Google or Facebook: where to look for your customers?
It is not a matter of fashion or generation: Google and Facebook do not sell the same thing. One sells intent, the other attention. Choosing means knowing which one your trade needs.
Google: the customer is already looking for you
Someone who types “emergency plumber” or “divorce lawyer” has a problem now and is looking for who will solve it. On Google, you do not create the need: you put yourself in its path. The direct consequences:
- Requests are ripe: the person is ready to talk, often to sign.
- The click is paid at the price of the competition: all your competitors target the same words, and bids rise accordingly. In some trades (legal, insurance, locksmiths), the click alone costs the price of a lunch.
- Volume is capped by searches: if there are only a hundred searches a month in your area, no budget will create a hundred and first.
Facebook & Instagram: you interrupt, so you must win them over
Nobody opens Instagram to find a heating engineer. You invite yourself into a news feed: it is an interruption, and it has its rules:
- Attention costs less than a Google click, and the volume is much larger: you reach people who were not looking yet.
- Requests are less ripe: the person was tempted, not decided. Calling back quickly and following up make all the difference between a profitable campaign and one that “brought nothing”.
- The visual decides everything: on Google, people read; on Facebook, they look first.
Choosing by type of trade
- Emergencies and breakdowns (plumbing, locksmiths, heating repairs): Google first. The need arises suddenly and is searched for: being found is worth more than winning people over.
- Projects that mature (renovation, kitchens, solar panels, heat pumps): both, with different roles. Facebook sows early in the thinking, Google harvests as the decision approaches.
- Pleasure or appearance purchases (beauty, restaurants, leisure, decoration): Facebook and Instagram first. Nobody searches for anything there, but people let themselves be tempted, and the image works for you.
- Business customers (consulting, B2B services, software): Google for precise searches, LinkedIn to target job roles and sectors. Facebook is rarely the first choice there.
The real answer: start with one, measure, then add the other
The beginner’s trap is spreading too thin: two ad networks, four campaigns, a small budget everywhere, and no lesson learned anywhere. Choose the channel that matches the nature of your demand (urgent or maturing), give it a real budget for a month, measure the cost per request, then, and only then, test the second channel with what the first one taught you.