Adwords vs. Facebook Ads – Which should you use?
December 31, 2018
If you’re talking about advertising online it’s very likely you’re referring to ether Adwords or Facebook Ads (also known as Pay Per Click or PPC). Of course there are many other types of advertising methods you can do online but these two are the most common. So which do you choose? The decision between Adwords vs Facebook Ads can be difficult to make. Each platform has a variety of different benefits, and each serve a different purpose. Ultimately things like your business position, budget and industry might dictate whether you choose to go with Adwords or Facebook ads. Sometimes you might choose both.

If you’re a complete newbie to these platforms I’ll give you a bit of a run down on what each of them are and what you can do with each. Then I’ll give you some of my tips to help you succeed with your Adwords or Facebook advertising efforts.

Adwords
Adwords is Google’s advertising platform. You’re probably familiar with the concept ‘just google it’. Just googling something is just one way of using Adwords for your advertising.

Googling things, that is, searching for things using Google, is known to advertisers as the Search Network. The Search Network basically refers to Google’s network of search engines. Typically with a search network campaign you use keywords to get matched against search terms a user makes. You bid against each keyword and compete against other advertisers for your position. This is a great method if you know your potential clients are at the research or purchase stage of their buying cycle.

However adwords is a lot more complex than just the search network. You can use the display network (those banner ads you see when you’re browsing the internet). You can also run shopping ads, if you’re an e-commerce store, YouTube ads if you have video content. Mobile only, call only, app downloads, app reengagement and remarketing campaigns are also other features that you might want to use within adwords.

Facebook Ads
Now Facebook is a whole other can of worms! Facebook advertising has become really interesting over the last couple of years.

You have to consider the main difference between Facebook advertising and Adwords advertising. With Facebook advertising you are getting in front of people whilst they are using the social media platform. Consider this, your target market is on the platform to connect with friends, family and businesses that they resonate with or want to be in touch with.

Hence, when advertising on Facebook you want to aim to be as least intrusive as possible. You also want to make sure you are providing value. Facebook is the platform where people will build a relationship with your brand. Where you can subtly nurture them and create touch points in the buying cycle.

Not unlike Adwords, Facebook has a range of ad types that are available to you. You can use video ads, call to action ads (with the aim of sending people to your website to take action), engagement ads that are aimed at building post engagement or even to grow your page likes. You can advertise events, you can advertise to people in Facebook messenger and so much more.

Truthful & Honest Thoughts to Improve Your Chances of Success

Customer Journey
The key thing to think about in any advertising method is your customer journey. You want to create a valuable experience for your audience but also ensure you’re playing on the right platforms at the right time and at the right stage in their journey. For example if you’re a brand new business brand awareness type ads (both on Adwords and Facebook) might be the best way to go. If you’re a well established e-commerce store you might focus on conversions on your site (again both platforms can help achieve this).

Track Everything
Further to note that both Adwords and Facebook have tracking codes (Google Analytics and Facebook Pixel respectively) that also make advertising a lot easier, and are super critical if you want to adopt more advanced strategies. You need to have tracking in order to implement retargeting/remarketing campaigns (this is showing ads to people who have already visited your site).

Consider a Facebook brand awareness campaign to drive cheap traffic to your site, then retargeting those visitors through Adwords Display or Search Network when they’re more qualified to convert.

Consider Your Conversion Goal
Not all advertising is aimed at driving sales on your website. If you’re an e-commerce store, then it likely is. However there are so many different goals that you can strive for through Adwords or Facebook Ads. You might want people to read a lengthy blog post (so you’re goal might be based on session duration). It might be that you want people to fill out an enquiry form on your site, or make a phone call. Each goal has a purpose, and you might have a variety of goals throughout your marketing funnel (more on that below).

Stay Up To Date
Both platforms are constantly evolving to improve the advertiser and user experience. This means different user interfaces, different features and upgrading existing features. It’s incredible the number of changes that occur in such a short time frame. If you stay on top of the changes, you can usually get a competitive advantage because it may help you stand out

Be Patient
It takes time to get consistent steady results. Before you start advertising you need to plan to be in it for at least the medium haul. It’s not a short term strategy, getting rich quick is not the game here! Depending on the complexity of your campaigns and strategy, I would suggest advertising for no less than 4-6 months.

The idea is that you never stop, and you keep at it. But if you’re looking to ‘trial’ it to see if it works for your business, you need to give it good shot. This allows you to account for ‘off’ periods, and seasonality. It also gives you an opportunity to test different campaign types and optimise the campaigns based of the data you gather of that period (the more data the better!)

Put the budget aside

Adwords
If you want to advertise through Adwords you need to put aside at least three months budget for the activity. This ensures you have enough funds to invest during the first three months. This is because the first three months are crucial to a new Adwords campaign. In that three months you will need to test and optimise and get the strategy right. This cannot be done in less than that time. You need to have enough budget for the whole three months and commit to the whole period otherwise it’s a waste to start in the first place.

I know earlier I said you need to advertise for a minimum of 4-6 months, however you need the money for the first three months to ensure you’re not going to run out of funds two weeks in. The hope would be by month four, you will have new money into the business to put back into advertising. Budget recommendations is absolute minimum $20, but ideally $30/day, but this can vary depending on your industry.

Facebook
Facebook can be a ‘shorter’ term strategy if you need something with quicker results. You can probably get away with a one month long campaign to get a good idea of what will be best for your business, (within a month you can test a variety of different ads and their results). Bear in mind that sometimes this means you might test different campaign types and ad formats for more brand awareness, or testing audiences to see if they will convert.

However you still need to have a consistent advertising strategy for 4-6 months regardless to really say what will or won’t work. There are many different campaign types for Facebook which can be tested hence why one month testing per ‘strategy’ then moving onto another strategy to optimise and test results. Budget for Facebook can be about $20/day to start but the more variables you’re testing the bigger your budget needs to be.

Have a marketing funnel
Optimal results usually occur when you have a super tight marketing funnel – in its simplest form, this means you need to have the best landing page and offers to move the prospect through to sale.

If you’re completely new in business, you’re likely going to have to develop a lead magnet product. This is a highly lucrative offer that is typically FREE or super cheap (think $1). For example, my lead magnet is my free mini email course (get on it here). If you’re an existing business there is likely something in your business you can use to fulfil this purpose.

Online, a lead magnet might be a free PDF guide related to your industry. You can see this in bricks and mortar businesses too. Take massage therapists for example. They offer a 10 minute massage for $10, then they upsell to a full hour massage. This is highly effective strategy to get new people into your funnel (and business) and helps you build a list of leads that you can then nurture using email marketing.

Using a lead magnet can be a highly effective way of growing your list, building a good relationship and qualifying leads.

Conclusion – Adwords vs. Facebook…. And the winner is…
Choosing between Adwords vs. Facebook is ultimately dependant on your business model, your marketing plan and your goals. Consider what you want to achieve, and then formulate an advertising strategy that can achieve each of your goals. It’s useful to test both platforms and make sure you give each a fair shot. Businesses today are utilising as many different platforms as they can to get in front of their desired audience. There’s no right or wrong answer and the only way you’re going to find out is to give it a go for yourself.

So there you have it, my top tips on how to succeed with Adwords and Facebook advertising. If you take away anything from this, the most crucial would be to give it the time and money it needs to flourish. If you only have enough money for a week long stint, then you might as well put the money elsewhere. Think of your customer journey and create a strategy that fits in with your business. If you’re not sure what’s best for you, please get in touch with me!

About PupDigital

PupDigital have your digital marketing needs covered. From online advertising to website design, we can help. Based in Canberra, servicing the world with quality, down to earth digital marketing services.

Subscribe

Enter your email below and we will keep you up to date on the latest insights into our world of digital marketing.

Contact Us

Recent Posts
August 21, 2026
The Client AGA Air Conditioning is a Canberra-based heating and cooling specialist delivering residential and commercial installation, servicing and maintenance across the ACT. AGA had built a strong reputation through quality workmanship, referrals and customer service. What it needed was a digital and acquisition sy stem that matched the standard of the business and its growth ambitions, one built to support serious, sustained investment rather than one-off campaign spend. PupDigital was engaged in a multi-year partnership to bring the website, conversion tracking and paid media strategy together into a single, connected acquisition system. The Challenge AGA was already a trusted local provider, but its website and advertising weren't working together as one system. The site needed to better communicate the quality of the business and give prospective customers a clearer path to enquire. At the same time, the advertising account needed to become far more commercially disciplined. Heating and cooling demand shifts significantly through the year, and customer intent moves quickly between installation, servicing, evaporative cooling and gas heating, each with different commercial value. Residential and commercial enquiries needed to be treated differently, and the business's own capacity to take on work had to be factored into how aggressively the account was scaled. It's the kind of complexity we see all the time working with trades, services, and building and construction businesses. It's genuinely where we do our best work. A broad, static campaign was never going to cut it here. The goal wasn't more traffic, it was a system that turned demand into real, valuable enquiries, built to scale as the business did. Our Strategic Approach 1. Rebuild the Conversion Experience The first priority was improving what happened after someone clicked an ad. PupDigital designed and developed a new website that better reflected AGA's positioning and made its services easier to understand, with: Clearer service pathways for residential and commercial customers Improved mobile usability and more direct calls to action Tighter alignment between ad campaigns and the landing pages they led to Simplified enquiry journeys The website was built as part of the acquisition strategy, not a separate branding exercise. Every campaign needed to send customers to a page that matched their intent and made the next step obvious. 2. Improve the Quality of the Data Better optimisation depends on measuring the right things. PupDigital strengthened conversion tracking across the site and ad account, including enquiry forms and tracked phone calls, and critically, stopped treating every conversion as equal. AGA's feedback made clear that phone calls often represented stronger opportunities than lower-intent web actions. Tracking and optimisation were refined accordingly, shifting the strategy away from simply increasing reported conversions and towards improving the quality of the enquiries being generated, the metric that actually matters to a business owner's bottom line. 3. Structure Campaigns Around Demand and Commercial Value Rather than one broad, always-on campaign, PupDigital structured the account around AGA's core service categories and how demand moved seasonally, giving granular control over which services were promoted, how budget was allocated, and the messaging and landing pages each audience saw. This meant investment could be increased where strong opportunities existed, pulled back where intent was weaker, and kept continuously aligned with the work AGA actually wanted to win, not just the work that was easiest to generate leads for. Scaling Investment With Confidence As performance and enquiry consistency improved, PupDigital progressively scaled AGA's monthly ad investment, growing it 300% over the course of the partnership. This wasn't a case of increasing spend and hoping volume followed. Every scaling decision was informed by conversion performance, search demand, lead quality feedback, seasonal opportunity, and AGA's real capacity to service new work. Growth in ad spend only compounds when the wider system, website, tracking and campaign structure, can convert that investment efficiently. Building that system first is what allowed AGA to keep increasing investment with confidence, rather than second-guessing where the budget was going. The Results Following the website launch in May 2025, AGA's Google Ads performance improved substantially against the preceding period: Conversions up 14% 18.71% conversion rate, a 77% improvement Impressions up 22% Monthly ad investment scaled 300% across the partnership The standout result was conversion rate, not raw traffic volume. The campaigns didn't need to chase the largest possible audience. They became more focused on reaching people actively searching for AGA's services and directing them into a stronger website experience. The result was a materially higher percentage of visitors taking meaningful action, a more efficient acquisition system, not just a busier one. Broader Business Growth: A Harvey Norman Commercial Contract Throughout the partnership, AGA continued expanding its residential and commercial workload, including securing a significant commercial contract with Harvey Norman Commercial, alongside a growing volume of rough-in and fit-off work. Landing a contract like that comes down to the quality of AGA's work and reputation, not an ad campaign in isolation. What it does show is the broader trajectory of the business during our partnership, and the part PupDigital played in making sure AGA's digital presence could keep up with, and represent, that scale of growth. Winning commercial-level work like this means having a website and digital presence that looks and performs the part, and that's what we focused on throughout. The Business Impact The most valuable outcome wasn't any single campaign result or website metric. AGA moved from a fragmented digital setup to one connected system for attracting and converting customers, and gained: A website that reflects the quality and scale of the business Clear visibility over what's actually driving enquiries, not just what's easy to report Granular control over service-specific and seasonal demand Confidence to keep increasing investment because the system converts it efficiently A digital foundation that supported the business's move into larger commercial work This is the throughline in how PupDigital works with trades, services, and building and construction businesses: advertising is never managed in isolation. It's shaped by the type of work a business wants, the enquiries it actually values, and the capacity it has to deliver, because that alignment, not spend for its own sake, is what drives real business growth. Conclusion AGA Air Conditioning shows what's possible when a website, tracking and paid media strategy are treated as one connected system, working together, rather than three separate pieces bolted on side by side. PupDigital's role was never simply to drive more clicks. We rebuilt the customer journey, strengthened measurement around what actually matters, aligned campaigns with seasonal and commercial priorities, and built a structure capable of supporting significantly increased investment, investment AGA could scale with confidence because the underlying system was built to convert it. The result: a 77% improvement in Google Ads conversion rate, a 300% increase in monthly ad investment, and a stronger digital foundation that helped support AGA's move into larger-scale commercial work.
Dark ad for ChatGPT Ads launch with laptop mockup and bold “ChatGPT Ads Are Here” text
June 11, 2026
For years, Google and Meta have dominated digital advertising. But a new player has entered the conversation.
Futuristic city and garden scene with people outdoors at sunset, blending technology and nature
May 19, 2026
AI and automation are changing business fast, but human connection matters more than ever. Discover why authenticity, trust, and community may become the biggest advantage for small businesses moving forward.
Show More
Share this Post:

You might also like

August 21, 2026
The Client AGA Air Conditioning is a Canberra-based heating and cooling specialist delivering residential and commercial installation, servicing and maintenance across the ACT. AGA had built a strong reputation through quality workmanship, referrals and customer service. What it needed was a digital and acquisition sy stem that matched the standard of the business and its growth ambitions, one built to support serious, sustained investment rather than one-off campaign spend. PupDigital was engaged in a multi-year partnership to bring the website, conversion tracking and paid media strategy together into a single, connected acquisition system. The Challenge AGA was already a trusted local provider, but its website and advertising weren't working together as one system. The site needed to better communicate the quality of the business and give prospective customers a clearer path to enquire. At the same time, the advertising account needed to become far more commercially disciplined. Heating and cooling demand shifts significantly through the year, and customer intent moves quickly between installation, servicing, evaporative cooling and gas heating, each with different commercial value. Residential and commercial enquiries needed to be treated differently, and the business's own capacity to take on work had to be factored into how aggressively the account was scaled. It's the kind of complexity we see all the time working with trades, services, and building and construction businesses. It's genuinely where we do our best work. A broad, static campaign was never going to cut it here. The goal wasn't more traffic, it was a system that turned demand into real, valuable enquiries, built to scale as the business did. Our Strategic Approach 1. Rebuild the Conversion Experience The first priority was improving what happened after someone clicked an ad. PupDigital designed and developed a new website that better reflected AGA's positioning and made its services easier to understand, with: Clearer service pathways for residential and commercial customers Improved mobile usability and more direct calls to action Tighter alignment between ad campaigns and the landing pages they led to Simplified enquiry journeys The website was built as part of the acquisition strategy, not a separate branding exercise. Every campaign needed to send customers to a page that matched their intent and made the next step obvious. 2. Improve the Quality of the Data Better optimisation depends on measuring the right things. PupDigital strengthened conversion tracking across the site and ad account, including enquiry forms and tracked phone calls, and critically, stopped treating every conversion as equal. AGA's feedback made clear that phone calls often represented stronger opportunities than lower-intent web actions. Tracking and optimisation were refined accordingly, shifting the strategy away from simply increasing reported conversions and towards improving the quality of the enquiries being generated, the metric that actually matters to a business owner's bottom line. 3. Structure Campaigns Around Demand and Commercial Value Rather than one broad, always-on campaign, PupDigital structured the account around AGA's core service categories and how demand moved seasonally, giving granular control over which services were promoted, how budget was allocated, and the messaging and landing pages each audience saw. This meant investment could be increased where strong opportunities existed, pulled back where intent was weaker, and kept continuously aligned with the work AGA actually wanted to win, not just the work that was easiest to generate leads for. Scaling Investment With Confidence As performance and enquiry consistency improved, PupDigital progressively scaled AGA's monthly ad investment, growing it 300% over the course of the partnership. This wasn't a case of increasing spend and hoping volume followed. Every scaling decision was informed by conversion performance, search demand, lead quality feedback, seasonal opportunity, and AGA's real capacity to service new work. Growth in ad spend only compounds when the wider system, website, tracking and campaign structure, can convert that investment efficiently. Building that system first is what allowed AGA to keep increasing investment with confidence, rather than second-guessing where the budget was going. The Results Following the website launch in May 2025, AGA's Google Ads performance improved substantially against the preceding period: Conversions up 14% 18.71% conversion rate, a 77% improvement Impressions up 22% Monthly ad investment scaled 300% across the partnership The standout result was conversion rate, not raw traffic volume. The campaigns didn't need to chase the largest possible audience. They became more focused on reaching people actively searching for AGA's services and directing them into a stronger website experience. The result was a materially higher percentage of visitors taking meaningful action, a more efficient acquisition system, not just a busier one. Broader Business Growth: A Harvey Norman Commercial Contract Throughout the partnership, AGA continued expanding its residential and commercial workload, including securing a significant commercial contract with Harvey Norman Commercial, alongside a growing volume of rough-in and fit-off work. Landing a contract like that comes down to the quality of AGA's work and reputation, not an ad campaign in isolation. What it does show is the broader trajectory of the business during our partnership, and the part PupDigital played in making sure AGA's digital presence could keep up with, and represent, that scale of growth. Winning commercial-level work like this means having a website and digital presence that looks and performs the part, and that's what we focused on throughout. The Business Impact The most valuable outcome wasn't any single campaign result or website metric. AGA moved from a fragmented digital setup to one connected system for attracting and converting customers, and gained: A website that reflects the quality and scale of the business Clear visibility over what's actually driving enquiries, not just what's easy to report Granular control over service-specific and seasonal demand Confidence to keep increasing investment because the system converts it efficiently A digital foundation that supported the business's move into larger commercial work This is the throughline in how PupDigital works with trades, services, and building and construction businesses: advertising is never managed in isolation. It's shaped by the type of work a business wants, the enquiries it actually values, and the capacity it has to deliver, because that alignment, not spend for its own sake, is what drives real business growth. Conclusion AGA Air Conditioning shows what's possible when a website, tracking and paid media strategy are treated as one connected system, working together, rather than three separate pieces bolted on side by side. PupDigital's role was never simply to drive more clicks. We rebuilt the customer journey, strengthened measurement around what actually matters, aligned campaigns with seasonal and commercial priorities, and built a structure capable of supporting significantly increased investment, investment AGA could scale with confidence because the underlying system was built to convert it. The result: a 77% improvement in Google Ads conversion rate, a 300% increase in monthly ad investment, and a stronger digital foundation that helped support AGA's move into larger-scale commercial work.
Dark ad for ChatGPT Ads launch with laptop mockup and bold “ChatGPT Ads Are Here” text
June 11, 2026
For years, Google and Meta have dominated digital advertising. But a new player has entered the conversation.
Futuristic city and garden scene with people outdoors at sunset, blending technology and nature
May 19, 2026
AI and automation are changing business fast, but human connection matters more than ever. Discover why authenticity, trust, and community may become the biggest advantage for small businesses moving forward.