Facebook vs Google Ads: which should you start with?

It's the question every business owner asks within about ten minutes of deciding to try paid advertising, and the usual answer — "it depends" — is useless.

So here's a version you can actually act on. There's one distinction that decides it, and once you've seen it you'll know which one you should be starting with.

Capture versus create

Google Ads captures demand that already exists. Someone has a problem, they type it in, you appear. The wanting has already happened; you're competing to be the one they pick.

Meta ads create demand that wasn't there. Nobody opens Instagram wanting a new pergola. You put a beautiful pergola in front of the right person on a Sunday afternoon and, occasionally, they decide they want one.

Everything else follows from that.

	Google Ads	Meta ads
Buyer's mindset	Actively looking	Scrolling, not looking
Cost per click	Higher	Lower
Conversion rate	Usually higher	Usually lower
Speed to first enquiry	Days	Weeks
What it needs from you	Keywords and a landing page	Good images or video
Best for	Urgent, searchable problems	Visual, discretionary, impulse

Start with Google if…

• People search for what you do by name. Plumber, locksmith, physio, conveyancer, mechanic.
• The need is urgent or unavoidable. Broken things, legal deadlines, pain.
• You need enquiries this month, not a pipeline next quarter.
• You've got somewhere decent to send the click.
• You have no photos and no appetite for making video.

If that's you, Google is almost certainly the better first dollar, and the full guide to Google Ads for local businesses is the place to start.

Start with Meta if…

• Nobody searches for your thing, because they don't know it exists.
• The purchase is visual — interiors, food, beauty, events, fashion, landscaping.
• It's discretionary. A nice-to-have rather than a must-fix.
• You've got good photos or can film on a phone.
• You're building an audience over months, not chasing this week's jobs.

Meta also has a second job worth knowing about: it's the cheapest way to stay in front of people who've already looked at you. Even businesses that live on Google often run a small retargeting budget on Meta, which at modest spend is genuinely good value — see where the money goes on a $500 monthly budget.

If people are already searching for you, go and meet them. If they aren't, you have to go and find them. That's the whole decision.

Two Adelaide businesses, two answers

It's easier to see with examples.

A mobile windscreen repairer. A rock hits a windscreen on the South Eastern Freeway and within an hour someone is typing "windscreen repair Adelaide" into a phone. The demand is urgent, searchable and unavoidable. There's nothing to create. Google, obviously, and the money would be close to wasted on Instagram — nobody is browsing their way into wanting a windscreen.

A custom furniture maker. Almost nobody searches "custom dining table Adelaide", because most people who'd eventually love one have never considered it as an option. But show somebody a thirty-second video of a slab being finished, and a small number of them will start imagining it in their own house. Nothing to capture; everything to create. Meta, and it'll take months rather than weeks.

Most businesses sit closer to one of those poles than they think. If you're genuinely torn, look at your last twenty enquiries and ask how each of them found you. That's usually the answer, already written down.

What about the other platforms?

They exist, and they're mostly a later problem. LinkedIn works if you sell to other businesses and can stomach the register, which is a real if for most local trades. TikTok can be extraordinary for visual, personality-led businesses and a complete waste for everyone else. And Google's own non-Search options — Display, YouTube, Performance Max — are worth considering only once your Search campaigns are producing conversions worth learning from.

None of that changes the starting decision. Pick the one that matches how people find your kind of business, and get it working before you add anything.

Why not both?

Eventually, both. Not first.

A budget split across two platforms is a budget that never learns anything on either. Both systems need enough data to work out who to show your ads to, and starving them both to be fair is the most common way small advertisers waste a year.

Sequence it instead. Get one platform to the point where you know your cost per enquiry and it's a number you can live with. Then add the second, funded properly, and judge it on its own terms.

What's true on both

Whichever you pick, the same four things decide whether it works, and none of them live inside the ad platform:

• Tracking, before you spend. Otherwise you're buying clicks and calling it marketing.
• The page the click lands on. This is where most paid budgets are actually lost — whether your site converts matters more than any targeting setting on either platform.
• Knowing what a customer is worth. Without that number, no cost per lead is good or bad, it's just a number.
• Patience. A month before conclusions, on either platform.

The simple rule

Ask yourself one question: would somebody type my service into Google today?

If yes, start with Google. If no, start with Meta. If you're not sure, it's probably Google — the demand that already exists is cheaper to win than the demand you have to manufacture.

And whichever you choose, remember that paid ads are rented. The moment you stop paying, the enquiries stop. That's fine, and often worth it, but it's the argument for running the slower compounding work in parallel — local SEO is what eventually lets you turn the tap down.