I work with a lot of realtors in my business, providing great real estate web design and real estate strategies to help them grow their businesses.
One of my real estate agent clients recently asked: What’s the difference between Google Ads and Facebook Ads?
We were discussing ad budget and ad strategy and she had a bit of a hard time understanding the difference between advertising on Google vs Facebook. Based on that conversation, it made me realize that a lot of realtors are struggling with real estate lead generation and want to start dabbling with running Ads, and are probably asking the same or a very similar question.
At the end of the day, which one will give you your fastest and cheapest return on investment?
First I want to talk about the biggest difference between the two: Google and Facebook, despite both of them being “big tech” both own a slew of different properties that you can advertise on.
Let’s start with Google, there is obviously Google.com; the search engine itself, and the ads that you see under search results. This has a bunch of different properties associated with it like image ads or display ads, otherwise known as banner ads. Then there is Youtube for video ads, shopping for products, and local for your business page to name a few.
Google is also constantly rolling out new products that can definitely help you with your business.
Then we have Facebook, where the main advertising machines are really Facebook itself and Instagram, with a little emphasis on banner ads for other websites.
Most realtors’ top-of-mind questions would be the cost. However, there is no straight-up answer.
First, the cost is relative based on the ad and not the platform. The cost per acquisition price is really based on your message and how good you are at solving your client’s problems.
Second, starting with too small of a budget with ads is going to give you crap results.
It’s like saying ‘I’m going to pay for postcards to mail to my 100,000 farm area’ but only mail out 10 or 20. If the budget is too small, the reach will be too small and it’ll just be a waste of money and time in the end. You really need to create a baseline and it’s best to start with a reasonable budget to get it.
Google is great for educating and Facebook is excellent for indoctrinating.
If your consumer is trying to educate themselves, then chances are, they’re likely going to go to Google or Youtube to find the answer to their question. If you have a great resource that can be used to educate the potential lead on their problem, then create an ad and link it to that content.
Facebook, on the other hand, is great for educating as well but it’s even better at indoctrinating leads.
In advertising, there is this rule that you may have heard of called ‘Marketing Rule of 7’s’ which means that a potential customer must see a message at least 7 times before they’ll be provoked to take an action.
Facebook does an excellent job of remarking to that lead so that you keep showing up around the internet and they start remembering who you are.
If you’re starting, then going with Facebook would be the better choice. This is because while the education portion isn’t as strong as Google’s, you’re still able to create that type of messaging on Facebook all while still indoctrinating and remarketing to get your 7 impressions.
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Brand Building – position you as the thought leader and authority in your community.
This expert’s opinion would say that having both Google Ads and Facebook Ads is advantageous for your business. Having an omnichannel strategy using both Google and Facebook works the best but if you’re on the fence and you have the budget.
But if you’re just starting and you don’t have the budget, then the best way to choose the answer is by asking the question, are your customer’s problem aware or solution aware.
Find out more tips to help you scale your business and build predictability? Join our free Square 1 Facebook Group today. If you need help building out your real estate website, we’re just a call away! We’re experts so feel free to reach out to us and we’ll be more than happy to help you out.
Emmanuel here and my goal is to empower 1 billion realtors with tools to generate business online. Think you can be one of them?
Emmanuel is the CEO of Square 1 Group, a boutique agency that helps real estate entrepreneurs build a unique brand online. He has been in the real estate digital marketing industry for over a decade and has helped hundreds of real estate entrepreneurs grow their business. He ensure that Square 1 Group is able to design, build, and manage custom-built lead-generating websites.
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