Part 1 of 2

Advertising + PPC: Facebook vs. LinkedIn vs. Google, which is best for different situations

Barry Hott is an expert at buying and overseeing ads on Facebook since 2008 – over $600M in ads overall!

Outline:

• Intent for advertising
• Google Ads
• Pinterest Ads
• LinkedIn Ads
• Facebook Ads
• Video: TikTok + Snapchat
• Metrics for success and ideas about ad spend quantities
• Before we talk about the different platforms let’s first talk about intent. Some advertising platforms are useful for targeting people that have high intent for what you’re looking for think about search engines for example, where people are going to search for the thing that you might be selling. Other platforms are better for low or no intent, where you’re targeting people that aren’t interested in your product or service but trying to make them want your product or service. This would be more like Facebook or TikTok, people aren’t on those platforms to buy a product or hear about your service.
• Google ads are great for businesses where there is already an intent. People are searching to find the things that they need and they’re entering their problems right into Google to find their solutions, what better way to have your product or service be displayed to the right customer. These can also be highly competitive and expensive if you’re competing for common or popular terms.
• Pinterest is a great place to advertise if you’re trying to sell items that are visually appealing. People might be searching for exactly what you have or looking for inspiration for other things related to it you’re selling, but either way, Pinterest can be a useful tool to target relevant or high intent users.
• LinkedIn is a great place to advertise to people based on occupations or industries. This is obviously for more business-focused purposes, but can be used to hit the right people if you know how to use it well.
• Facebook ads are great for advertising pretty much anything to low intent audiences. The key to Facebook advertising is to make content that gets people’s attention and motivates them to take action. Historically there has been valuable interest and behavioral-based targeting on Facebook however in recent months Facebook has removed a lot of the granular targeting options that people have benefited from in the past. You can still use Facebook ads to “target with your creative” meaning that you make creative that would resonate with your audience and Facebook will use its machine-learning algorithm to figure out how to target to the right users based on the content of your ads. Facebook ads offer a lot of flexibility customization but they’re also quite complex. The good thing is that you can dip your toe in at a small scale to see what works for you but know you also might not see immediate results so keep trying different things.
• If you’re feeling extra creative and comfortable with video, TikTok and Snapchat offer a unique opportunity to advertise to users view primarily short-form video content. Since attention spans are low and the expectation for relevant content is high, it’s more difficult to succeed here, but if you can make relevant content to your audiences, it can be very fruitful.

Resources & Links

Part 2 of 2

Resources & Links