Facebook Ads or Google Ads: Which Should You Try First?

Google captures demand that already exists: someone has a problem, searches for it, and you appear. Facebook creates demand by interrupting people who were not looking. If customers already search for what you do, start with Google. If what you sell is visual, start with Facebook. Most small businesses should not run both at once.

That is the decision in a paragraph. The rest of this explains how to tell which side you are on, and how to test it for a couple of hundred dollars before committing to anything.

How Do Facebook and Google Ads Actually Differ?

The mechanical difference is intent, and it drives everything else.

On Google, the person is looking for you. A burst pipe at 11pm produces a search for “emergency plumber”. The intent is already there and you are competing to be the one they find. That intent is why Google clicks cost more, and why they convert faster.

On Facebook and Instagram, you interrupt. Nobody opens Instagram looking for a plumber. But someone who has been half-thinking about renovating their bathroom might stop on a good before-and-after photo. You are creating the thought rather than answering it, which takes longer and works differently.

A worked pair of WA examples makes it concrete.

A Joondalup plumber should be on Google. The work is urgent, people search for it by name, and the job is worth enough to cover the click. Running Facebook ads for emergency plumbing means showing your ad to thousands of people whose pipes are fine.

A Fremantle homewares boutique should be on Facebook and Instagram. Almost nobody searches for “handmade ceramic bowls Fremantle”. They do stop scrolling for a good photo of one. The product is visual, the purchase is impulsive, and the platform matches that.

The awkward middle case is the business whose customers search, but only occasionally and unpredictably. A conveyancer, a wedding photographer, a removalist. People do search when they need you, but they need you once every several years, so search volume in any given month is thin. These businesses often do best with search ads running quietly at a low budget to catch the people who are looking, plus a slow social presence that keeps them familiar for the years in between. That is close to running both, which I argue against below, so the honest version is: start with search, and add social only once search is working and you know your numbers.

What Does Each Platform Cost in Australia?

Facebook clicks are generally cheaper than Google search clicks, often substantially. That sounds decisive and it is not, for one reason: a cheap click from someone who was not looking for you is worth less than an expensive click from someone who was.

What matters is cost per enquiry, then cost per customer. I have seen businesses proudly report twenty-cent clicks from Facebook that produced nothing at all, alongside eighteen-dollar Google clicks that paid for a month. The click price is the least important number in the account.

On Google, click costs vary enormously by industry, and you can check yours rather than trusting anyone’s average. Google’s Keyword Planner will show you the real bid range for your searches in your city, free, before you commit to anything. Do that first, because the answer changes the entire comparison: a $3 click and a $25 click lead to different decisions about which platform to start on.

On Facebook, your costs depend more on your creative than your industry. A good photo with a clear offer can cost a fraction of what a mediocre one costs, because the platform rewards things people stop for. That is genuinely good news for small businesses with something worth photographing.

Realistic starting budgets on either platform sit around $20 to $50 a day. Below that you gather data too slowly to learn anything before you run out of patience.

The Part Nobody Mentions: What You Actually Have to Make

The two platforms demand completely different things from you, and this decides more outcomes than targeting ever does.

Google needs words and a landing page. You write a headline, some description lines, and you send the click somewhere relevant. If you can write a clear sentence about what you do, you can run a Google campaign. No photography, no video, no ongoing creative production.

Facebook and Instagram need a constant supply of images or video. This is the requirement people underestimate, and it is why so many small business social campaigns quietly die. Your ad stops working after a few weeks because the same people have seen it too often, so you need new creative regularly. If taking photos is a chore you will avoid, a social campaign will fade whether or not the targeting is right.

Be honest about which of those you can sustain. A landscaper who finishes a photogenic job every fortnight is well placed for social. A bookkeeper who has nothing visual to show is not, however good the targeting options look in the ads manager.

The industries that do best on paid social are the ones where the work photographs itself. Real estate agents and builders both fall into that category, and both have the added advantage that their customers are geographically clustered, which is exactly what Meta’s targeting is good at.

The good news for anyone with something worth photographing: Facebook and Instagram reward creative that looks real over creative that looks produced. A clear phone photo of an actual finished job routinely outperforms something expensively made, because it stops the scroll in a way that looks like a person rather than an advertisement.

Which One Suits Your Business?

Run through these honestly.

Start with Google if: people search for what you sell by name, your work is urgent or time-sensitive, you sell a service rather than a product, your margins absorb a click that costs a few dollars, or you can answer the phone promptly.

Start with Facebook or Instagram if: what you sell is visual, nobody would think to search for it, it is an impulse or lifestyle purchase, you have good photos or can take them, or you are building local awareness in specific suburbs.

Consider neither yet if: your website does not convert the free traffic you already get, you cannot handle more enquiries, or you have not finished your Google Business Profile. Those are all cheaper problems to fix and fixing them makes any advertising work better later.

If two of the three lists above describe you, go with the one where you can realistically sustain the work. A platform you will keep feeding beats a theoretically better one you will abandon in six weeks.

Test One Platform Yourself First

Why Not Run Both at Once?

Almost every small business wants to. It is usually a mistake, for three reasons.

Budget dilution. Split $1,000 across two platforms and you have two underfunded campaigns instead of one that gathers enough data to improve.

The learning period. Both platforms need a run of conversions before their automated bidding works properly. Half a budget takes twice as long to get there, and sometimes never does.

You cannot tell what worked. Run both, get five enquiries, and you have no reliable idea which platform produced them or what to do more of.

Get one working, know your numbers, then add the second with a separate budget. That sequence is slower for a month and considerably faster over a year.

The exception, once you are established on one platform, is retargeting: showing ads on Facebook and Instagram to people who already visited your website from Google. That genuinely is worth running alongside, because it is not a second campaign competing for the same new customers, it is a cheap second look from people who already showed interest. It also tends to be one of the lowest-cost things in any account, since the audience is small and already warm. Save it for once your first platform is working, but know it is there.

When It Is Worth Getting Help

After the test, not before. A month of your own data means you can judge a proposal properly instead of taking someone’s word for it.

It is worth paying someone when you have proved a platform works and want to scale it, when you are spending steadily and cannot tell what is producing enquiries, or when you are ready to run both properly and do not want to manage two accounts yourself.

Tell me what you sell and who buys it and I will tell you which platform I would start on. Fifteen minutes, free, and it is usually a short conversation, because the answer is normally obvious once someone describes their customer out loud. You can also read how I approach social media ads and Google Ads, or the fuller breakdown of what Google Ads cost.

Questions People Ask Me About Paid Ads