How to combine Facebook & Google ads

Facebook Ads

The two powerhouses of the digital marketing advertising world, Facebook and Google ads.

With a near 60% market share of the advertising space, it doesn’t have to be a matter of one or the other, you can and should use both!

We want to show you in this article how you can combine the two and create an advertising powerhouse that will have your competitors shivering in their boots.

Here’s how…

Google URL Builder

To track the data from your Facebook Ads into your Google Analytics account and thus set up RLSA Google Ads, you will need to use the Google URL builder – https://ga-dev-tools.appspot.com/campaign-url-builder/

Without this, you won’t be able to track those people from Facebook over to Google and the more granular you get with the builder, the better your segmentation will be.

Note: any audience list used for Google Search Network needs to be 1,000 minimum.

Cross-Platform Retargeting

When you target users who found you using either Google or Facebook with the opposite, you are using cross-platform retargeting.

You can use Facebook to retarget people who find your website from a Google search ad with the specific keyword they searched for.

The best way to do this is to create custom landing pages with specific keywords and then create a custom audience using the URL of the custom landing page.

When you have created the custom audience, you can create a super-specific headline, image and copy to the custom landing page.

How To Combine The Two With Lead Ads

To build a list of leads, you can run a campaign in Google Ads with the lead campaign option and choose website visits as an option.

With this campaign, you will need a landing page in order to create a form to generate leads.

Once you have created a landing page and generated leads, you can begin to transfer this information over to Facebook.

Now, on Facebook, you want to create a custom audience and select the customer file option.

This will allow Facebook to target those exact people who match on Facebook creating a super-specific list of people to target.

What is the point of this?

It’s about building familiarity with your brand and building a relationship with your potential customers.

They’ve seen your Google ad, filled out the form and passed on their details to you and now they’re being reintroduced to you via Facebook Ads.

Some would say this is a bit over the top, but if you’re selling high-ticket items, for example, you will need this level advertising between the two platforms just to get people to trust you.

Use Facebook’s Detailed Targeting To Your Advantage

There’s no question that Facebook has better targeting than Google and that’s because they have far more information on their users than Google will be able to collect.

Users on Facebook have given Facebook so much information on themselves that as we all know, it can get a bit creepy.

For us advertisers though, it’s a gold mine.

Combine this with RSLA Google Ads, and you’re in for a treat.

What are RSLA Google ads?

RSLA stands for ‘remarketing list for search ads’.

Google defines the use of RSLA ads as: “Remarketing lists for search ads (RLSA) is a feature that lets you customise your search ads campaign for people who have previously visited your site, and tailor your bids and ads to these visitors when they’re searching on Google and search partner sites.”

This format of ads can be used when people don’t buy from you but are still searching using Google search and all it requires some simple coding added to your site.

Keep in mind: Google requires 1,000 cookies before the list can be used to tailor ads.

How do you do this?

  • Fill out the demographics for your audience targeting on Facebook
  • Fill out the markets you are interested in targeting
  • Use the Google URL builder we spoke about at the start of the article and run the ads as usual in Facebook
  • Use the URL generated from the URL builder and copy + paste it to create a new audience in the URL box

Combining Google with Lookalike Audiences

Lookalike audiences specific targeting will help tremendously with furthering your reach in attracting new customers.

You can also create a lookalike audience of 1% and then also target your highest valued customers with an LTV lookalike.

Using a lookalike audience really helps with increasing the size of your potential audience by hundreds of thousands and even millions in some cases.

Additional Things To Keep In Mind:

  • Try and keep/make your audience size big to keep CPC costs down
  • Keep in mind where the audience is in your funnel
  • With your messaging, keep it consistent across Facebook and Google
  • Exclude the audiences above from other campaigns you are running to avoid overlap

Conclusion

Combining both Facebook and Google puts you a step above the rest of the competition and opens more doors for your business than if you were to use the two separately.

Using the highly specific targeting of Facebook alongside Google’s keyword targeting, you can make sure your ads are targeted to the exact individual(s), reduce your ad costs and increase your conversion rate.