Google Ads vs Facebook Ads: What’s Best For Dropshipping?

Google ads vs Facebook ads for dropshipping: which is the best?

That can be a tricky question, especially if you are new to dropshipping and don’t have much marketing experience under your belt.

Choosing the wrong platform won’t only hurt your chances of success but also make you waste a lot of money. 

Thankfully, you don’t have to worry because we will closely look at the two platforms to help you understand their strengths and weaknesses in this post. Our goal is to help you eliminate guesswork and make prudent decisions.

Additionally, we will highlight several reasons why advertising is important for your dropshipping business. 

Hopefully, in the end, you will be able to confidently decide if Google or Facebook ads will be suitable for your business. 

Let’s dive in already!

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Why is advertising important for dropshipping business?

Did you know that there are about 20 million eCommerce websites in the world? That’s huge!

The worst part is that only a small fraction of these websites make meaningful annual sales. The rest just struggle to get along. 

How do you get eyeballs to your products in a fiercely competitive market? Simple. By advertising. 

But isn’t advertising costly? It sure is, but the long-term benefits are always worth it if done right.  

To begin with, advertising gives you a chance to grow your dropshipping sales. 

In addition to that, advertising can help to increase your brand awareness. If people don’t know about your business, they will certainly not be interested in your products. But when they do, not only will they buy your products, but also recommend them to others. 

On top of that, advertising allows you to stand out from the competition. No matter the dropshipping niche you are in, there will always be someone doing something similar. The one sure way to get ahead of them is by effective advertising. 

Lastly, advertising can provide you with the feedback you need to optimize your marketing strategy and improve sales. 

With all that said, let’s now see some of the advertising channels you can explore.

Where should you advertise your dropshipping business?

What advertising channels can you use to promote your dropshipping business? The truth is, your options are nearly limitless.

For example, you could choose to start with SEO by publishing lots of keyword-filled content on your website. While this approach is great, it will take a while. Studies have shown that it takes an average of 12 months to see results with SEO. 

You could also choose to do email marketing or word-of-mouth marketing. The problem, however, is that they take a lot of time, too. 

Running online ads on Google or Facebook is your best bet if you want instant results.  

What’s the deal about Google and Facebook, and why use them as advertising channels for your dropshipping business?

Here are some quick stats you need to know, starting with Facebook:

• In the first quarter of 2021, Facebook (now Meta) had about 3.51 billion active users, and they all use one of the company’s products: Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp. That’s quite a large audience to target. 
• These users spend an average of 34 minutes every day on Facebook. That’s enough time to convey your messaging.
• On average, each user clicks on 2.5 ads every day. Not bad in terms of engagement. 
• Facebook ads see an average of  3.9% click-through rate. 

And here are some interest stats for Google:

• Many online retailers using Google ads for their advertising have seen an increase in their sales. William Sonoma, for example, has reported a 70% uptick in sales. 
• Google tops the lead when it comes to search advertising and has a lion-share of 65%
• For every $1 you spend on Google ad, you stand to make back $8.
• The average cost-per-click for Google ads ranges from $1 to $2. 

Those are interesting stats, aren’t they? Almost want to make you start running ads already. 

But which should you choose for your dropshipping business: Google or Facebook?

Let’s now look at these two advertising platforms in-depth, as doing so, we believe, will help you make a better decision.

Google Ads: A Brief overview and advertising capabilities

Google is undoubtedly the largest search engine in the world. This means that most potential customers looking for your product will start their search on Google. 

And there are two ways through which they can find you: organic search or paid ads. 

For example, if you searched “WordPress hosting” in Google, you would see this:

The top results with Ad prefix are paid ads, whereas the ones below are organic results. 

Google Ads, an advertising tool from Google, allows you to get your products in front of potential customers via paid ads as they search for products online. 

With Google Ads, you can target customers in any country, regardless of their gender, type of device, status, etc. 

What’s more, several features have been built into Google Ads to increase your chances of succeeding with your advertising. 

They are as follows: 

• Keyword Planner
• Audience manager
• Insights
• Landing page

Keyword Planner

To be successful with Google Ads, you need to know the search queries potential customers will use to find your products. 

For example, if you sell dog toys, you will want your online store to show up for search queries such as “best dog toys”, “toys for poodle” etc. 

These search queries, technically, are known as keywords. 

The Keyword Planner tool makes it easy to find keywords to target with your campaign. In addition to that, it gives you detailed information about the keywords you are looking to target.

These include average monthly search volume, keyword difficulty, and estimated cost per click. 

Audience Manager

The audience manager tool allows you to target a specific demographic of an audience with your ad. You can target them based on income size, gender, location, etc. 

Insights

Google Insights gives you, well, insight into your ad performance and trends you might be interested in. 

For instance, you can get information about search trends, demand forecasts, consumer interests, etc. 

Landing page

Do you want to know what happens when visitors click on your ads through to your website? The Landing page feature is where to look.

Here, you can gain insights into your click-through rate, number of clicks, page speed, conversion rate, etc. 

Google Ad: Pros

With all that said about Google Ads, you might be wondering if it is ideal for your dropshipping business. 

To help you determine that, here are pros about the platform that you need to know:

1. Stronger intent

When compared to other advertising platforms like Facebook, people who find your store through Google ads are more likely to be ready to buy. 

Let’s say you dropship kids sneakers, and people are finding your store by searching for “affordable kids sneakers”. It’s apparent that this set of people intends to buy, right?

As such, promoting your business via Google ads increases your chances of making sales. 

2. Expansive reach

Did you know that Google processes about 5.6 billion searches every day? 

The best part? Searchers don’t need to have an account with Google to find your dropshipping website.

3. Offers better ROI

Like we had earlier mentioned, for every $1 you spend on Google ads, you stand to make $8 in profits.  

4. Wider reach

If you run ads on Facebook, your ads will only be shown to users with Facebook, Instagram, or Messenger accounts. 

Whereas for Google ads, your ads will appear in Search Result Pages and online outlets like newspaper publications, Google Partners websites, and even YouTube. 

Google Ads: Cons

Here are reasons why Google ads might not be suitable for your business. 

1. Higher cost-per-click

Each time someone clicks on your Google ad, you will pay about $2. Now, at such a rate, you could blow your entire dropshipping marketing budget and still not get much back. 

2. Limited demographics

Compared to Facebook, Google Ads’ audience demographics are limited. 

3. Has a steeper learning curve

Google Ads is not so beginner-friendly, and it may take you a while to get a proper hang of it. 

Facebook Ads: A brief overview and advertising capabilities

If you are looking to deliver personalized ads based on your target audience’s likes, dislikes, interests, hobbies, etc. Facebook Ads is your best bet. 

The reason is, Facebook, the undisputed King of social media, has well-developed audience demographics data. 

What’s more, it costs way less to run ads on Facebook. As such, you can start with as little as $10 to promote your dropshipping business. 

Keep in mind that Facebook ads are not only shown on Facebook alone but on other social media platforms owned by the company. They include Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp [no ads on WhatsApp yet, though].

Facebook comes with an advertising management system called, well, Facebook ad Manager. This tool makes managing your ad across the Facebook ecosystem a seamless experience. 

Let’s look at it a bit more closely to know its capabilities.

The Facebook Ads Manager

The Facebook Ads Manager tool lets you do the following:

1. Create new ad campaigns and determine your campaign objectives. This makes it ideal for driving traffic to your dropshipping website 

2. A/B test your campaigns by trying different ad types to see which works best

3. Optimize your ad budget so that you get to spend less but make more

4. Choose your preferred ad format. You don’t have to limit your ad options to text and images alone. Facebook gives you extra options like video, carousels, and collections.

Facebook Ads: Pros

So, what are some of the benefits of promoting your dropshipping business via Facebook ads?

1. Cheaper

The average cost per click for Facebook ads is $1. This is way less than Google’s $2

2. Better conversion rate

Studies have shown that the average conversion rate for Facebook ads is 9.21%. Whereas for Google, it’s 4.4%.

This means if you are looking to convert most people interacting with your ads into customers, Facebook ads are your best bet. 

3. Better targeting 

Facebook offers better audience targeting than Google. We’ve mentioned that earlier. 

Facebook Ads: Cons

Facebook ads may not be ideal for you for certain reasons. Here are a few:

1. Cumbersome interface

You might find your Facebook ads manager’s interface somewhat cumbersome, particularly the audience targeting part.  

2. Lower buying intent

People viewing your ads on Facebook are most likely not interested in buying anything, but only to break boredom or catch up with friends. So, Facebook is really not the place to be if you are looking to hard-sell prospective customers. 

With all that said about Facebook, let’s now answer the question that matters most; Google ads vs Facebook ads for dropshipping, which is the best?

Google ads vs Facebook ads for dropshipping: which is the best?

The truth is, there’s no right or wrong answer to this question. But before deciding which platform to go for, here are important things to keep in mind:

1. Budget

If you are low on budget, Facebook ads are your best bet. 

2. Sales 

Google ads are a better option if you are more interested in immediately driving sales for your business. 

3. Brand awareness

If you just launched your dropshipping store and want potential customers to know about it, Facebook ads are ideal. 

Optimize your dropshipping advertising campaign

It’s important to optimize your advertising campaign, regardless of the platform you choose. 

Not sure how to go about it? 

Here are some tips that will help. 

1. Use high-quality images and videos for your ads
2. Add CTA (call-to-action) buttons to your ads, especially on Facebook. For instance, if you want to get visits to your website, add a “Visit Store” button to your add
3. Refine your audience targeting until you can refine no more. In other words, ensure you are targeting the right audience. 
4. Leverage the interest targeting built into tools such as Sell the Trend.

Sell the Trend is a robust product discovery and automation tool for Dropshippers that makes it easy to find your target audience, create videos for your ads, find trending products to promote, calculate influencer engagement, etc. 

The best part is that you can start for free. 

Start your free trial today. 

Conclusion

Promoting your business via Google or Facebook ads is one surefire way to drive sales and grow your business. 

Hopefully, by now you’ve decided which of the platforms is best for your business. 

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