Cracking the Code: Google and Meta Marketing Secrets for Success

What’s the most challenging part for brands in online advertising? It is to target the right audience with the right message. Popular ad networks like Google Ads Network and Facebook’s Audience Network lead the online advertising race. These tools provide valuable insights on ad placements and targeting options to reach the relevant audience.

As of November 2023, the Meta market cap is about $855.01 billion. With its massive reach and comprehensive machine learning model, Meta marketing has evolved as a sure-shot strategy for advertisers.

This blog discusses the different strategies and best practices for Meta marketing and Google marketing that can revamp your social media strategy.

Overview of Google Advertising

According to Google, 94% of clicks come from the first search page results. Google Ads helps businesses to market their products and services on the search engine where users search related topics. The platform also helps to promote products on mobile apps, videos, and pay-per-click price models.

The different types of ads for an effective Google marketing strategy are search ads, video ads, display ads, and shopping ads.

Google matches the relevant keywords from the user with your Google ads and displays them to users. This helps to increase brand awareness, conversions, and reach.

Decoding the Google Marketing Tactics

Google Ads help you create online advertisements targeting specific segments of audiences.

Here’s how you can master Google marketing to use it to your advantage-

Create Effective Landing Pages

What is the first thing a user sees after clicking your ads? It’s your landing page. The average landing page conversion across different industries is 9.7%. An effective landing page creates a positive user experience and drives conversions.

Optimise your landing page based on your purpose. For example, if you want your page visitors to sign up for newsletters, highlight the sign-up CTA (call to action) in the front. If you want to increase sales, mention a clear CTA to purchase the product and include customer testimonials.

Best Practices for Optimising Landing Pages

1. Include the most essential information on the first fold to capture the user’s attention instantly.

2. Focus on customer pain points and how your product addresses them to create a compelling copy.

3. Structure your landing page using bullet points and paragraphs.

4. Write effective CTAs that benefit the user.

Use Precise and Researched Keywords

Detailed keyword research is essential for creating an effective ad campaign. Choose specific keywords instead of broad ones to place your ads in front of the right audience. Broad keywords increase the chances of showing your ads to the non-target audience. In turn, this can lead to fewer conversions and increased ad spending.

Best Practices for Choosing Relevant Keywords

1. Use keyword research tools like Google Keyword Planner, Moz, Ahrefs, and SEMrush to understand the keyword trends.

2. Incorporate long-tail keywords and target specific audiences.

3. Optimise your ads with negative keywords to avoid showing them as irrelevant ads.

Tip: You might not identify the right keywords the first time. Experiment, measure, and tweak your campaign with different keywords.

Improve Your Quality Score

Quality score is a crucial factor that determines your ad rank. Aim for a high-quality score to rank better on SERPs (search engine result pages). Google calculates the quality score considering the landing page’s effectiveness, the click-through rate (CTR), and the relevant keywords. Additionally, your performance on SERPs also affects the score.

A higher quality score indicates low acquisition costs and better ad placements. Another crucial aspect that affects the page’s SEO and quality score is meta tags in digital marketing. Typically, they are not visible on the page and are snippets of text in the source file describing the page’s content. Focus on important meta tags such as the title and meta description tags to rank well on SERPs.

Best Practices to Improve Your Quality Score

1. Add more relevant keywords to your ads by matching your ad text’s language with the user’s search. Besides, you can group your keywords based on different themes.

2. Improve your click-through rate by writing your ad text based on the intent of the keywords, including a unique offering like free shipping.

3. Evaluate and optimise your landing page based on the user’s intent. Try to keep a consistent message on your ads and landing pages.

Overview of Meta Marketing

With 2.93 billion users, Meta is a dynamic advertising space for brands looking to upscale their business. The platform serves as a hub for researching brands and discovering local businesses. Meta marketing involves promoting your product across Facebook and other Meta platforms.

Meta helps to increase brand visibility, improve your reach, and encourage sales of products and services. Another key aspect of the platform is its visual advantage. So, visually appealing businesses like fashion and food can use the platform to their advantage.

The different Facebook ads for creating an effective Facebook Marketing Strategy are image ads, carousels, video ads, messenger ads, and lead generation ads.

The Meta marketing ecosystem includes tools like the Business Manager and the Ads Manager. These tools provide audience insights and help in effective ad placements.

Decoding Meta Marketing Tactics

Meta ads are increasingly evolving as a preferred advertising space for businesses.

Here are some key strategies to stand out on the platform-

Leverage Influencer Marketing Strategy

Influencer marketing has been an age-old effective strategy for advertisers to boost engagement, build trust, and drive sales. The State of Influencer Marketing, in their 2022 report, state that the global Instagram influencer marketing market is expected to reach $22.2 billion by 2025.

Partnering with influencers is an integral aspect of B2C advertising and demands a considerable amount of the campaign’s budget.

Instagram doesn't encourage repurposed content. Collaborate with influencers to create fresh content for reels to widen your reach. While discovering the right influencers, focus on the engagement quotient rather than the number of followers.

Key Practices for Creating an Influencer Marketing Strategy

1. Partner with influencers using your company page’s “paid partnership.” With this feature, you can promote influencer content on your channels.

2. Ensure that influencers mention the paid partnership label with your business. This helps to pull their content to advertise in Ads Manager.

3. Avoid using stickers or copyrighted music for Instagram reels and stories. Meta won’t approve such ads.

Looking to tap into the influencer market? Growth Jockey helps you partner with the right influencers based on your niche and audience.

Joybird partnered with content creator ChrissaSparkles to promote its Barbie Dreamhouse furniture. She is the right fit for the collaboration because she shares some core traits with Barbie. E.g., love for pastels and pinks and vibrant home decorations.

Use “Broad” Targeting

Another important point to consider with Meta marketing is broad marketing. This casts a wide net for potential customers and helps overcome user privacy limitations. “Open” and “broad” targeting align with Meta’s machine learning algorithm. It produces optimised results as you can feed more audience data with these targeting options.

Open targeting means you haven’t added any targeting options besides demographics. Broad targeting adds minimal targeting, keeping the audience scale close to millions. Considering the recent iOS security updates and privacy issues, it is better to opt for broad targeting.

Best Practices for Widening Your Audience Reach

1. Focus on location and demographics in targeting options.

2. Avoid advanced targeting options like lookalike audience or behavioural targeting.

3. Create ads convincing to new users or those visiting your page for the first time.

Experiment with Meta’s Advantage+ Campaign

Meta has mastered the machine learning algorithm game with its automated campaign types. The platform’s new Advantage+ Campaign feature is a testament to its machine learning feat. The Advantage+ campaign was released in 2022. It works for two types of campaigns: shopping and apps.

Meta’s new feature helps to combine all your ad types into one campaign. You can use the campaign across the different phases of the buyer’s journey. Ensure that you have many creatives ready to feed into the machine learning model. This helps in getting a more optimised output for your campaigns.

Best Practices to Use Meta’s Advantage+ Campaign

1. Focus on three aspects: the data you provide to the model, the creatives, and the results.

2. Ensure that you feed 20 to 50 ads to the model.

3. Measure your campaigns to understand which strategy works best.

Implement Meta’s API Conversions

Meta’s API conversions help to track and optimise your conversions along with Facebook Pixels. Advertisers who implemented the API and Facebook Pixel witnessed a 13% improvement in conversions. Facebook Pixel bridges the Ads and your website activity. On the other hand, API conversions connect the Meta Ads with conversion events (adding to cart).

Best Practices for Improving Performance with Meta’s API Conversions

1. Aim for a “Good” or “Great” event quality rating.

2. Improve your rating by sharing more customer information parameters.

3. Share the same events across Facebook Pixels and API conversions to avoid missing out on events.

Google Marketing and Meta Marketing: A Powerful Combination

Although Google and Meta marketing have merits and demerits, combining them can amplify each other’s results. While Meta helps to build brand awareness on its vast ad network, Google helps to rank better on SERPs. If a particular campaign performs well on Meta, brands can repurpose it for Google as well.

Here’s how you use them together for a successful campaign-

1. Implement cross-marketing campaigns which involve remarketing the same campaign on Google and Meta. Remarketing is cost-effective and even maximises the ad spend.

2. Test your campaigns (videos) with Meta Ads and then move to YouTube ads. Given the wide reach, videos work best with Meta ads.

3. Leverage the benefits of both platforms to cast your campaigns to a broader audience.

The Bottom Line

Google and Meta are the central hubs for modern advertising campaigns. Combining the reach of both platforms can cover most of the internet population. While Google ads primarily target search engine users, Meta ads appear across Facebook and Instagram platforms.

Google Ads matches the ads with the user’s search intent to appear in their searches. On the other hand, Meta’s machine learning algorithm produces optimised results with automated campaign tools. Combined, these two are a powerful duo and provide amplified results for campaigns.

Growth Jockey analyses your business needs and recommends an appropriate social advertising platform. Our team of experts creates highly optimised social media campaigns that reach the right audience. For leveraging the power of social advertising, contact Growth Jockey today!

FAQs

What are the special features of Google Ads that boost marketing outcomes?

Google Ads has features like conversion tracking and audience targeting that help understand how well campaigns perform. You can modify ads using these features.

Can social proof be effective while marketing on Google and Meta?

Adding social proof, like positive user reviews and testimonials, can build credibility in Meta and Google marketing. Highlighting user comments on Facebook pages can also enhance marketing results.

Do live sessions strengthen marketing campaigns on Meta?

Live sessions are fantastic ways to connect with the audience on Meta, promote products, and gather insights. It improves the bonding with the followers, which can bring more conversions.