Comparing 📊 the effectiveness of digital advertisement options from Google and Facebook to build an audience 👥 and drive traffic growth 📈.
After some ad experiments on Facebook to promote UnscrewMe, we thought we should also look at Google Ads.
In short, we think that Facebook ads work better for UnscrewMe at this stage. Mainly due to the social aspect that could help increase reach substantially even after an ad campaign has finished. But both offerings are very different and it really depends on what one is aiming for, which ad model will be more effective.
Previous learnings from Facebook Ads
Let’s start with a quick recap of the results when we “boosted” posts on Facebook before. Facebook only reports figurs in US Dollar, to make comparisons with the Google figures in Pounds easier, we converted Facebook’s US Dollar figures.
The basic results from our previous Facebook campaigns:
- Clicks per impression: 0.037
- Cost per person reached: £0.015
- Cost per click: £0.18
How Google Ads compare
Our ad in Google Search was much more subtle and less visual than the posts we boosted on Facebook: just a few words, no images.
The cost per impression came in at £0.016 after ten days and thus was pretty similar to what we achieved on Facebook. The big surprise to us was the cost per click at £0.79 – that was about four times what we paid on Facebook.
Of course, these figures are not representative and with different key words and a different budget, Google Ads might perform entirely differently. But purely based on those figures, Facebook Ads seem like better value.
Additional Google Search insights
Maybe results in terms of impressions and reach are only part of the story for Google Ads. The amount of information provided by Google around an ad campaign seems much more comprehensive than the statistics you get on Facebook.
Not entirely surprising in this day and age, but more than 50% of people saw our ad on their mobile device, with desktops and laptops coming in at just below 40%. I was somewhat surprised to see that only 10% appear to use a tablet to search for wine events.
One valuable insight Google Ads provide that Facebook Ads don’t offer are the search terms used by people to discover content.
For some reason, the most clicks on our ad were observed when people searched for “wine test”. Maybe this was a misspelling or an auto-correction?
Not too surprising was that the most impressions overall was for search term “wine tasting”. Yet these searches did not have the most effective click to impression ratio. Quite a bit behind in terms of total clicks was the search for “wine experiences london”, an interesting variation.
Not many clicks in total, but by far the highest clicks per impression at 0.1 was recorded for the search “wine sampling”.
On the other hand, Facebook offers more demographic details about the users than Google does. Both aspects, search behaviour and demographics can be valuable to optimise online ad campaigns.
Measure the results
Looking at our visits in Google Analytics largely confirmed what Google Ads reported. What we found interesting was that even throughout the ad campaign, more users came via “direct referral” than via the ad campaign. This might mostly be determined by our rather low budget for the campaign.
Looking at our traffic sources from a more generic perspective, we noticed that Medium and Facebook regularly bring some users to UnscrewMe, while disappointingly postings on Twitter seem to rarely have any effect on visitor figures.
Over time, organic Google Search referrals also increase slowly, which we consider to be a positive signal.
Which one to choose
It is difficult to decide which kind of ad works better. It probably mainly depends on the goals one wants to achieve. Potentially, Google Ads and Facebook Ads can reach very different people – or exactly the same.
Besides the slightly better performance on the impression metric and mainly due to the higher rate of clicks of the Facebook Ads, the added value of “Likes” make Facebook appear like the ad platform that delivers more sustainable value. With “Likes” for a page or post on Facebook the reach increases, since Facebook currently often includes “Likes” of friends in the newsfeed. That means that through such “Likes” also the friends might see the page or post, increasing the potential impressions and audience further. The value of this effect is due to our specific product and does not necessarily apply to other products and services. There is no question that Google Adscan be very efficient in many other scenarios, so we don’t want to make a general statement here.
In summary, if you’re on a tight budget, going with Facebook Ads might yield better short-term and long-term results due to the mechanics of a social network and partly perhaps also due to the more advanced targeting possibilities.
Continuing the new series we started in November, our next article will present some wine bars in London that opened recently, to give you even more opportunities to enjoy a glass.
(Little by little, this article came together with plenty of coffee ☕️ at Kaffeine Eastcastle St, Lantana Shoreditch and Clerkenwell Grind as well as some wine 🍷 at Westland Coffee & Wine, Cork & Bottle Hampstead & 28°-50° Marylebone Wine Workshop and Kitchen where I had a nice 2016 Pinot Noir by La Crema Winery from Monterey in California in the USA 🇺🇸 boasting red fruit flavours combined with smoked wood and some spice.)
