Google, Bing, Meta or LinkedIn? How to Choose Where to Advertise
Google Ads, Bing, Meta ads and LinkedIn ads all promise to reach the right potential customers, so choosing between them can feel like a gamble. In reality, no platform is best for every business, because each reaches people at a different moment and in a different mindset. The right choice depends less on the platform itself and more on your customers, your business goals and your budget. In this guide, we begin with the questions that should shape that decision. We then explain how each platform works, what online advertising really costs and where ad spend is most often wasted. Finally, we look at why combining platforms often works best, and we close with a short checklist to help you choose where to start.
Start With Your Customer, Not the Platform
The best digital advertising platform is the one that fits your customer, your goal and your budget, not the one with the biggest name. Four questions usually bring that fit into focus.
Who Are You Trying to Reach?
First, consider whether your audience already knows you. They might be past customers or people who visited your website last month. On the other hand, they might never have heard of your business at all. You might be trying to reach both types of potential clients. Because the audience shapes everything that follows, it’s one of the biggest factors in choosing a network.
What Do You Want Them to Do?
Next, think about the action you want people to take. You might want them to fill in a form, buy from your online store, or visit your shop. Sometimes the goal is simply brand awareness, so potential clients remember your name. Since each of these goals is complemented by different ad platforms or formats, it pays to be clear about your objectives before diving straight in.
Are They Searching or Scrolling?
Someone who searches “photocopier near me” is essentially putting their hand up. They have a problem, and they want it solved now. Google and Bing search ads, a form of PPC advertising, reach that person at precisely the right moment they put in that search term. By contrast, someone scrolling social media is in a very different frame of mind. They’re catching up with friends or simply passing time. As a result, social and display ads are excellent for building brand awareness, though they rarely lead to an immediate purchase.
What Can You Realistically Spend?
Finally, your budget sets the boundaries for everything else. If you’re a brand-new small business trying to keep the lights on, advertising may not be your first move. Instead, start by getting your Google Business Profile and Apple Maps listings right. From there, invest in local search engine optimization and organic social media marketing, which cost time rather than money. We wouldn’t put $2,000 into a Google Ads campaign in month one unless the financing were there to support it. Building your foundation through digital marketing strategies and good web development will make your paid ads more effective in the future. Simply spending money on advertising without the foundation of a good website and analytics likely won't produce the results you want.
How Each Platform Works
Each of the major platforms reaches people in a different way, and that difference matters more than its size. Google and Bing respond to what people search for, while Meta and LinkedIn target who people are.
Google Ads
Google Ads, once known as AdWords, has the broadest reach of any ad platform, since over 90% of people use Google search. Its ads appear in search results when someone looks up a keyword. Google Maps ads appear when someone is looking for a local business (e.g., “google ads agency near me”). For online stores, Google Shopping ads place your product, price, and photo right at the top of the results. Someone searching for a dishwasher might see yours for $900, just one click away from checkout. Google Ads also serves ads on YouTube, Gmail and websites across the web through their massive display ad platform. The catch, however, is that Google knows you need it and they know their reach is the broadest in the industry, so its clicks often cost more than other ad networks.
Microsoft (Bing) Ads
Bing follows the same search-intent model as Google, and it also powers the ads on Yahoo, Ecosia and DuckDuckGo. That said, its share of search is much smaller, around 5 to 10%. Less competition means lower prices. For example, on one campaign, a $5 Google click cost just 50 cents on Bing. Its audience, meanwhile, skews older and more corporate. Picture people at work who can’t change their office browser settings. For that reason, Bing tends to be a stronger fit for B2B and industrial services. Better still, you can import your Google Ads campaigns with the same campaign structure and keep the two in sync automatically. In our experience, Bing works best as a complement to Google rather than a replacement for it.
Meta Ads (and Why a Boosted Post Isn’t a Campaign)
Meta covers Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and Threads, and it works very differently from search. Whereas Google targets keywords, Facebook ads and other Meta ads target interests, life details and past engagement with your page or website. It also gives you room to tell a story, with ad formats like carousels, video and longer ad copy. Someone who needs a dishwasher today doesn’t want to read how yours was invented. However, someone weighing a marketing course may happily read the instructor’s story before signing up. Boosting a post, by the way, is only the light version of Meta advertising. It’s fine for a one-off push. A steady lead pipeline, however, needs full ad campaigns in Meta Ads Manager, with set budgets and more precise targeting.
LinkedIn Ads
LinkedIn knows something the other platforms don’t, namely people’s job titles, companies and industries. This proved decisive for one cybersecurity client who insisted on Meta ads to reach senior managers. We weren’t convinced their buyers were there, so we moved them to LinkedIn ads for precise job-title targeting. We then paired it with Google search ads on cybersecurity keywords. In the end, that combination worked better than Meta alone would have. LinkedIn’s post ads earn plenty of impressions but fewer clicks, so InMail is often better for starting real conversations. It’s also a poor fit for e-commerce.
What It Costs, and Where Ad Spend Gets Wasted
Cost is rarely as simple as comparing prices per click, and the most expensive mistakes usually happen after the ad does its job. To understand why, it helps to look at how pricing works, how to judge value and where budgets tend to leak.
Paid search runs on an auction, like most ad platforms, so the price rises as more businesses bid on the same keyword. Location plays a role as well, since the same campaign can cost far more in a large city than a smaller one. For this reason, there’s no neat rule for splitting ad spend across platforms. If you’d like to test something new, setting aside around 10% of your budget is a sensible starting point. However, at a smaller budget it takes longer to collect significant data to assess the campaign’s performance.
When it comes to judging results, cost per lead tells you far more than cost per click. Meta is often cheaper per click than Google, for example. That's not always the case. For one franchise client, the Meta leads arrived much earlier in their decision than the Google leads did. Meanwhile, their leads cost $50 to $150 each against deals worth thousands of dollars. In that light, a lead can be cheap even when the click wasn’t.
Ultimately, the biggest waste we see has little to do with the platform itself. Without tracking through tools like Google Analytics, an ad platform might report 500 clicks with no idea what those people did next. Consequently, it can’t learn who your real buyers are. Sending ads to your homepage creates a similar problem. Someone who needs a compressed air system yesterday should land on a page with a form, not a general welcome. A local distillery we know spent $800 on ads and earned a healthy number of clicks but no sales. The ads, it turned out, sent people to a page that didn’t help them buy. Even so, that money wasn’t wasted, because it showed them they needed a better landing page.
Why One Platform Is Rarely the Whole Answer
For most businesses, the strongest results come from platforms working together rather than a single channel carrying the load. Search and social do different jobs, and combining them also protects you from leaning too hard on any one source.
Search ads capture demand that already exists, while social, display and video ads build demand for later. Better yet, Google, Meta, Bing and LinkedIn all let you retarget your website visitors. You could, for instance, reach everyone who visited in the last 90 days without filling in a form.
Beyond performance, there’s a bigger reason to spread your efforts. If paid media becomes your only source of leads, every budget cut will hurt. That’s why we recommend running some awareness campaigns alongside lead generation and keeping up your organic online presence. That way, people in your area know your local business exists long before they need you. Digital advertising isn't a replacement for marketing strategy, local SEO, organic social media, search engine optimization, or email marketing. The decision you make about which advertising platform should fit into your bigger marketing strategy.
A Quick Checklist Before You Spend
Before committing any budget, a few honest questions will point you toward the right starting platform. Start by asking who you’re trying to reach and whether they know you yet. Then decide what action you want them to take. Next, consider whether your customers are actively searching or casually scrolling. After that, check whether your tracking and landing pages are ready to turn clicks into results. Finally, be honest about what you can spend without putting the business at risk. Note that a good Meta and Google Ads agency should ask you these questions before setting anything up.
Talk It Through With Us
As a web development and digital marketing agency, we’ll look at your goals, budget and customers together. We'll conduct a Meta or Google Ads audit if you're already running ads. From there, we’ll map out where your ad dollars can take you further, faster. Choosing a platform is far easier with a Meta and Google Ads management company that has seen what works and what doesn’t and offers full digital marketing services.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do you have any questions on the above, or would you like to share your experience? Just email [email protected] or call 289-536-6797.
At Mawazo Marketing we work with owners of B2B companies who want to accelerate their business. We help them with a concrete digital growth plan, a website that saves operational cost, and a digital marketing system that generates leads. For qualifying clients we offer a 5x ROI guarantee: if we don't reach the objective, then we pay back the difference. Book a Free Strategy Session to find out more.
