Why Facebook & Google advertising work better together

In an increasingly complex and omni-channel world, more and more performance marketers are recognising that traditional attribution models are broken. Last-click attribution, commonly used in the industry to measure the effectiveness of one channel over another, simply isn’t geared towards the complex web of interactions and touch points a user has with a brand before purchase.

In many cases, attribution and reporting are broken. They aren’t giving you the full picture. You could be undervaluing one channel without knowing it’s potential to drive success for your business as part of a wider web of touch points. In order to better plan for future investment, and meaningfully measure the outcomes, modern marketers need to understand online search behaviours across the digital landscape, instead of pitting channels against each other and making them rivals for your online advertising dollar.

Cross-channel campaigns lead to better performance

Recent analysis from Facebook has found that cross-channel campaigns incorporating both search and social advertising can lead to significantly improved performance. It just makes sense – think about the last time you bought something online. Did you see one ad on Facebook and purchase straight away? Probably not. The Facebook ad may have sparked your interest, leading you to research the brand of product category further through Google search, only to finally get round to buying the item weeks later.

That kind of experience fits with the majority of online conversions these days. A 2017 Curalate Consumer Survey found that 76% of US consumers have purchased a product they saw in a brand’s social media post, with 11% buying online immediately and 44% buying online at a later time. It stands to reason that these purchases “at a later time” are not only driven by your Facebook remarketing activity (no matter how sophisticated those may be!) but also by users’ tendencies to research cross-channel over periods of weeks and sometimes months.

Facebook’s findings from extensive analysis essentially boil down to this: when Facebook ads are combined with advertising on Google, performance improves.

One particular Facebook test involved showing a group of users Facebook ads & other media, and then comparing this to a control group shown only other media.

The results were stark: the group who saw Facebook ads engaged in 19% more organic search-referred site visits and 10% more paid search-referred visits, compared to the group that didn’t see Facebook ads.

Importantly, the group exposed to Facebook ads and online search ads included more high quality leads, with 50% of Google-referred site visits driven by Facebook ads leading to a desired action on site. Whether that action was a purchase or filling out a contact form, for example, combining Facebook and Google search ads resulted in better qualified traffic and more of kinds of actions on site that marketers are really interested in.

Key Takeaways

So what are the key takeaways? Maybe it’s time to start looking at your online advertising investment more holistically.

• Think about integrating campaigns and messaging across Facebook and Google, to drive an increase in qualified traffic to your website, and more of the actions on-site that are truly important.
• Test different approaches to integrating these two major marketing channels, and learn what works best for your particular business model.

One thing is for sure – Facebook and Google advertising are stronger together!

Our Facebook Live

On a recent episode of our weekly Facebook Live, we discused our new Google partnership in detail, and gave more insight on how social and search are stronger together!

Watch the full replay below: