Whether you aim to become a digital marketing professional or manage your business’s online advertising, you must learn Google Ads and Facebook Ads. Each platform offers unique tools and strategies for reaching your target audience, but knowing where to start is key.
This guide will help you make the right choice.
Google Ads or Facebook Ads?
Both are beneficial for your marketing strategy, but the choice between Facebook Ads or Google Ads depends on what you want to achieve, your target audience, and the type of products or services you want to market.
In most cases, combining both will generate the best results, allowing you to reach more customers at every step of their buying journey.
When it comes to learning, each platform has its own tools and learning curve to go through, but any skills you build in campaign management, analytics, and ad optimization are transferable across other advertising platforms.
For example, if you become an expert in Google Ads, you can easily use your skills to work with Bing Ads. When you become an expert in Facebook Ads, running campaigns on TikTok will be straightforward.
Let's take it from the beginning and examine the differences and similarities between the two platforms.
What Are Google Ads?
Google Ads is a platform owned by Google and opens the doors to the millions of users on Google Search, YouTube, Gmail, Discover, and Google Display Network, which includes the thousands of websites that participate in Google Adsense.
The unique characteristic of Google Ads is that it is primarily intent-driven, meaning your ads are shown to users actively searching for specific products or services.
For example, if someone searches for “best corporate law firms,” Google Ads can place your ad at the top of the search results.
When you start learning Google Ads, you’ll focus on understanding keywords, bidding strategies, and writing effective ad copy. You’ll also need to learn how to analyze data in Google Ads Manager and Google Analytics to improve the performance of your campaigns.
What Are Facebook Ads?
Facebook Ads or Meta Ads allow you to advertise on Meta products like Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and Audience Network (which includes websites that are allowed to display Facebook ads).
The main characteristic of Facebook ads is that they are interest-driven, meaning your ads appear based on users’ demographics, interests, and online behavior.
For instance, you could target users interested in laptops, even if they aren’t actively searching to buy a computer.
Learning Facebook Ads requires you to get familiar with Meta Ads Manager. You’ll learn how to create engaging visuals and videos, set audience targeting, choose ad placement, and track campaign performance with custom reports.
Key Differences Between Google Ads and Facebook Ads
Here are the main differences between the two platforms:
| Feature | Google Ads | Facebook Ads |
|---|---|---|
| Audience | Intent-based (searching users) | Interest-based (browsing users) |
| Targeting | Keywords, location, devices | Demographics, behaviors, interests |
| Ad Formats | Text ads, display, video ads | Images, videos, carousel ads |
| Best For | Direct response (leads, sales) | Brand awareness, engagement |
| Learning Curve | More technical; requires understanding keywords and bidding strategies. | Creative-focused; easier for those with design and social media skills. |
When to Learn Google Ads First
You should consider learning Google Ads first when:
1. You're promoting products and services that your target audience is actively searching for on Google. For example, home repair, legal, or medical businesses can generate direct leads from search ads.
2. You want faster results. Both Google Ads and Facebook Ads can generate traffic as soon as you start a campaign, but from experience, Google Ads can bring in higher quality traffic than Facebook Ads.
Due to the intent-based nature of Google Ads, it's more likely to get targeted traffic faster than running interest-based ads on Facebook.
3. You have clients that can benefit most by running campaigns on Google Search and display networks. These are typically established businesses that want to get more targeted traffic and leads and make more sales.
What Does The Learning Roadmap of Google Ads Look Like?
If you know nothing about Google Ads, you can learn the basics in a few days. You should start by familiarizing yourself with the Google Ads Manager - the platform to run Google Ads.
Then, you should learn how to set up and optimize different types of campaigns. The most common are:
- Google Search Ads
- Google Display Ads
- Google Performance Max Campaigns
- Google Video Ads
You should also learn how to work with the Google Keyword Planner to identify the right keywords for your ads and how to analyze performance data and key metrics.
Learning through a dedicated Google Ads course is the best way to start. There are plenty of options from Google and third-party providers.
Google Ads Learning Resources
- How to become a Google Ads Specialist
- 10 Best Google Ads Courses For Beginners
- How to Get a Google Ads Certification
- Digital Marketing Full Course (includes courses on Google Ads and Facebook Ads)
When to Learn Facebook Ads First
Facebook ads is worth learning first when:
1. You want to reach users on the Meta network and introduce them to your business, products, or services. Facebook Ads are excellent for startups or small businesses looking to raise brand awareness and promote their unique products to a large audience.
2. You already get traffic from search engines through SEO and want to diversify your traffic sources.
3. Your products can easily be represented by nice visuals and videos.
4. Your clients want to expand their reach beyond search and connect with customers who start their buying journey through a social media network rather than Google.
What Does The Learning Roadmap of Facebook Ads Look Like?
Similar to Google Ads, the first step is to learn how Meta Ads Manager works and then practice setting up campaigns with different objectives and target audiences.
You need to understand how audience targeting works on Meta platforms, how to create custom audiences, and how to run retargeting campaigns.
From experience, learning Facebook Ads is easier than learning Google Ads because most users are already familiar with how social networks work. What is more challenging with Facebook ads is creating attractive visuals (images and videos) to get users' attention.
Facebook Ads Learning Resources
- Top 10 Facebook Ads Courses For Beginners
- How to Become a Facebook Ads Expert
- Facebook Ads Course (Beginner & Advanced)
Learning Both in the Long Term
Although choosing one platform is a great starting point, mastering both Google Ads and Facebook Ads will significantly enhance your digital marketing skills. Each platform complements the other, allowing you to create a more robust digital marketing strategy.
For both, going through a course is a great starting point as it will help you learn the basics in a structured way. To become an expert, though, and reach a point of running profitable campaigns, you need a lot of hands-on practice.
Start by allocating a small budget and experiment with Google Search Ads - they are easy to set up and optimize, and they will help you understand how Google Ads work.
Experiment with different bidding options, keywords, and ads. Enable conversion tracking and see if you can get conversions within your acceptable cost.
Do the same with Facebook Ads. Start a campaign with the goal of getting clicks or landing page views and analyze the results. Try different types of ads - image ads, carousels, and videos and determine which one performs better.
For both scenarios, ensure you give the campaigns enough time to run. As a rule of thumb, you should make changes every couple of weeks. This will provide enough time for the systems to execute your changes and give you enough data to make data-driven decisions.
