For most local businesses the short answer is this: if people already search for what you do, start with Google Ads. If they don’t, or if what you sell needs showing rather than finding, start with Meta. Plenty of businesses end up running both, but almost nobody should start with both. Here’s how I think it through with clients.
The difference in one sentence
Google Ads catches people who are looking. Meta Ads interrupts people who aren’t.
Someone typing “emergency electrician Portsmouth” into Google has a problem right now and is ready to ring somebody. A Google ad puts you at the top of that moment. Someone scrolling Facebook or Instagram on the sofa isn’t looking for anything; a Meta ad has to earn their attention, but it can reach people long before they’d ever think to search.
Neither is better. They do different jobs.
When Google Ads is the right call
Google works best when there’s existing demand with clear intent. Trades, repairs, legal and financial services, dentists, garages, removals, anything urgent or high-value that people go looking for by name. The search term tells you exactly what the person wants, so you can match the ad and the landing page to it precisely.
The trade-off is cost. Because those clicks are valuable, other businesses bid for them too, and in competitive trades a single click can cost more than a coffee, sometimes several. That’s fine when one job is worth hundreds or thousands of pounds. It’s less fine for a low-ticket product.
Google also punishes sloppiness. A badly set-up campaign with broad keywords and a homepage as the landing page will spend your budget on the wrong searches with great efficiency. The set-up and the search-term pruning are where the money is saved.
When Meta Ads is the right call
Meta comes into its own when the product is visual, when it’s something people want rather than need, or when nobody is searching for it yet. Restaurants, cafés and bars. Gyms and classes. Home improvements people are tempted into rather than forced into, such as garden rooms, kitchens and landscaping. Events, courses, local shops with something worth looking at.
The targeting is built around who people are and where they live rather than what they typed, so you can put a short video of your work in front of homeowners within ten miles of the workshop and see what happens. Clicks are generally cheaper than Google, though the people clicking are further from buying, so the follow-up matters more.
Good creative is the whole game on Meta. A decent photo or a fifteen-second clip will outperform any amount of clever targeting, which is where a design and video background comes in useful.
What about budget?
You can test either platform on a few hundred pounds a month, but I’d be honest that the first month is mostly about learning: which searches convert, which audiences respond, what a lead actually costs you. Committing to three months gives the campaign time to settle and gives us real numbers to decide on. Spending fifty pounds for two weeks and concluding that ads don’t work is, sadly, the commonest outcome I hear about from new clients.
Tracking is not optional
Whichever you choose, the campaign is only as good as its measurement. That means conversion tracking on form submissions and phone calls, ideally with enquiries flowing straight into your CRM so we can see which clicks became customers rather than just which clicks became clicks. Without it, you’re spending money on a feeling.
Set up properly, the numbers tell you plainly what an enquiry costs from each platform. That, not opinion, is what decides where the next month’s budget goes.
Ads switch off; content doesn’t
One more thing worth saying. Ads are brilliant for enquiries now, and I run them for exactly that reason. But the moment you stop paying, the traffic stops. That’s why I usually pair a campaign with SEO and search-term articles on the client’s own site, so that while the ads bring in work this month, the site is building something that keeps bringing it in without a daily budget.
Not sure which to try first?
If you’d like a straight answer for your particular business, I’m happy to look at what people are searching for in your area and tell you honestly where I’d start. Drop me a line and we’ll go from there.
