Facebook or Google PPC?

Many people are shifting from Google Adwords to Facebook for pay per click (PPC) advertising because the cost per click (CPC) on Facebook is cheaper. While this may be true, you can still achieve great results on a cost per lead (CPL) basis on Google Adwords.

The key is that you have to test different opportunities on Google Adwords. Take the time to test the search network, remarketing, and targeted YouTube ads. You may be surprised by what you find. For example, for one of our clients we ran both banner ads and text ads on YouTube. We found that the text ads drastically out performed the banner ads, and that the CPL was actually cheaper than using the search network.

The second thing that you want to do is test multiple landing pages and offers. This is where you can win or lose big. We were running a Facebook PPC campaign for one of our clients using a shortened landing page (squeeze page) and the cost per lead was relatively good. We knew that if we tested we could drive the CPL down. In total, we tested four different variations of the squeeze page and drove the CPL down to a tenth of the original CPL. Let’s think about the impact of this. You can increase lead volume by ten times and maximize profitability simply by testing.

In the end, this same campaign generated the same CPL on both Google Adwords and Facebook because multiple ads and landing pages were tested. While it does take a little effort up front to optimize your campaign, it is worth putting in the time to drive down your CPL, which pays off month after month.