Should I use Google Ads or Facebook Ads?

Start with Google Ads if people are already searching for what you sell, and start with Facebook Ads if they are not. That is the whole decision. Google catches demand that exists; Meta creates demand that does not. Check which case you are in before spending anything: use Keyword Planner to see whether your category has real monthly search volume in your country. If it does, search will almost always find your first customers faster and teach you more per pound.

Which is cheaper, Google Ads or Facebook Ads?

Facebook is cheaper per click and Google is often cheaper per customer, which is why comparing click prices decides nothing. A search click costs more because you are bidding against everyone who wants a buyer already looking for that thing. A Facebook click costs less because most people who see the ad were not looking for anything. The number that settles it is cost per acquired customer against what a customer is worth to you.

Can I run both at the same time?

You can, and with a small budget you should not. Splitting a limited budget across two platforms usually means neither gets enough data to be read honestly, so you end up with two inconclusive experiments instead of one clear answer. Run the one your demand situation points at, give it long enough to cover your sales cycle, and add the second only when the first is working and you know what a customer costs you.

How much should I spend to test a channel?

Enough to get a readable number of conversions in a period that covers your sales cycle — as a rough floor, enough clicks that thirty or so conversions are plausible, otherwise you are reading noise. In practice most small businesses need several hundred pounds or dollars over four to six weeks per channel. Below that, a channel can look dead purely by chance, and the commonest expensive mistake is switching it off on that evidence.

Is SEO better than PPC?

They answer different questions about time. PPC buys traffic today and stops the moment you stop paying; SEO compounds slowly and keeps working, but takes months and cannot be scheduled. The usual sensible order for a business that needs customers now is to prove demand with paid search first — because it tells you within weeks whether people convert on your offer — and then invest in SEO for the terms paid proved were worth having. Doing SEO first means guessing which terms matter for six months.

What if nobody is searching for my product?

Then paid search cannot work, and that is genuinely useful to know rather than a setback. It means either you are in a category people do not yet name — where Meta, content and word of mouth are the way in — or you should be advertising against the problem people DO search for instead of the solution you invented. Check the volume for the problem in the buyer's own words before concluding your market is small.

Guide

Google Ads or Facebook Ads: which to start with

The one difference that decides it — catching demand that exists against creating demand that does not — and what each costs you to find out.

Start with Google Ads if people are already searching for what you sell. Start with Facebook Ads if they are not. That is the decision, and almost nothing else about the two platforms changes it. Google catches demand that already exists; Meta creates demand that does not. Everything else — the click prices, the targeting, the creative formats — follows from that one difference.

Most comparisons end at "use both, they do different jobs". That is true and no use to someone with one budget and one week, so this page picks one, and says exactly when the answer flips.

The one difference everything else follows from

Someone typing "emergency plumber Manchester" has already decided they need a plumber. Your ad has one job: be the one they pick. The work is being present, credible and easy to call.

Someone scrolling Instagram has decided nothing. Before they will consider you, your ad has to make them notice a problem, believe it matters, and then believe you solve it — three jobs in about two seconds. That is why Meta advertising is a creative discipline and paid search largely is not.

The same budget, on each platform
	Google Ads (search)	Facebook / Instagram Ads
What the user is doing	Actively looking for what you sell, right now	Scrolling. Not thinking about you at all
What you have to prove	That you are the right one to pick	That the problem is worth caring about, then that you solve it
Cost per click	Higher — you are bidding against everyone else who wants that buyer	Lower, often much lower
Cost per customer	Frequently lower despite the click price, because the intent is already there	Depends entirely on the creative, which is a skill and a running cost
How fast you learn	Days. Someone searched, clicked, bought or did not	Weeks. You are testing an audience and a message at the same time
What kills it	Nobody is searching. No volume, no campaign	Creative fatigue. The same ad stops working and the cost climbs
Ongoing work	Mostly maintenance once the structure is right	A constant supply of new creative, forever

How to check which case you are in

This takes twenty minutes and decides where several thousand pounds go, which makes it the highest-return twenty minutes in the whole exercise.

Write down five to ten phrases a buyer would type — in their words, not your product name.
Put them through Google Keyword Planner, restricted to the country you actually sell in.
Read the monthly volumes. Hundreds a month in your country for buying-intent phrases means demand exists.

Demand does not exist

Your category returns tens of searches a month, or only your own brand name. Paid search has nothing to catch.

Demand exists

Buying-intent phrases return hundreds or thousands a month in your country. People are looking; the only question is who they find.

If you are in the first case, do not conclude your market is small until you have checked the volume for the PROBLEM in the buyer's own words. People search for problems long before they search for solutions they have never heard of.

Why the cheaper click is often the expensive channel

A Facebook click can cost a fraction of a search click, and this is the single most misleading comparison in advertising. You are not buying clicks. You are buying customers.

A search click costs more because you are bidding against everyone else who wants a buyer with their card out. A social click costs less because most of the people clicking were not looking for anything and will not buy. Whether that trade is good depends entirely on your conversion rate, and you do not know your conversion rate until you have run both — which is the honest reason this question is hard.

Until you do, cost per acquired customer is the only comparison that means anything, and it is the one neither platform shows you by default.

What each channel needs from you, forever

The running cost that nobody budgets for is not the media. It is the work each channel demands to keep working.

Google needs structure and patience. Get the account structure, negative keywords and landing pages right, and it mostly runs. The failure mode is quiet waste — paying for searches that were never going to buy.
Meta needs new creative, permanently. Every successful ad set decays. Cost climbs, frequency climbs, results fade, and the only fix is fresh creative. If nobody can produce that every few weeks, Meta will work for a month and then quietly stop.

Rising cost with rising frequency is fatigue, not a bad audience — a distinction worth knowing before you conclude the platform does not work for you. It is covered properly in the budget guide.

And SEO?

SEO and paid search answer the same question — what do people search for — on completely different timescales. Paid buys traffic today and stops the instant you stop paying. SEO compounds, keeps working, and cannot be made to arrive on a date.

For a business that needs customers now, the order that wastes least is to prove demand with paid search first, because it tells you within weeks whether people convert on your offer — and then invest in SEO for the terms paid proved were worth having. Doing SEO first means guessing which terms matter and finding out in six months.

Deciding this with your own numbers

Rallik connects Google Ads, Meta, Analytics and Search Console and compares each channel against its own history rather than against a benchmark — so "is this still worth it" is answered with what your account actually did. It will also tell you when a difference is too small to read yet, which is the answer more often than any dashboard admits.

Common questions

Should I use Google Ads or Facebook Ads?: Start with Google Ads if people are already searching for what you sell, and start with Facebook Ads if they are not. That is the whole decision. Google catches demand that exists; Meta creates demand that does not. Check which case you are in before spending anything: use Keyword Planner to see whether your category has real monthly search volume in your country. If it does, search will almost always find your first customers faster and teach you more per pound.
Which is cheaper, Google Ads or Facebook Ads?: Facebook is cheaper per click and Google is often cheaper per customer, which is why comparing click prices decides nothing. A search click costs more because you are bidding against everyone who wants a buyer already looking for that thing. A Facebook click costs less because most people who see the ad were not looking for anything. The number that settles it is cost per acquired customer against what a customer is worth to you.
Can I run both at the same time?: You can, and with a small budget you should not. Splitting a limited budget across two platforms usually means neither gets enough data to be read honestly, so you end up with two inconclusive experiments instead of one clear answer. Run the one your demand situation points at, give it long enough to cover your sales cycle, and add the second only when the first is working and you know what a customer costs you.
How much should I spend to test a channel?: Enough to get a readable number of conversions in a period that covers your sales cycle — as a rough floor, enough clicks that thirty or so conversions are plausible, otherwise you are reading noise. In practice most small businesses need several hundred pounds or dollars over four to six weeks per channel. Below that, a channel can look dead purely by chance, and the commonest expensive mistake is switching it off on that evidence.
Is SEO better than PPC?: They answer different questions about time. PPC buys traffic today and stops the moment you stop paying; SEO compounds slowly and keeps working, but takes months and cannot be scheduled. The usual sensible order for a business that needs customers now is to prove demand with paid search first — because it tells you within weeks whether people convert on your offer — and then invest in SEO for the terms paid proved were worth having. Doing SEO first means guessing which terms matter for six months.
What if nobody is searching for my product?: Then paid search cannot work, and that is genuinely useful to know rather than a setback. It means either you are in a category people do not yet name — where Meta, content and word of mouth are the way in — or you should be advertising against the problem people DO search for instead of the solution you invented. Check the volume for the problem in the buyer's own words before concluding your market is small.