MBA1532 Google vs. Facebook Ads + Free Ride Friday
2 Feb 2026 · 17 min
Omar Zenhom breaks down Google Search ads versus Facebook/Instagram ads: Google targets people actively searching for solutions, Facebook targets by interest and demographics. Test both with $100 each, spending $20 a day for five days, then plan four to five weeks to optimize at $1,000 monthly spend.
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All right, let's jump into today's episode Foreign. Welcome to the Hundred Dollar MBA Show. Powerful business lessons that make an impact every day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the Hundred Dollar mba, a complete business training and community online. And in today's episode you will learn Google versus Facebook Ads. If you had to spend money on only one, which one should you use? Both Google and Facebook have been in the ad game for some time and they both make most of their revenue off ads. Even though Google has all these great products like the Google Pixel phone and the Google Home speaker and Android, still, 86% off of all revenue from Google comes from their ads. Same thing goes with Facebook. They got great products out there. They acquire a lot of different software like WhatsApp and Instagram. Also they can make money off ads. So where should you give your money? Which one will be most effective for your business? That's what we get into in today's lesson. So you get the most bang for your buck. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. You might be at the point where, hey, you have some marketing dollars you want to spend and digital ads is where you want to spend it. And it's not a bad investment. We found that digital ads, Facebook, Google and otherwise have really helped us grow our business. Now, before we get into the weeds of Facebook versus Google, you need to understand that even if you're hiring a marketing expert to run your ads, it does take time to optimize. It does take time for, for you to get the benefit of it. I would probably say if you're focused and you have a reasonable budget, let's say $1,000 a month for either, you can really start to optimize things in about four to five weeks, sometimes sooner. But I think that four to five weeks really allows you to really start ramping up. The first week is not gonna be as good as the second week. Second week gets better, third, fourth. But this is just from my own experience. Now that's the ramp up. Now, when it comes to Facebook ads, Facebook ads need to be refined over and over. You can run an ad that's running brilliantly for a week, two, three, even a month, but sooner or later it's just not going to convert for you. It's just not going to be effective. You're going to have to bring it all down and restart. Re optimize. That's not the same with Google. You'll still have to optimize, but not as frequently. Uh, ads tend to have more of a shelf life. They'll long last longer. Your efforts, your campaigns will definitely last longer on Google and it's just the nature of the platform. Now when I say Google Ads, I'm talking about search ads where people search a keyword and your business will show up as one of the ads in the search results. And it's usually at the top or at the bottom of the search. Also, the nature of the ad is different. It's text based, okay? If you search Google, you'll see a bunch of ads at the top. Search for anything, search for best microwave or retro Air Jordans, whatever you want to search. You'll see some ads at the top and it'll be marked with ad a D and it's all text based. Facebook, on the other hand, there's a lot more options. And when we say Facebook, we're also talking about Instagram as well. Because when you run ads on Facebook, you have the option to also put them on Instagram. Now these are images, these are videos along with text and call to action and a button that says learn more, all that stuff. It's a little bit more dynamic. So the nature of the ads are different. Text based versus image or video based. Now how people see the ad is also different. Okay, so you can see how these are very different types of ad platforms. How does somebody see an ad on Facebook? Well, you serve them the ad on Facebook. You actually say, when you're putting up an ad on Facebook, I want you to target these types of people that like these certain groups that maybe are a lookalike audience of my own email list, maybe the retargeted people, people that have been on my website, things like that. So you actually are telling Facebook, hey, these are the type of people I want you to show this ad. And the ad gets shown to the people based on that criteria. And they will either look at it, scroll through it, click it. That's up to obviously the performance of the ad. Now with Google, you don't tell Google, hey, show this to certain groups of people or demographics. You actually tell Google, I want you to show this ad. When people search these keywords, totally different when somebody types in these words, I want you to show this ad. Now the reason why I'm pointing this out is because this is where the cost is involved in both Facebook and Google. If you are targeting a wide group of people on Facebook, it's going to cost less because it's not as competitive. That group or that niche is not that competitive. Now the more competitive the group, the more people are serving ads to the same people, the more you're vying to show your ads above somebody else's. So say for example, I'm gonna sell two tickets to the super bowl, okay? And I'm running an ad on Facebook. If I'm running this ad in July, it's gonna be a whole lot cheaper. Cause not many people are selling tickets to the super bowl in July, right? But if I'm selling this in January, yeah, there's gonna be other people vying for that. Those types of people that are looking for super bowl tickets, okay, same thing with Google. Okay, if the keyword is searched a lot, is there a high traffic keyword? If a lot of people are looking for that keyword, it's gonna be more competitive. If it's more a niche keyword, less traffic, it's gonna be less expensive, less competitive. And this is also known as, you know, long tail keywords, you know, versus short Tail. So long tail is like saying, my keyword is best plumber in Middlesex County, New Jersey. Okay. Very long keyword and is very specific. So less search traffic. It's gonna be cheaper versus best plumber, period. That's it. Best plumber. Best plumber. A lot of people are going to be searching that. It's a wide net. It's going to be super competitive. Now, the first thing to look at to decide if you should spend your money on Facebook or Google Ads is where does your audience go? Okay, where does your audience go? Where do they live? Okay, now you might be saying, well, they both live on Facebook and they go to Google and search. No, you need to really think about it deeply. When somebody goes to buy your product, okay, do they buy it because somebody referred it to them, because they said it? Do they buy it because they saw an ad? Are they the type of person that would buy your product, that would search Google and try to learn more, to try to find information? Now we're getting somewhere. Okay, what kind of customer is it? Is it an educated customer, somebody who does the research? Or is it somebody that will actually just buy your product because a friend referred it to them, or because somebody shared something on Facebook for them or because their friend actually uses it? And Facebook's great for this because they really know everything about everybody. So they will show you an ad for something that your friend is interested in or has bought, knowing the likelihood that your friend told you about it. Second, how competitive is your space? Are you the only player in your space? Are there a few players? Are there hundreds of players in your space? I'm talking about competitors. If there's 200 types of businesses like yours, types of products just like yours, it's gonna be highly competitive on Google. They're all running ads and they're all trying to go for the same keywords, and it's gonna be expensive for you. And Facebook might be a better option if you are in a blue ocean, if you are one of few people, even if your only competitors are maybe top five, 10, are well known household names, Google could be good for you because it's less competitive and you can still rank and get your ads up there for your keywords for a reasonable price. Now, I'm going to give you a strategy, but before I get into that, I want to talk to you about what we found Facebook is really good for and what Google is really good for. If you're looking to advertise for awareness, you want people to know who you are. You want people to understand what you do. You want people to understand what you offer. You're not actually looking for a sale yet. You're actually not looking to maybe close a sale. You just want to get them aware of you so you become, you know, a player in the market. This is especially important in the beginning of your business, Is especially important if you're in a competitive business. Facebook is great for awareness. Why? Because you can serve ads for awareness and for clicks and for views for pretty low cost. You know, depending on your marketplace, it could be 20 cents, 30 cents, maybe even 10 cents. And that's pretty good. That is very, very good for awareness. And when we say awareness, this is just maybe you're advertising or boosting your blog post, your features page. You're just educating your audience. Google, on the other hand, is very good at converting customers. You are actually attracting buyers. If somebody's googling, you know, best dating software, for example, or best dating app, they're going to be interested in downloading a dating app. They're not looking to do anything else, really. They're a buyer. They're somebody who's interested. So if you can advertise on Google and convert them on your website, you have a very high converting homepage or sales page that you can send them to. If you know how to do that really well with a compelling video, with a great copy, with a great offer, if you have a free trial or a free plan, Google is going to be your best friend. So Facebook is great for awareness, and Google is great for conversions. If you can convert on your site. Now, these are generalities. You could still convert sales on Facebook. There's a lot of great businesses that do that. I'm just talking about the majority of what we found. Now, my personal opinion is you need to find out what's best for your business. And the only way to do it, and you know what's coming, is to test. What I want you to do is I want you to spend a hundred dollars on Facebook, $100 on Google. Okay? You're gonna spend $20 for five days each. So that's $100 over there. So $20 a day for five days at Facebook. Same thing for Google. You can use a software like adespresso to build your own ads if you want to do this yourself. Or you can hire an expert to do this for you. And that's going to cost you an additional amount, but it's only going to maybe cost you a few hours of work, three, four, five hours, and you can hire them on Upwork nice and easy. You can just search Digital marketing specialist and you could say hey, I'm looking to experiment. This is what I want to do. If this goes well, you know we can continue to work together. So in total, even if you hire an expert, it might cost you three to five hundred dollars for this experiment and then you'll know where to spend your your money. Ongoing.
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Guys, digital ads can be a great way to have regular traffic to your website. Regular awareness, get you that momentum. You need to start getting sales and start building credibility. A lot of people kind of think it's all or nothing. Either dump a whole bunch of money on ads or don't do ads at all. No, I really believe in a happy medium. I've been experimenting with digital ads for years now, and there's been months where I didn't do any advertising and there's been months where I spent a lot of money on advertising. What I found really works is a steady, slow pace, meaning you're spending a reasonable budget and it doesn't have to be a lot of money. Again, it could be a thousand dollars a month and if you see results, you increase it a little bit. A little bit. Nothing drastic. Okay? And if you don't see results, cut the budget and see how the results change. Sometimes when you cut the budget, your conversion rates go up. I know it's crazy, but you have to do that. You have to experiment. It's the consistency that really builds momentum. The more consistent you are, you'll start to see results. I hope you love today's episode. Thank you so much for listening. But today's episode's not over because it's Free Ride Friday. Let's see who won this week's. Free Ride. And the winner is Steph. Steph says five stars. Subscribe or you're robbing yourself. Hi Omar, this is Steph from Ivy and Joe here. I recently opened a hair salon in Bendigo, Australia, along with my partner in life and partner in business. Sounds very familiar. We've been listening to the 100 LMBA show now for the past few months and I honestly have to say it's drastically changed our business. Your actionable advice is fantastic. We've gone from a wanderless mess to taking action and seeing meaningful changes. We especially love your episode with Chris Brogan on blogging. If you haven't subscribed to this business podcast yet, do it now or you're robbing yourself and your business of value. Wow, Steph, what an awesome review. Thank you so much and congratulations on all your success. So happy we're able to help in any way we can. Keep listening to the show. We're going to keep trying to help you along the way. And congrats. You are our Free Ride Friday winner. So just email us over at Omar100- MBA-NET and I'll hook you up with the lifetime membership to Easy Course. If you want to win a free ride, just leave us an iTunes rating and review just like Steph did and listen in on Friday to see if you won. It's that simple. Before I go, I want to leave you with this no matter what you decide to do with your marketing, you have to market. You have to spend time, money, effort to market your business. Always. Whether it's content marketing, email marketing, outreach, networking, video marketing, webinars. You have to do something to continue to keep people coming through the door. One of the biggest mistakes businesses do is that they stop marketing because they think it's an expense that needs to be cut. A lot of businesses cut out marketing as the first expense during COVID 19. This is why it's an amazing time right now to be spending money on Facebook ads, Google Ads. It's unprecedented times. You can make an incredible amount of conversions. The price of ads is very, very low because people have pulled their money out when they should have kept it in. Marketing gets you business, but you got to keep on doing it. Whether you spend money on ads, whether you write blog posts, whether you do podcast interviews, whether you do webinars. Again, keep marketing. Thank you so much for listening. I will check you on Monday's episode. Until then, take care.
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