Social Media Ads vs. Google Ads: A Small Business Owner’s Guide to Choosing the Right Advertising Platform
“I want to advertise online, but I’m not sure where to start, or what platform makes sense for my business.”
As a small business owner, you may have asked yourself this question. If not it’s the perfect place to start.
Getting Started with Online Advertising
Since every channel is different, each business should take a unique approach to marketing based on the specific goals of the business. So let’s start there. What are you trying to achieve? Are you looking to grow awareness of your company in a local area? Are you promoting a blog and driving traffic to a landing page on your website? Do you need more online sales from people who are ready to buy? Each of these questions will lead to a different approach to digital marketing. Starting with the goal and working backward is the best way to strategize a marketing campaign. Let’s dive in!
Benefits of Social Media Advertising for Small Businesses
Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and most other social media platforms allow companies to promote content on their platforms. If done correctly, this can be a great way to ‘get your name out there’ and eventually start advertising online with a small budget. This is where businesses need to take the time to thoughtfully strategize which social media platform makes the most sense to invest time and money into.
Always ask yourself: Where are my customers spending their time? Meet them there and deliver the right message at the right time on the right platform for the best chance of success.
Imagine you’re a travel agent, and while business has slowed recently, you’re noticing an uptick in interest for warm weather vacation planning during the winter months. After analyzing industry trends and chatting with clients, you discover that tropical getaways are gaining popularity—specifically trips to the Caribbean.
To capitalize on this interest, you create a blog post titled, “Top 3 Caribbean Islands for a Family Vacation in 2025.” Using Facebook’s advanced audience targeting tools, you set up a sponsored post to promote your blog to a group of prospective clients. For as little as $1–$2 per click, you can reach a highly specific audience—like families who’ve shown recent interest in travel, follow Caribbean travel pages, or have engaged with similar content.
With a budget of just $30, your ad could attract 20–40 relevant visitors to your website, if just one of them becomes a customer it’s a success! While these users may not be ready to book a trip immediately, they’ve expressed interest by clicking your link. This now turns into an opportunity to build trust, showcase your expertise, and capture a lead through a newsletter opt in then follow up with a personalized welcome email.
There are a number of different marketing objectives that sponsored social media platforms can support. The most common are driving traffic, growing brand awareness, connecting on Messenger, generating leads, getting phone calls, but there are many more as well. Choosing the right objective on the right platform is a crucial step to creating a successful campaign using social media ads.
If you’re interested in testing out sponsored social media advertising for your small business, check out my Sponsored Social Media page!
How Google Search Ads Can Drive Sales for Small Businesses
While social media ads are helpful to entice potential customers to visit your website through engaging content, Google search campaigns deliver ads to people who are already showing intent in a product or service. Marketers are able to deliver ads to keywords that best represent what their ideal customer would be searching for, which is what typically makes the channel worth the costs.
Using the same example as above: If someone is searching on Google, “Caribbean family vacation”, and our travel agency appears first due to a Google search campaign, they may be quickly able to entice them to click with catchy headlines, relevant descriptions, and eye-capturing images. This intent is why Google search ads can be so valuable to small businesses, providing an ability to bid for relevant prospects through keyword based ad campaigns.
The most popular objective on Google search is driving traffic, but you can also promote a physical store location on Google Maps, or promote a phone number to call your business.
If you’re interested in testing out Google search campaigns for your small business, check out my Google Search page!