Google Ads vs Facebook Ads: Where a B2B Budget Works Harder

The question comes up in almost every first conversation about paid media: should we put the budget into Google or into Facebook? The answer is almost never “one of them” — but the split matters enormously, and getting it wrong wastes months.

The difference is not really about platforms. It is about two fundamentally different moments in a buying decision.

Intent Versus Interruption

Google Ads reaches people who have already decided they have a problem and are actively looking for a solution. Someone typing “managed server support Lithuania” is not browsing. They have a server problem, a budget and probably a deadline.

Facebook and Instagram reach people who are doing something else entirely. They are not looking for you. Your ad interrupts them. That sounds like a weakness, and for some businesses it is — but it is also the only way to reach people who do not yet know your category exists.

This distinction drives everything else. Search captures existing demand. Social creates it. A business selling something people actively search for should start with search. A business selling something people do not know to search for has no choice but to start with social.

What the Numbers Actually Look Like

Cost comparisons across platforms are frequently misleading because they compare different things. Here is the honest version for a typical B2B service business:

	Google Ads (Search)	Facebook / Instagram
Typical B2B cost per click	Higher — competitive terms run several euros	Lower — often a fraction of search
Conversion rate to enquiry	Considerably higher	Considerably lower
Cost per qualified lead	Often lower despite higher CPC	Often higher despite cheaper clicks
Time to first result	Days	Weeks — the algorithm needs volume to learn
Targeting basis	What they searched	Who they are and what they engage with
Scales by	Search volume, which is finite	Audience size, which is very large
Creative demand	Low — text and extensions	High — constant new creative required

The row that surprises people is cost per qualified lead. Cheap clicks feel efficient, but a click from someone with no active need converts at a far lower rate, and the leads that do arrive are often unqualified. Judging a campaign on cost per click rather than cost per qualified lead is the most common reporting mistake we see.

Where Google Ads Wins Clearly

Search advertising is the stronger choice when:

• The problem is urgent. A failed server, a hacked site, a broken laptop. Nobody waits to be retargeted.
• The category is well understood. People know what “SEO services” or “computer repair” means and search for it by name.
• The budget is small. Search can produce meaningful results on a modest budget because you only pay for people already looking.
• You need results this month. A well-structured search campaign produces enquiries within days.

The constraint is volume. If only a few hundred people a month search your terms, search will hit a ceiling quickly no matter how much you are willing to spend.

Where Facebook Wins Clearly

Social advertising is the stronger choice when:

• Nobody searches for what you sell. New categories, new approaches, services people do not know are available.
• The audience is definable but not searching. Company size, job title, industry and interests are things Meta’s targeting handles well.
• The product benefits from being shown. A dashboard, an interface, a before-and-after — things that are hard to convey in a text ad.
• You have exhausted search volume. Once you own the search terms that matter, social is where additional budget goes.

The Attribution Problem Nobody Solves Properly

Here is the uncomfortable part. A typical B2B purchase involves multiple touches over weeks. Someone sees a Facebook ad, does nothing, reads an article a week later, searches your brand name a fortnight after that, and converts through a branded search ad.

Last-click attribution gives Google all the credit. Facebook’s own reporting, using view-through attribution, also claims it. Both are partly right and both are misleading.

Three practical responses:

• Separate branded from non-branded search. Branded search conversions are frequently demand created elsewhere, being harvested cheaply by search. Reporting them as search performance flatters the channel.
• Ask on the form. A single “how did you hear about us” field, free text, produces more honest signal than any attribution model.
• Watch the aggregate. If total enquiries rise when social spend rises, social is working, regardless of what the attribution report says.

How We Split a Limited Budget

For a B2B service business starting from zero, with a modest monthly budget, the approach that works most consistently:

Month one and two — all search. Take the highest-intent terms. Keep the account small and tightly matched. The goal is not scale, it is learning which terms produce real enquiries and what a qualified lead costs.

Month three — introduce retargeting. Not prospecting. Show ads to people who have already visited. This is the cheapest meaningful social spend available and it borrows the intent that search already established.

Month four onward — test prospecting if search has capped. If search is delivering all the volume the business can handle, leave it alone. If it has hit its ceiling, prospecting on social is the next lever.

The mistake we see most often is running both at full spend from day one. Neither gets enough data to optimise, and when results are mediocre there is no way to tell which channel was at fault.

What Both Platforms Need From Your Site

Paid media is amplification. It makes whatever is already there louder, including the problems.

Before spending anything: the landing page must match the ad’s promise exactly, load fast on mobile, and make the next step obvious. Conversion tracking must be verified by completing a real conversion and confirming it appears. And there must be a way to respond quickly — a lead that waits a day for a reply is frequently a lead lost, which is why we usually recommend pairing paid campaigns with live chat on the landing pages.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a realistic minimum monthly budget?

For search, enough to generate roughly 100 clicks a month on your target terms — otherwise there is not enough data to optimise. In competitive B2B categories that is a meaningful sum. Below that threshold, organic SEO is usually the better use of the money.

Is LinkedIn better than Facebook for B2B?

Its targeting by job title and company is better, and its costs are substantially higher. For high-value contracts the economics can work. For services with smaller deal sizes, Facebook’s cheaper reach plus careful qualification usually wins on cost per acquisition.

How long before a campaign is worth judging?

Search: three to four weeks. Social: six to eight, because the algorithm needs conversion volume before it optimises well. Judging a social campaign after ten days tells you almost nothing.

Should I bid on my own brand name?

Usually yes. It is cheap, it protects against competitors bidding on your name, and it lets you control the message. Just report it separately so it does not inflate your apparent campaign performance.

Do I need different landing pages for each channel?

For search, the page should match the query closely. For social, it should do more explaining, because the visitor arrived without context. The same page rarely serves both well.

What is the most common reason campaigns fail?

Sending traffic to a page that was not built to convert. The campaign gets blamed, the account gets rebuilt, and the page stays the same. Fix the destination before increasing the budget.

The Bottom Line

Google captures demand that already exists. Facebook creates demand that does not. Neither is better in the abstract — the right split depends on whether people are already searching for what you sell, and how much of that search volume exists.

Start where intent already is, prove the economics, then expand into creating demand. Doing it in the other order is expensive and slow.

Our Google Ads and Facebook advertising teams run both, and our online advertising service exists precisely to work out the split before the budget is committed. Platform documentation for Google Ads campaign types and Meta’s advertising objectives is worth reading before either.