Google vs Meta vs TikTok: Where to Spend Your Ad Money

Two Types of Traffic, aka Humans

Google, Meta, or TikTok. Where do we start? Where do we advertise? Who do we give money to so they help us promote our products and services? They're all different, they're all important, and they all have the one thing we all need. Attention.

Here's the key to the whole thing. There are two types of traffic, aka humans. There's interruptive traffic and there's search intent traffic. Once you understand that difference, the platform question almost answers itself.

Say you have a plumbing business. You handle plumbing emergencies. You're not going to do great on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, because it's not every day that somebody has a clogged toilet. But when somebody has a clogged toilet, you better be on Google, because they're searching for a plumber to come right then and right now to fix their problem. That's intent-based marketing. You want to make sure you are there.

Interruption Marketing: The Snorkeling Test

Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok are the opposite game. Interruption marketing is exactly what it sounds like: you're interrupting whatever somebody is doing on social media to see if they're interested in your product or service. You get enormous volume of less qualified people, because they might not be ready for your brand right then and there.

One of our staff members just showed me a video that interrupted them on TikTok. A snorkeling product called Lungs that you breathe into for oxygen while you're snorkeling. Super cool. If that showed up for me on social media, I would have been interested. You know what, I'm actually going to go buy one, because it extends your time while you're snorkeling.

But here's the point: if I'm on Google, I'm not searching for that thing, because I don't even know it exists. So if you're an e-commerce brand with a great product, if you know your product could generate interest, if your services are unique and could definitely have demand, then Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok might be great for you.

Google: High Intent, High Price

On Google, you have high-intent people, actively searching to solve a problem. You have a very wide network, millions of sites where they can put your ads in front of people. You also have YouTube, the pre-roll ads, where you can literally say, in this video I want my product, because it's probably the right audience. And you have great local advertising possibilities, like the plumber example.

The con? It's a lot more expensive. Where Facebook might get you a dollar a lead, or even a few cents a prospect, you're going to pay $10, $20 on Google, because it's higher intent. More qualified prospects cost more. That's the trade.

Now, I spend a lot of money every single month advertising our brands, hundreds of thousands of dollars a month. And I can tell you I spend most of it on Google, maybe 60%. Why? Because I spend a lot of energy on my organic content. I post thousands of times. So I want to retarget those people, and Google is a great platform for me to retarget them and bring them into the next level of the journey.

Meta: The Targeting Machine

The targeting Meta has is absolutely a game changer. They are better at it than anybody else. If you want to find people interested in a subject, they'll get you in front of the right people. And they're only getting better.

Meta is great for direct-to-consumer and e-commerce brands, and it's access to billions of people. Massive, massive reach. If you want to invest your money in reaching a lot of people, Facebook is a great place for branding at scale, and it lets your brand build over time.

TikTok: Native Ads and Insane Organic Reach

What's happening on TikTok right now? The organic reach is insane. You can have a video get 20 million views with only 100 followers. It doesn't matter. That is still very unique. And when you run advertising there, it feels like a native piece of content. It feels organic, not like an ad. You can create content that feels like part of the platform. As simple as that.

Gen Z and millennials, roughly 16 to 35 years old, the people born after 1980, are actively on the platform, and the older generation is growing there too. There's an enormous amount of people who ONLY actively use TikTok. If you don't target them, you're missing out on them entirely. Right now, my graph of new customers coming into our brand is exploding solely because of my TikTok efforts.

The con: it is creative heavy. You can't post one video. You're going to have to post dozens if not hundreds of videos, and it has to be a machine. That's also why it's so great for influencer marketing.

The Cheat Sheet: Match the Platform to the Job

Let me summarize it as briefly as I can. If you want high intent, people ready to buy your products and services, you do Google. If you want to build a brand, get awareness, and have people to retarget, you do Facebook. If you want to go viral and scale through video content, you do TikTok. If you want long-form video storytelling, that's YouTube. If you want to target people 16 to 30 years old, there's no competition, TikTok wins. If you're going direct-to-consumer with product sales, Meta or TikTok; they're only getting started with this new era of QVC, of online shopping, of home shopping network. If you sell a local service, Google is number one; that's how you get people to show up to a clinic, a practice, a brick-and-mortar store. If you have an information product or want to generate leads, Meta or Google are the winning players.

So you have to do all of them, or you pick the one that's right for your business right now. I do all of them, because for me they're all great opportunities to capture attention, and I'm serious about growth. You pick what's right for you based on what I just went over. Get started, and you can scale from there and add platforms as you grow.