Search intent against social attention
The difference between Google Ads and Meta ads is not the platform; it is the state of mind of the person seeing them. On Google, someone typed “block paving Bolton” and is looking for a paver. On Instagram, someone is looking at a friend’s holiday and your advert interrupts. The first person converts at a high rate for a high click price. The second converts at a low rate for a low price, and only if the advert stops them.
| Google Ads | Meta ads | |
|---|---|---|
| The person is | Searching for it now | Not thinking about it |
| Works for | Services people search for; urgent needs; high-value considered purchases | Products people did not know they wanted; visual businesses; local awareness; re-reaching past visitors |
| Works badly for | Things nobody searches for yet | Emergencies; anything people would rather search for |
| Priced by | Click, set by auction on the phrase | Impressions or clicks, set by auction on the audience |
| Creative | Text matching the phrase | Image or video that stops a scroll |
| Best first use for a local business | Buying phrases with a matched landing page | Retargeting people who visited the site but did not enquire |
Source: Cybrial. Neither platform publishes a price list; both are auctions.
What it costs, honestly
“How much do Facebook ads cost” is one of the commonest questions about the platform, and every article answering it quotes a different average, because there is no fixed price. You bid for attention in an auction against everyone else who wants the same people at the same time. Costs rise in November and December, fall in January, and vary several-fold between a broad UK audience and a narrow local one.
The honest way to know your cost is to spend a small amount and read your own numbers: cost per thousand impressions, cost per click, and, once tracking is set up, cost per enquiry or sale. Anything else is someone else’s average for someone else’s business. We have no Meta case study to show you on this site, and this page does not pretend otherwise; when there is a result we can publish with its source, it will be here.
When it works for a small business
- Retargeting. Showing an advert to people who visited your site in the last 30 days and did not enquire. Small audience, cheap, high conversion, and the best first use of the platform for almost any business.
- Visual products and visible work. Food, sweets, furniture, driveways, weddings: a good photograph of the actual thing stops the scroll. A sweet shop with a thousand lines has more to show than a solicitor.
- Local awareness for a new business. A tight radius, a real offer, a real photo. Not to sell today; to be recognised when the need arrives and the person searches.
- Events, launches and seasons. Time-limited and visual is the platform’s home ground.
- Reaching customers who already follow you, at low cost, with something new.
When it does not
- Urgent trades. Nobody scrolls Instagram for an emergency locksmith. That is a Google search and a Business Profile.
- Anything the customer would rather research. Considered B2B purchases are found through search and referrals; social reaches the wrong moment.
- A site that does not convert. Every channel multiplies the site’s conversion rate; a leaking site leaks paid visitors fastest.
- Without tracking. Meta reports its own numbers generously. Without the pixel and Conversions API measuring real enquiries and sales, you are optimising to Meta’s scoreboard.
Setting up a first campaign properly
- Business Manager, not a boosted post. Boosting is the simplified interface that hides the controls; Ads Manager in Business Manager is where the settings live.
- Install the Meta pixel on the site and set up the Conversions API (server-side) alongside it, because browser-only tracking now misses a large share of visitors. Define the events: lead, purchase, contact.
- Build a retargeting audience: site visitors, last 30 days, excluding people who enquired. Start there.
- Choose a Leads or Sales objective, never Awareness or Traffic for a first campaign; the objective tells Meta who to show the advert to.
- Creative: a real photograph or short video of the actual work or product, one plain sentence, a price or offer, and a clear button. Three variations so the platform can learn.
- A daily budget small enough to lose while learning, run for two weeks before judging anything.
- Send clicks to a matched page, not the homepage, and read cost per real enquiry, not cost per click.
The management fee to refuse
The same rule as Google Ads. Some agencies charge a percentage of your Meta spend to manage it, up to 40%, which pays them more for spending more and nothing for making it work. Management should be a flat fee for the hours. Ours sits inside a growth block from £250 a month and does not change with the budget; the hours go on the creative, the audiences, the tracking and the landing page, which is where the result comes from.
