Solved: Google Ads vs. Meta Ads (The Real Reason)

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out!

I’m happy to give you some initial thoughts on your Google Ads vs Meta Ads question. Tbh, it’s a question I hear a lot, and the real answer usually surprises people. It has less to do with the platforms themselves and more to do with a few fundamental things about your business that you need to get crystal clear on first.

The truth is, asking which platform is better is like asking whether a hammer or a screwdriver is the better tool. Without knowing if you’re dealing with a nail or a screw, the question is impossible to answer. Both platforms can deliver incredible returns, and both can burn through your cash with nothing to show for it. The difference is in the strategy, not the software.

So, before we even touch on the specifics of each platform, we need to take a step back and build the foundations. We need to define who you're selling to, what you're selling them, and how much they're worth to you. Once we have that sorted, the choice between Google and Meta will become obvious. This letter will walk you through exactly how to do that, from the ground up. We’re going to build your entire advertising strategy, piece by piece.

Your ICP is a Nightmare, Not a Demographic

Let's be brutally honest. Most businesses I talk to have a terrible understanding of their ideal customer. They’ll show me a PowerPoint slide that says something like, "Our target customer is Sarah, a 35-year-old marketing manager at a mid-sized tech company who enjoys yoga and brunch."

This is utterly useless. It tells you nothing of value and leads to the kind of generic, wallpaper ads that people have trained their brains to ignore. You end up targeting a massive group of people with interests like "marketing" and "brunch," wasting 99% of your budget on people who will never, ever buy from you.

To stop burning cash, you have to redefine how you think about your customer. Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) isn't a person; it's a problem state. It's a specific, urgent, expensive, and often career-threatening nightmare that keeps them awake at night. Your job is to become the world's leading expert on that nightmare.

Let’s make this real. Forget "Sarah the marketing manager". Instead, think about her nightmare:

• The Nightmare: She's just been told by her CEO that her department's leads are "low quality" and the sales team is complaining they can't close any of them. Her budget for next quarter is on the line, and she's terrified she looks incompetent. She's desperate for a way to generate qualified leads that the sales team will actually love, and she needs to show results, fast.

See the difference? We're no longer talking about yoga. We're talking about professional pain. This is a problem she would gladly pay to make go away. Your entire marketing and advertising strategy must be built around solving this specific nightmare.

Here’s another example for a B2B SaaS client we worked with in the legal tech space. Their old ICP was "law firms with 20-100 lawyers." It was too broad and their ads were failing. Their new ICP, their nightmare, was this:

• The Nightmare: A senior partner at a busy litigation firm just realised a junior associate missed a critical filing deadline. The firm is now exposed to a multi-million-pound malpractice suit, their professional indemnity insurance is about to skyrocket, and their reputation is on the verge of being shredded. The partner's personal capital is at risk. Their problem isn't "needing document management"; it's the visceral fear of catastrophic failure.

Once you've isolated this nightmare, your next job is to figure out where these people live online. Where do they go to learn and complain about their problems? This isn't about demographics, it's about digital ethnography. You need to find their watering holes:

• -> What niche industry podcasts do they listen to on their commute? (e.g., 'Acquired' for tech leaders, 'The Journal' for finance execs).
• -> What industry newsletters do they *actually* open and read? (e.g., 'Stratechery' by Ben Thompson, 'Morning Brew').
• -> What software tools do they already pay for and integrate into their workflow? (e.g., HubSpot, Salesforce, Xero).
• -> What influencers or thought leaders do they follow on LinkedIn or Twitter? (e.g., Jason Lemkin, April Dunford).
• -> What specific online communities or forums are they members of? (e.g., Subreddits like r/sysadmin, Facebook Groups like 'SaaS Growth Hacks').

This intelligence is the blueprint for your entire targeting strategy. It tells you exactly which interests to target on Meta, which keywords to bid on in Google, and which publications to consider for partnerships. Do this work first, or you have no business spending a single pound on ads. It's the difference between precision-guided marketing and just firing a cash cannon into the void.

I'd say you need to understand intent vs. interruption...

Okay, now that we’ve established that understanding your customer's pain is the first and most important job, we can finally talk about platforms. The choice between Google and Meta comes down to one simple question:

Is your ideal customer actively searching for a solution to their nightmare *right now*?

Your answer to this question dictates your entire channel strategy. There are only two fundamental types of digital advertising: Intent-Based (capturing existing demand) and Interruption-Based (creating new demand). Google and Meta are the kings of their respective domains.

Google Ads: The World of Active Intent

Google is a solution engine. People go there with a problem they are already aware of and are actively seeking to solve. They are typing their pain directly into the search bar. This is called 'demand capture'. The demand already exists; your job is just to show up and be the best answer.

Think about it. Nobody goes to Google to browse. They go to find, to fix, to buy. The commercial intent of a user on Google Search is often incredibly high. This is why it can be so powerful, especially for services and products that solve an immediate, urgent need.

For example, if your boiler breaks down in the middle of winter, you don't scroll through Instagram hoping an ad for a plumber pops up. You grab your phone and search for "emergency plumber near me". The company that shows up at the top of Google with good reviews and a clear call-to-action is getting that job. I remember a campaign we ran for an HVAC company in a competitive area; even with a lead cost around $60, it was massively profitable because the leads were from people with a genuine, urgent problem.

For B2B, it’s the same principle. The Head of Engineering whose developers are threatening to quit over a broken workflow will search for things like "Jira alternatives for dev teams" or "how to improve developer workflow". In the case of an accounting software business, they need people searching for "new accounting software for small business" or "Xero alternative". They are problem-aware and solution-aware. Advertising to them on Google is about intercepting them at the exact moment of their need.

Meta Ads (Facebook & Instagram): The World of Passive Interruption

Meta is a discovery engine. People are not there to solve a problem. They are there to be entertained, to connect with friends, to scroll passively through content. They are not in a buying mindset. Your ad is an interruption to their social experience. This is called 'demand generation'. You are creating awareness of a problem they might not have even been thinking about, and introducing your product as the solution.

This might sound harder, and in some ways it is. But it’s also where incredible scale can be found. You are not limited by the number of people searching for your solution. You can reach almost anyone.

This approach works brilliantly for products or services that are visually appealing, new, or solve a problem people don't realise they have. For example, a company selling a new, innovative kitchen gadget can't rely on Google Search because nobody is searching for a product they don't know exists. But a compelling video ad on Instagram showing the gadget in action, saving someone time and effort, can stop a user mid-scroll and make them think, "Wow, I need that". We've seen this work incredibly well for eCommerce brands; one of our clients, a women's apparel brand, saw a 691% return on their Meta ads spend by showcasing their products to highly targeted interest-based audiences.

For B2B, Meta can also be a powerhouse, especially for software. A B2B software campaign we ran on Meta generated over 4,600 registrations at just $2.38 each. We didn't target people searching for the software; we targeted users based on their job titles, interests (like following competing software pages), and behaviours, and interrupted their feed with an ad that spoke directly to their professional frustrations.

So, how do you choose? The following flowchart should make it simple.

Of course, this is a simplification. The best strategies often use both platforms in concert. For example, using Meta to generate awareness and then using Google Search Ads to capture those users when they later search for your brand or solution. But as a starting point, this framework is invaluable. You must pick one to master first, based on where your customer is. Don't try to do both at once with a small budget; you'll just do both badly.

You'll need a message they can't ignore...

Once you’ve defined your customer’s nightmare and chosen the right type of platform, you need to craft a message that will actually get their attention. This is where most advertising falls flat. A great targeting strategy with a weak, generic message is like having a perfect key for a lock but being too weak to turn it. It’s useless.

Your ad copy and creative are not there to describe your product's features. Nobody cares about your features. They only care about what your features can do for them. Your ad's only job is to connect your solution directly to their pain, so viscerally that they feel understood and are compelled to learn more. It should feel less like an advertisement and more like a solution that has just appeared at the perfect moment.

Here are three battle-tested copywriting frameworks that we use for our clients to cut through the noise. They work because they are based on fundamental human psychology.

1. Problem-Agitate-Solve (PAS)

This is perfect for high-touch services or complex B2B solutions where the pain is deep and emotional. You're not just selling a service; you're selling relief from a persistent, agitating problem.

• Problem: State the nightmare directly and in their own language. Start with a question they're already asking themselves.
• Agitate: Pour salt in the wound. Describe the negative consequences and frustrations of not solving the problem. What happens if they do nothing? Make the pain tangible.
• Solve: Introduce your solution as the clear, simple, and effective way out of that pain.

Example for a fractional CFO service:
(P) "Are your cash flow projections just a wild guess? Worried you're one bad month away from a payroll crisis?"
(A) "While you're stuck in spreadsheets, your competitors are confidently raising their next funding round, backed by solid data. Every day of uncertainty is another day you're falling behind."
(S) "Get expert financial strategy for a fraction of a full-time hire. We build the dashboards that turn financial uncertainty into predictable, scalable growth. See how."

2. Before-After-Bridge (BAB)

This framework is incredibly effective for SaaS products or anything that creates a clear transformation. You paint a picture of their current frustrating reality (the 'Before' state) and contrast it with a desirable future (the 'After' state). Your product is the 'Bridge' that gets them there.

• Before: Describe their current world. What does their workflow look like? What are the daily frustrations?
• After: Paint a vivid picture of the new reality your product creates. What does life look like when their problem is solved? Focus on the feeling of relief, confidence, or success.
• Bridge: Position your product or service as the simple, straightforward path from Before to After.

Example for a FinOps (Cloud Financial Management) SaaS:
(B) "Your monthly AWS bill just landed. It’s 30% higher than last month, and your engineers have no idea why. Another fire to put out, another tense meeting with finance."
(A) "Imagine opening your cloud bill and smiling. You see exactly where every pound is going, waste is automatically flagged and eliminated, and you can predict next month's spend to the dollar."
(B) "Our platform is the bridge that gets you there. Connect your AWS account in 5 minutes and find your first £1,000 in savings today. Start your free trial."

3. Feature -> Advantage -> Benefit (FAB)

People often get this wrong, they just state the feature. Don't just list what your product does; explain *why it matters*. This is about translating technical specs into tangible business outcomes.

• Feature: The specific attribute of your product (e.g., "0.001% margin of error").
• Advantage: What that feature enables (e.g., "which means your results are incredibly precise").
• Benefit: The ultimate positive outcome for the customer (e.g., "so you can publish with unshakeable confidence, securing more funding and attracting top talent").

Example for high-ticket lab equipment:
"Our new mass spectrometer has a (Feature) 0.001% margin of error. This gives you (Advantage) the highest level of data integrity in the industry, so you can (Benefit) publish groundbreaking results with unshakeable confidence, securing the research grants and attracting the top-tier talent that other labs can only dream of."

The impact of moving from generic, feature-based copy to pain-point-based copy is not small. It can be the difference between a campaign that fails and one that scales profitably. Better copy leads to a higher Click-Through Rate (CTR), which tells the ad platforms your ad is relevant, which in turn lowers your advertising costs. It's a virtuous cycle.

You probably should calculate your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)...

So, we know who we're targeting and what we're going to say to them. Now we need to figure out the economics. This is the part that most businesses skip, and it's why they can never figure out if their ads are truly "working" or not. They get obsessed with vanity metrics like Cost Per Lead (CPL) or Cost Per Click (CPC) without any context.

Let me be clear: a "good" CPL is a meaningless concept on its own. A £50 CPL might be a disaster for a business selling £30 t-shirts, but it would be an unbelievable bargain for a company selling enterprise software with a £50,000 annual contract. The real question isn't "How low can my CPL go?" but rather "How high a CPL can I afford to pay to acquire a truly great customer?"

The answer to that question lies in its counterpart: Customer Lifetime Value (LTV). Your LTV is the total profit your business makes from an average customer over the entire period they do business with you. Calculating this, even as a rough estimate, is the single most empowering thing you can do for your marketing. It turns advertising from a cost centre into a predictable growth engine.

Here’s how you calculate it. You only need three numbers:

1. Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA): What do you make from a typical customer each month (or year)?
2. Gross Margin %: What is your profit margin on that revenue? This is crucial. We care about profit, not revenue. It's your revenue minus the direct costs of servicing that customer (Cost of Goods Sold).
3. Monthly Churn Rate %: What percentage of your customers do you lose each month? (If you have annual contracts, you can use an annual churn rate and ARPA).

The calculation is simple:

LTV = (ARPA * Gross Margin %) / Monthly Churn Rate %

Let’s run an example for a hypothetical B2B SaaS company:

• ARPA = £500 per month
• Gross Margin = 80% (0.80)
• Monthly Churn Rate = 4% (0.04)

LTV = (£500 * 0.80) / 0.04
LTV = £400 / 0.04
LTV = £10,000

This is the truth. In this example, every new customer you acquire is worth £10,000 in gross margin to your business over their lifetime. This number changes everything. Suddenly, you're not just trying to get cheap leads; you're trying to buy £10,000 assets.

So, how much should you spend to acquire one of these assets? A healthy and sustainable benchmark for many businesses is a 3:1 LTV to CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) ratio. This means for every £3 of lifetime value, you can afford to spend £1 acquiring the customer. This gives you enough margin to cover overheads, R&D, and still make a healthy profit.

In our example, with a £10,000 LTV, you can afford to spend up to £3,333 to acquire a single new customer (£10,000 / 3). This is your target CAC.

Now we can work backwards. If your sales process converts 1 in every 10 qualified leads into a paying customer (a 10% lead-to-customer rate), you can afford to pay up to £333 per qualified lead (£3,333 / 10). Suddenly that £50 lead from a perfectly targeted LinkedIn campaign doesn't seem expensive, does it? It looks like an absolute bargain.

This is the maths that unlocks aggressive, intelligent growth. It frees you from the tyranny of cheap, low-quality leads and gives you the confidence to invest in channels that deliver real value, even if the upfront cost seems high. Use the calculator below to get a feel for your own numbers.

We'll need to look at campaign structure...

Armed with a deep understanding of your customer, a compelling message, and the economic framework to guide your spending, we can now start thinking about how to actually structure your ad campaigns. The way you set up your campaigns is critical; a messy structure makes it impossible to know what’s working, while a logical structure gives you clarity and control.

The first, and most important, rule is to choose the right campaign objective. This tells the platform's algorithm what you want it to do. And here lies a common, costly mistake.

How to Pay an Ad Platform to Find Your Worst Customers

Many businesses, especially when they're new, think they need to "build brand awareness". So they go onto Meta or Google and select "Reach" or "Brand Awareness" as their campaign objective. This is, in almost all cases, a catastrophic error. You are giving the algorithm a very specific command: "Find me the largest number of people for the lowest possible price."

The algorithm, being a ruthlessly efficient machine, does exactly what you asked. It seeks out the users within your targeting who are the cheapest to show ads to. And why are they cheap? Because they are not in demand. They are the people who scroll endlessly but never click, never engage, and absolutely, positively never pull out a credit card. You are actively paying the world's most powerful advertising systems to find you the worst possible audience for your product. It’s a fast track to burning your budget with nothing to show for it but some meaningless "impression" numbers.

Unless you have a multi-million-pound budget like Coca-Cola, you should almost always choose a conversion-based objective. This means optimising for Leads, Sales, Sign-ups, or whatever action is most valuable to your business. This tells the algorithm: "I don't care about showing my ad to everyone. I only care about showing it to the people within my audience who are most likely to take this specific action." The algorithm will then use its vast dataset to find those people for you. You are paying for results, not just eyeballs. Awareness is a byproduct of effective conversion advertising, not a prerequisite for it.

The Funnel is Not Dead: Structuring Your Meta Campaigns

For Meta ads in particular, it’s helpful to structure your campaigns around a simplified marketing funnel: Top of Funnel (ToFu), Middle of Funnel (MoFu), and Bottom of Funnel (BoFu).

• ToFu (Top of Funnel): This is your prospecting campaign. You're reaching out to cold audiences—people who have never heard of you before. This is where you use your detailed targeting (interests, behaviours) and Lookalike Audiences to find new potential customers.
• MoFu (Middle of Funnel): This is your engagement retargeting campaign. You're targeting people who have shown some interest but haven't visited your website yet. This could be people who have watched a percentage of your video ads or engaged with your Instagram profile.
• BoFu (Bottom of Funnel): This is your website retargeting campaign. You're targeting people who have visited your website but haven't converted yet. These are your warmest leads, and this is often your most profitable campaign. This includes people who added a product to their cart but didn't buy, or started filling out a lead form but didn't finish.

By seperating your campaigns like this, you can tailor your messaging and offers to each stage of the journey. You wouldn't speak to someone who knows your brand and has visited your pricing page the same way you'd speak to a complete stranger. This structure gives you the control to do that effectively.

Inside your ToFu campaign is where you'll do most of your audience testing. Based on the ICP research you did earlier, you can test different ad sets targeting different groups of interests, or lookalikes of your best customers. I usually prioritize audiences like this:

Audience Prioritisation for Testing:
1. Lookalike of Highest Value Customers
2. Lookalike of All Past Customers
3. Lookalike of people who have completed a key conversion (e.g. Added Payment Info, Initiated Checkout)
4. Detailed Targeting (Interests/Behaviours related to your ICP's nightmare)
5. Broad Targeting (only once your account has significant conversion data)

For new accounts, you'll start at #4 to gather data. Once you have at least 100 conversions, you can start building and testing lookalike audiences, which are often the top performers. You test different audiences in seperate ad sets, see which ones deliver conversions within your target CAC, and scale the winners while turning off the losers. It's a continuous process of disciplined experimentation.

I'd say you can expect these costs...

This is always the big question: "What should I expect to pay for a conversion?" The answer, frustratingly, is "it depends". It depends on your industry, your targeting, your creative, your offer, your location, and a dozen other factors. Anyone who gives you a definitive number without knowing these things is guessing.

However, based on our experience running campaigns for hundreds of clients across various niches, we can provide some general ballpark figures. These are not promises, but they can serve as a rough guide to help you budget and set realistic expectations. The numbers below are based on a conversion being something like a lead, a free trial sign-up, or a newsletter subscriber - a relatively low-friction action. E-commerce purchases or high-friction B2B leads will definitely be more expensive.

We typically see performance fall into these ranges, primarily influenced by the cost of traffic (CPC) in a given region and the conversion rate (CVR) of the landing page.

• Cost Per Click (CPC): In developed countries (UK, US, CA, AU, etc.), a typical CPC might be between £0.50 and £1.50. In developing countries, it can be much lower, perhaps £0.10 to £0.50, but the quality of the traffic can also be lower.
• Landing Page Conversion Rate (CVR): For a lead/signup objective, a decent landing page should convert between 10% and 30% of its visitors.

Doing the maths (CPA = CPC / CVR), this gives us the following estimated Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) ranges:

For Signups/Leads:

• Developed Countries: Between £1.67 (£0.50 / 30%) and £15.00 (£1.50 / 10%).
• Developing Countries: Between £0.33 (£0.10 / 30%) and £5.00 (£0.50 / 10%).

For Sales/eCommerce Purchases:

eCommerce conversion rates are typically much lower, often in the 2-5% range. This means the cost per purchase will be significantly higher.

• Developed Countries: Between £10.00 (£0.50 / 5%) and £75.00 (£1.50 / 2%).
• Developing Countries: Between £2.00 (£0.10 / 5%) and £25.00 (£0.50 / 2%).

Of course, for sales, the absolute CPA matters less than your Return On Ad Spend (ROAS). If you're selling a £200 product, a £50 CPA is fantastic (4x ROAS). If you're selling a £40 product, it's a loss. It all comes back to knowing your numbers.

If your initial costs are at the higher end of these ranges, don't panic. That’s normal. The goal of the first few weeks of a campaign isn't immediate profit; it's data collection. Through disciplined testing of audiences, creatives, and landing pages, the goal is to systematically drive that cost down over time. I remember one medical job matching SaaS client where we took their CPA from over £100 down to just £7 through this exact process of methodical optimisation.

This is the main advice I have for you:

We've covered a lot of ground, from high-level strategy to the nuts and bolts of campaign costs. It can feel overwhelming, but it boils down to a logical sequence of steps. Forget about the platforms for a moment and focus on getting these fundamentals right first. If you follow this process, you will be miles ahead of most businesses who are just throwing money at ads and hoping for the best.

I've detailed my main recommendations for you below in a clear, actionable table. This is your roadmap. Work through these steps in order, and you will build an advertising system that is strategic, measurable, and built for profitable growth.

As you can see, running paid ads successfully is a deep and strategic discipline. It's not just about pushing a few buttons in an ad manager; it's about being a strategist, an economist, a psychologist, and a data scientist all at once. It requires a rigorous process and relentless optimisation.

Getting this process right from the start can be the difference between setting your business on a path to explosive growth or wasting thousands of pounds on failed campaigns. While this guide provides the roadmap, the execution can be complex and time-consuming. This is often where expert help can provide a significant shortcut, leveraging years of experience to avoid common pitfalls and accelerate your path to profitability.

If you'd like to discuss how this strategy could be specifically applied to your business, we offer a free, no-obligation 20-minute strategy session where we can take a look at your specific situation and provide some concrete recommendations. It's a great way to get a second opinion and ensure you're starting on the right foot.

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh