You have some budget to promote your business online.
Where should you spend it?
Google Ads? Facebook or Instagram? LinkedIn? TikTok? Perhaps a combination?
There isn’t a universal answer, because the different advertising platforms aren’t simply alternative places to display the same advert. They can reach people at very different stages of deciding whether they need what you sell.
The better question is:
Are you trying to capture existing demand or create new demand?
Understanding that distinction is a very good place to start.
What’s the main difference between search and social advertising?
Search advertising can put your business in front of someone who is actively looking for something.
Social media advertising can put your business in front of someone who fits the audience you’re trying to reach, whether or not they’re currently searching for you.
Imagine your boiler has stopped working.
You might immediately search Google for an emergency heating engineer. You’re expressing very clear intent and Google Ads can allow relevant businesses to compete for your attention at exactly that moment.
Now imagine you’re scrolling through Instagram and see an advert for a beautiful outdoor kitchen.
You weren’t searching for one. You may never have seriously considered buying one.
But now you are.
That’s a very different marketing opportunity.
When does Google Ads make sense?
Google Ads can be particularly powerful when people already know that they have a problem, need or intention.
Someone might search for:
employment solicitor near me
accountant for small business
luxury lodge Chichester
emergency drain clearance
These searches tell us something extremely valuable: what that person wants right now.
For businesses offering products or services with clear existing search demand, being visible at that moment can be extremely effective.
But competition matters.
If many businesses want the same customer, the cost of competing for those searches can become significant. That’s why choosing the right keywords, geographic targeting and landing pages matters just as much as writing the advert itself.
Sending expensive clicks to a weak website is a very efficient way of wasting an advertising budget.
When does social media advertising make sense?
Social advertising approaches the problem differently.
Platforms know a great deal about their audiences and allow advertisers to reach people according to various characteristics, behaviours, interests and other signals.
That makes social advertising particularly useful when the product or service is visual, interesting, new or something people aren’t necessarily searching for yet.
You can introduce an idea.
A new restaurant might want local people to discover it. An events business can promote an upcoming experience. An ecommerce brand can put an unusual product in front of people likely to appreciate it.
Social media also gives you considerable creative freedom.
Images, video, demonstrations, stories and customer experiences can all communicate something that would be difficult to squeeze into a search advert.
What about B2B advertising?
Business-to-business marketing introduces another set of considerations.
LinkedIn advertising, for example, can provide opportunities to reach people according to professional characteristics such as their industry, role or seniority.
That can be incredibly useful if you’re trying to reach a very particular decision-maker.
But targeting precision doesn’t automatically make a campaign cost-effective.
If you can identify your audience very precisely but your offer isn’t compelling, you’ve simply paid to show the wrong message to exactly the right people.
For B2B campaigns especially, I would think about the whole journey rather than the advert in isolation.
What happens after someone clicks?
Do you need to choose between search and social?
Not necessarily.
In fact, they can work extremely well together.
Someone might first discover your business through a social media advert.
A week later they see another piece of your content.
Eventually they search Google for your business, return to the website and make an enquiry.
Which channel deserves the credit?
All of them contributed.
This is one reason digital marketing becomes much more interesting when you stop thinking about individual channels in isolation.
Different channels can do different jobs within the same customer journey.
What about remarketing?
Remarketing — or retargeting — adds another dimension.
It lets advertising reach people who have already interacted with your business in some way, subject, of course, to relevant platform rules, consent requirements, and privacy legislation.
That audience is different from a completely cold one.
Someone who has already visited your website, explored a product or engaged with your business has demonstrated at least some level of interest.
A well-designed follow-up campaign can remind them that you exist or give them a reason to return.
The important words there are well-designed.
Nobody wants to feel stalked around the internet by the same pair of shoes they looked at three weeks ago.
Your landing page matters as much as your advert
This is one of the biggest advertising mistakes I see.
A business spends considerable time creating an advert, carefully chooses its audience and then sends everybody to the homepage.
Why?
If I’m responding to an advert about a particular service, take me somewhere that continues that conversation.
The landing page should reflect what the advert promised, answer the questions I’m likely to have and make the next step obvious.
That might be buying something, requesting a quote, booking an appointment, downloading information or making contact.
The advertising platform can deliver the visitor.
Your website still has to do something with them.
How much should you spend on digital advertising?
There isn’t a sensible universal minimum.
£500 spent intelligently in one market could produce useful results. In another highly competitive market, it might barely provide enough data to evaluate the campaign.
Start with the economics of your own business.
- What is a new customer worth?
- How many enquiries normally become customers?
- What can you reasonably afford to spend acquiring one?
- And importantly, what are you trying to learn?
Early advertising campaigns aren’t simply about generating sales. They can tell you which messages, audiences, searches and offers people respond to.
That’s valuable information — provided you’re measuring it.
Don’t confuse clicks with success
A thousand clicks might look impressive on a report.
They’re not particularly useful if none of those people become a customer.
Before spending money, decide what success actually looks like.
It might be:
- enquiries
- sales
- bookings
- telephone calls
- registrations
- downloads
- qualified leads
Then make sure you can measure them.
Cost per click can be useful. Click-through rate can be useful. Impressions can be useful.
But ultimately, your advertising needs to contribute to a business objective.
So which advertising platform should you choose?
Start with the customer rather than the platform.
If people are already searching for exactly what you offer, search advertising may be the obvious place to investigate first.
If you need to introduce your business, product or idea to the right kind of person, social advertising may offer the better opportunity.
If the buying journey is longer, you may need several channels working together.
And sometimes paid advertising isn’t the answer at all.
If the website isn’t ready, the offer isn’t clear or you don’t yet understand who you’re trying to reach, putting money behind the problem won’t solve it.
The best advertising strategy isn’t the one using the most platforms. It’s the one that reaches the right people, with the right message, at the right point in their decision.