Facebook or Google, Which is Better for Lead Generation?

Brandon Welch 0:00
You’re not gonna become a well known and liked company with Google. You’re reaching hundreds of people in a week. You could never afford to, even when there’s hundreds of people a week doing business with you, there’s not any more than hundreds of people a week searching to ever see that. So you’re not branding in any way, shape or form on Google. And if you were, even if it was possible, it would be extremely expensive. And so the quantity of people you reach is limited to dozens or hundreds with that they don’t remember a flipping thing about you, even if you had a really great landing page, if they didn’t choose you, if the offer didn’t sing to them, like right now, you’re lost. Welcome to

the Maven marketing podcast today is Maven Monday. I’m host Brandon Welch, and I am joined by Caleb. Opt Out of all social media. AG, you won’t find Caleb on them, Facebooks or them Tic Tacs,

Caleb Agee 0:51
actually, you know what? You can find me, and I need to make that. You just don’t see you. I just, I just don’t participate. I think is the problem. He opted out. So I opted out. He

Brandon Welch 1:02
He’s wiser than the rest of us. But speaking of Facebook and social media, today, we’re gonna talk about the machine of Facebook and meta and lead generation and the machine of Google, and which one you might best be using in your business. Title The episode is Facebook or Google the showdown, right? Yeah. So this is the place where we answer your real life marketing questions so you can eliminate waste and advertising, grow your business and achieve the big dream. And in the modern era of lead generation, the two big monsters and the two big tools to master, unfortunately or fortunately, sometimes come down to Google or Facebook. Yeah. And there’s a lot changing in both of those worlds. It’s

Caleb Agee 1:44
2024 by the way, if you’re listening to this later, as it’s 2086 and

Brandon Welch 1:48
you’re wondering, where am I, yeah,

Caleb Agee 1:50
yeah, Facebook, what’s that? Yes, it’s changed names seven times since we’re

Brandon Welch 1:53
probably still doing this podcast in 2086 Yeah, that’s right. Anyway, so the the question is, which is better? Yeah, we’re going to give you some short answers to that, but then we’re going to give you some long answers as well. We always do. We always do. But our goal is for you to come away with a strategic approach instead of just a Ooh, which media is going to win? Because if you haven’t figured it out yet by episode 68 of this podcast, it’s 6865 or 68 something like you haven’t figured it out. Media is not the answer. Connecting with human beings and presenting them a better life is the answer, and it’s just about which one of these tools is probably more equipped to do that from where you are in your business, yeah, and we’ve got lots of experience. We’ve been Caleb and I have been spending gazillions of dollars on Google, Facebook and all other platforms for over 10 years now.

Caleb Agee 2:49
We’ve easily spent millions, oh, on these combined and and I think, I think the thing we found, just, just for your edification, these two right now. That’s why I was time stamping it right now, we found that these two produce leads the most consistently, the most effectively, and scalably, then scalably, compared to some other medias that we’ve tried. And so we’re not biased to either one of these. We’re just saying we just go where it where it works, right?

Brandon Welch 3:20
Yep, we’ve got geniuses on both sides of these platforms and others and traditional media, and you know that about us. But if you’re sitting there, you’re going, Hey, I’ve got a business that’s doing, you know, four or $5 million a year, and I got maybe tapped out in one area, or I’m super frustrated with one of my lead sources. You’re going to hear other answers, like other principles, that will apply to more than just Facebook, sure here, sure, but it all comes down to where is the person, what’s going on in their life? What are their needs, pains, hopes and fears, and how can you present the best answer to their solution? Yeah.

Caleb Agee 3:54
So just for clarity, we’re talking specifically about today, customers right now, which we define as somebody who is in the market for what you were selling. Guess what today?

Brandon Welch 4:07
Yeah, they woke up and they got to have it. Now they have to have they’re not on a journey. They

Caleb Agee 4:10
had a flat tire, and you’re a tire shop. They had a leaky roof, and you’re a roof shop. They had, you know, they had a hungry stomach, and you up and have a restaurant, but we have to keep in mind that this person is very transactional in nature, because they have that need today, and they need it quickly. Usually they don’t really have an option to wait, right? If you get a flat tire, you got to get that fixed today, right? Yeah. So

Brandon Welch 4:36
if we wake up and we have the pain there are, there are products that are just like, something breaks, or something’s you know gotta happen, like, you’re going back to school and you gotta have XYZ thing happen, yeah? And that’s, that’s a demand, like, that’s a precipitating event that just broke and you had to go do it. There’s also people that are really, really, really close to the finish line that can be found, and maybe not this second. Yeah. Yeah, are they buying? Are they saying, Yes, I’ll buy. But if you presented the right offer or presented the right message or the right desire to them, they jump. You could, you could get them out of tomorrow mode a little quicker and into today mode. And just to say it plainly, Facebook is the media that does that better, because it reaches people while they’re not exactly and specifically searching, they’re not on a search engine page looking for an answer. Yeah, however, they may be in a mode. They may be in that two or three week window, or, you know, expendable income situation, where they could pounce on a product and if you present it to them upstream, yeah, even when they weren’t thinking about this second, they might jump Google. Doesn’t have the ability to do that. Google only shows you a search engine page when you’ve actually searched for put the search Yeah, and so what does that fundamentally mean? If we’re working the media backwards, that fundamentally means buyers are in a different psychology. They’re in a different mindset. They’re in more of a transactional, data, analytical mindset. When they’re on a search engine page, they’re in more of a relaxed, potentially emotional, relational mindset on Facebook. Now, some, some, the vast majority of both audio or both, all the audiences on Facebook are not just going to buy because you said so, but there’s a subset. There’s a bigger available audience that could potentially buy in a bigger window on Facebook than there is Google. Yeah,

Caleb Agee 6:26
and just for clarity, like we said, we’re talking about today customers. I don’t think we’ve mentioned we’re talking specifically about Google Search. Here we have an episode talking about the different Google campaign types that you can look into. Go back and look at that episode. We’ll put in the show notes too, just so you can click on it, yep. But there are lots of other Google type. You can even run YouTube ads through Google ads. That’s not, we’re talking about, talking about search ads. You search for, yep, marketing agency, old fashioned, and you found us. That’s, that’s a Google ad. And the same, because we don’t advertise, yeah, we’re not on there, but not on there. The same is true of Facebook. We are specifically talking about things that have to do with lead generation. So either there’s a an objective type that you can do for generating leads, which would make a form after they click on your ad, so they click on your ad, there’s a form they can fill it out, they can take the next step, yeah, so take the next step, or

Brandon Welch 7:20
click to your website and become either buy a service or book a appointment with your sales team, I

Caleb Agee 7:28
guess. So we’re looking for an action. We’re not, we’re not talking about video ads or things like that.

Brandon Welch 7:32
Yes, thank you for saying that, because yeah, and specifically lead generation, which has better options for you. So let’s start with Google. We’re gonna do pros and cons for each, and we’re just gonna go down the list and maybe expound on a couple. So Google, you are only reaching people who have asked to see your product. In theory, now that that’s in the pro category, I have it here if you’re going, you know, I don’t say maximize ad budget, because that’s always related to what you’re trying to make happen long term, maximization of like, I’ve got to have sales now my phones aren’t ringing. I need them to ring more for next week, to fill my calendars or whatever. You’re only going to be spending money to get in front of people who are looking for it this second. Yes, that that is good, but also means you’re at the finish line. And when people are at the finish line, they don’t take as much time. They don’t take hardly any time to go. What’s the quality this company? Who am I going to be dealing with? What’s the relationship? What they’re not thinking long term gut response, right? It’s a it’s usually a pain driven response. How do I get this out of my life as quick as I can? Um, assuming that you haven’t won them over or nobody’s won them over at that finish line. Yeah,

Caleb Agee 8:42
if you think about the old, like, marketing funnel, right? Gets smaller at the bottom, Google is just literally, it’s not even in the funnel. It’s a net that’s hanging underneath the funnel. Yeah, it’s literally, you’re putting your little fishing net right at the bottom. You’re you’re hoping you grab a couple fish on the way through. Yes. Like that is what Google is. It’s not even Google wants to say they’re at the bottom of the funnel. They know they’re after the funnel. You didn’t, you didn’t win them at all in a marketing sense. You just caught them while they were

Brandon Welch 9:07
looking so let me talk to my home service companies. Yeah, the people who are solving a problem like something’s broken, or like it’s got to be fixed for a utility, not, not talking about luxury items like solar or something like that, but like, just my home service, you know, roofers, uh, HVAC, electricians, all that stuff, yep, if, if you have not done your job creating awareness at the top of the old fashioned marketing funnel, so that people like you know you at least, are familiar with you have an inkling of who to call if something happens, if you’ve not done that, and by the way, a lot of you haven’t, a lot of you haven’t done a good enough job at that, which is why you’re dependent on lead generation. I would just say our biggest and most profitable clients dependent on lead generation. It’s a nice to have. They don’t even actually focus on it all that much, like the ones that are just killing it. It just happens because we’ve done a really good job at the top. Up at that funnel. That’s right, we talk about it a little different way. But that tomorrow customer, or that awareness cycle, if you haven’t done a good enough job, and the person wakes up and they gotta have what you do, they’re going on a consideration search Like, who do I find? That’s the middle of the funnel. Who can do this for me? And then action is at the bottom of that. Right? I take action. Well, those two things are, not based on their own information. That’s based on who they can find in that moment, and who they find in that moment depends largely on your budget and largely on your offer, which is another con of Google. You You have to be competitive. You’re not going to be the highest price, most valuable service and win in Google. That’s right. Or the most premium service. I should say you’ll get a few that way, but the majority that end up there and don’t already have a desire to buy you for a higher calling and a higher margin reason aren’t going to do it. Yeah, you’ll have to make it. You’ve lost. Yeah, you’ll have to make a concession. You’ve lost that chance to sell them on the higher way of doing business. So if you’re a premium electrician, because you do 120 checkpoint around my house and make sure everything’s safe, and you go test it over my outlets, and you look at my breakers and make sure it’s all good. And you want to sell me, you know, generators and extra wiring and extra lighting, because you want to be that kind of guy instead of the guy that just shows up to fix a broken light socket or something. You know, one of those high margin. One is low margin. Google is probably less of a platform for you, because you’re gonna get more of that low quality customer. Yep, anything to add to that?

Caleb Agee 11:34
No, I think the next one we have, you don’t have to be overly creative to get an action so Google, the responsive search ads, they the nerds call them R essays, and you basically, you insert a handful of headlines and a handful of descriptions. Headlines are the shorter blue text that you see at the top. The description is the bottom set, and Google kind of mixes and matches your ad for you, tests it and tells you which one’s working better.

Brandon Welch 12:02
And Google says cool when you want that ad to show. And you say, when people type in electrician. And you go, Well, we’re electricians. And then you might put something like fast service and good prices, yep. And then it says, Cool. Now, what landing page do you want to send them to? And you send them to a landing page. And that’s the end of creativity with Google.

Caleb Agee 12:19
It has nothing to do with your at least until you get to the landing page. It has nothing to do with your story, the your differentiating factors. It has nothing to do with what makes you special, really, hardly at all, unless you got some offer or something

Brandon Welch 12:31
like that. Nobody walks around going, Ooh, that was a really catchy Google ad I

Caleb Agee 12:35
saw today. No, nobody goes, if I can pull that back up for you, yeah, we’re gonna

Brandon Welch 12:40
believe this Google ad I saw. You know, wasn’t that so entertaining? Funny? I love this company. No, it’s all information based. And guess what, there’s, there’s data to prove this. But very, very often, people don’t even realize what company they’re clicking on. If they’ve seen or recognized the name that will that will cause them to click more often, but they’re not even consciously going, Oh, that’s the company I picked. They’re not looking at the URL. They’re going, what did the tech say? And did it? Did it satisfy the void I have in this second? That’s right. So it’s not with that, not at all a good way to create awareness or branding, yeah,

Caleb Agee 13:15
but, but the pro of it is that makes it more accessible, accessible for people who maybe starting out or starting out, don’t feel like they have the writing power. They don’t have the, you know, skills to make to write elegant ads. Yes, you don’t have to. They’re a little bit down and dirty. Yes,

Brandon Welch 13:32
uh, a couple other quick pros, it’s more call driven. People are obviously way more likely to pick up the phone or click the call button when they’re on mobile device, and Google, that is an advantage to a really well tuned relational service company does has good phone dialog. That’s an advantage for you, if you have quick follow up processes or whatever, and generally, people that talk will will respond quicker and take action quicker. Yeah, Facebook, it’s rare to be able to get a call off of Facebook. We can see a Facebook ad and have a propensity call now, again, that has to do with more the users mode, context and mode. However, the quality and character of that lead is going to be of action. So those are the cons, or, sorry, the pros of Google. Yeah, of Google. Let’s go a little bit into the cons. We talked a little bit about this a second ago, but it’s an extremely inefficient way to reach a lot of people. We’re not going to go super deep into this, but what you need to know is that there’s a metric that all marketers use called cost per 1000. It’s essentially what does it cost us to reach 1000 people? For comparison’s sake, I’m going to give you some medias, TV and radio costs us about five to $15 per 1000 people we reach. Okay, Facebook, we’ll talk about in a second, in a minute, or, sorry, a second or a minute, probably a minute. Maybe 10 to $20 per 1000 is not unreasonable, yep, still fairly efficient. Print can be in the 30 to 50 um. Let’s see, cable television can be more like the 15 to 30 range if you’re talking about Super Bowl ads. Big, big, big, big, big groups of people, premium audiences, maybe, maybe in the 20 to $30 range. Google is 800 to $1,200 CPM is the average I see, yeah, so we’re paying 10 to 15 times more to reach people, yeah, if not even 3040, times more, yeah. So at the lower ends of those other CPMs. So with that, you’re not gonna become a well known and liked company with Google. No, you’re just not gonna do it. You’re reaching hundreds of people in a week. You could never

Caleb Agee 15:35
afford to through Google in this in this sense even,

Brandon Welch 15:39
let’s just take it down to local companies. I’m thinking services like attorneys and doctors. And even when there’s, you know, hundreds of people a week doing business with you, there’s not any more than hundreds of people a week searching to ever see that. Whereas any of those other ad platforms, there’s 10s of 1000s this second using and watching and watching them. So the inventory, in and of itself, is more available on these other platforms. Now, in the Google versus Facebook world, that just means there’s a bunch, bunch, bunch more people, ie future customers, to win over on Facebook. So you’re not branding in any way, shape or form on Google. And if you were, even if it was possible, it would be extremely expensive. And so the quantity of people you reach is is limited to dozens or hundreds. And with that, they don’t remember a flipping thing about you. Even if you had a really great landing page, they’re not going to remember if they didn’t choose you, if the offer didn’t sing to them, like, right now, and it’s like, minutes, like, yeah, probably less than 10. Yeah. Get trying to get this out of their life. You’re, uh, you’re lost. I’m gonna

Caleb Agee 16:47
make a gamble that the only time you’ve remembered the result of your Google search was because they already had a pre existing, uh, place inside of your mind. Yeah, but you didn’t remember the ad. I didn’t remember that. I remember, I remembered ABC Roofing because they were already in my brain. That’s the only reason they I’m like, oh, yeah, I need to call them back. You know, that kind of thing. So,

Brandon Welch 17:11
yeah. So that’s the biggest con. And the biggest fundamental difference is, what’s the user doing? And then how many of them are there? Available there to you. You can’t create more. Yeah, you reach a ceiling. Most advertisers probably don’t have a budget where they’re going to reach that ceiling. But if you’re very niche service, you reached it. You reach it really quickly. You get

Caleb Agee 17:34
you get who’s searching. And you can’t go, we can’t run around and make people search for what you’re selling. Yes,

Brandon Welch 17:42
there’s a there’s a measurement inside, yeah, but there’s a measurement inside Google. We have a friend who has, like, a he does a really specific thing under houses, like a foundation repair guy. There’s not that many people looking for foundation repair. High margin, really great business. But in the grand scheme, a town of a million people can probably support two or three medium sized companies, and the rest are just onesie twosies. Yeah? He actually could, literally and very quickly reach all of the searches that are available to him in his market. Google would say, Cool. We come back tomorrow. Nobody’s searching Latin today. Nobody’s searching

Caleb Agee 18:19
for that. Yeah, the only other way to get is you get creative. You say crack in my foundation or something like that, and then you get a little different. But, yes,

Brandon Welch 18:26
okay, cons, currently it’s jacked. Google is jacked. We’ve talked a lot about that. There are some categories. I’m talking windows, doors, roofing, all of the luxury and upgrade remodel type Home Improvement services. We’ve done a lot of that, and even three or four years ago, we could still get a customer opportunity and have somebody in their living room talking to them about doing moving forward with that for 100 150 bucks total in now, we’re gonna do some math there in a second, but that’s, that’s like three or $400 yeah. And that’s largely due because Google is trying to create more inventory and charge more for it, because they are a machine that does not settle for leveling profits. Publicly traded

Caleb Agee 19:15
company with shareholders to answer to always want

Brandon Welch 19:18
more, more more. Yep. And even in the economy, is doing less less less. Google wants more and more, so they have to charge more for it, and they have to find a way to make more inventory that is at a lesser quality. They’re the proverbial putting sawdust on the horse feed. Ever heard that one? No, yeah. It’s the guy who puts a, you know, 10% sawdust in his horse feed to make it go longer he goes. This is great. I didn’t notice anything different. Then does a little more, a little more, a little more than one. Pretty soon his horse dies and he figures out, oh, wow, cool. It’s expensive lesson of the day. So that’s what they’re doing. They’re doing a lot of different ways. They’re trying to push more AI features and trying to, you know, Flash shiny objects, to marketers who don’t know better, but you do know better because you’re the. In the Maven marketing podcast, and you’re just going to go into Google with a skeptical, less rosy expectation than what was in the past, because you have to be dadgum good to get it to be profitable. Yeah,

Caleb Agee 20:13
be watching from all angles. You really they’re getting fast and loose with even how, if you, if you wanted you know exact and phrase match terms, those are also getting loose as well. They get they’re becoming closer and closer to broad match, which is just like, yes, we’ve talked about this before, but

Brandon Welch 20:29
they put, they’re putting your ads in front of less serious buyers. Is effectively what it is, or possibly robots. If you don’t click the right buttons, there aren’t buyers at all so and then on top of that, just because they wanted to, they increased, they jacked up the price over 200% in the last couple years. So it’s, it’s becoming one of the most expensive ways to earn customers if you’re not a known and liked and trusted company. Yeah. Matter of fact, I used to be able to hit home runs for brand new companies out of the gate and be like, this is undeniably going to be at least profitable. So we can build, build, build, build your machine and then go start doing these other broad media types. Yeah, we would have to work three to four times as hard. And I’m still, there’s still some categories right now that if it’s really competitive, man, I don’t know that Google is my launching. They

Caleb Agee 21:18
outpace, they outpace the economy, in their in their pricing, and that doesn’t work for the business owner, yes,

Brandon Welch 21:25
because, okay, we used to be getting clicks for five to 10 bucks in, you know, and I’m talking Home Improvement services that would have a five to $10,000 in price tag and and a couple few grand profitability in that sale, so they could afford to get and pay for lots of clicks to just let that system come out right now, but even in the Midwest, even in not like extremely competitive markets, I’m seeing an average of at least $20 a click for Home Services. I’m seeing it illegal, and I’m also starting to see it more in medical. For the record, I think Medical is the safest of those things, just because the lifetime value of patience, and there’s just a more profitability associated with that. But let’s just assume you are a $10,000 average ticket sale home improvement. You’re paying $20 a click in most categories, if not more. If you have a really, really good website and a decent you know, brand trust factor built because you’ve focused on the tomorrow customer. You can get a 10% of those clicks to convert into a lead. Do the math, that’s $200 a lead. You have to buy 10 clicks for one to turn into a lead. It’s 200 bucks. On the high end, you’re going to get three out of four of those to convert to convert to an appointment. Some of them are gonna be knuckleheads or don’t need what you sell. But if you’re really, really good at chiseling this down, you’ve got really good people on the phones and responding to your emails. 75% that puts you at a $266 appointment cost and a 50% close rate. You’re paying $500 $532 to be exact, if you close half of those leads, which all those are at the high end of performance, right? That’s cost to acquire the sale. It’s cost to acquire, you know, a sale that you might have two or $3,000 in profit in now, that’s profitable. I would trade 532, for 3000 all day long. Yep, I would do that. But my margins for error are quite a bit less than they used to be, because most people listening to this, if you haven’t focused on the things we’re talking to you about, that’s actually more like a 5% conversion rate on your website, the click is still 20 bucks, but now you paid $400 for a lead,

Caleb Agee 23:33
and your train and your sales trainee gets those leads, yes, and converts them at 30% or

Brandon Welch 23:41
your receptionist who hasn’t been trained, you know, God love him or her, but hasn’t been trained to properly get people to the next step, and they’re only setting, you know, half of those to an appointment. So now you’ve got an $800 cost per appointment, and now you know you can’t miss very many of those swings, or you’re getting into unprofitable mode. You got to have at least a 50% close rate. Most are to 30 to 40, but yeah, you know, and so, so you got into your 3000 Exactly, right? You don’t have much hay left, and that’s before you paid the the agency or the expert to run the media for you, right? So stakes are high on Google, and that’s why I kind of hate their guts. We do it. But for the average business owner, Google used to be just, you could put money there, and it was gonna shake out one way or another, whether you knew this stuff we’re talking about or not. But our team like, it’s a, it’s a weekly grind to keep the metrics at this level and they’re really good at like, we’re not, like, we’ve been doing this a long time. It’s not and by the way, that’s what my peers in the agency experience and all of that stuff. So profitability and margin for error is all gone down in Google. And I’m not trying to, I’m not trying to. Making a big bad wolf. We’ll spend multiple, multiple six figures on Google this month. It’s not even, it’s not like, we don’t do it anymore. I don’t got a dog on that fight. I’m just

Caleb Agee 25:07
telling you, it’s harder than it used to Yeah, yeah. Let’s talk about Facebook. And we’re talking about, actually, when we talk about this, talking about meta ads, everybody just calls it Facebook is actually Facebook and Instagram. And if you don’t check, if you don’t uncheck a certain but button, it could be a lot of other places, another junk that met up there. We try to just stick with those two, but that’s what we’re mainly talking about, lead generation on Facebook and Instagram. So ads,

Brandon Welch 25:31
yeah, so Google, the equation was, you enter the keywords you want your ads to show up for. Ideally, you show them an ad with some text that gets them to click to your landing page, and your landing page takes them to the next step, and you go from there. Yep, Facebook is a little different. That’s kind of sort of still the call to action, but I have to intercept them in a different mode. Okay, yes, I’m on Mindlessly scrolling, or she’s on Mindlessly scrolling, you know, looking for cat videos. That’s what Nate does, I know, but he’s doing it right now and paying attention. And in the back of my mind, I’m, I’m, you know, I’m tiptoeing into some categories of buying, let’s say I’ve got an old roof, and I know I need to replace it, but I’ve just been putting it off. Or this morning, I had a pain factor with my refrigerator because it was not acting the way it should. But I’m putting it off. It’s not

Caleb Agee 26:16
there’s a red hot problem. Being in the side of your car, you need, need to call Papa, you know, pop it in. But pop a dent. That’s a great name for that’s a really good

Brandon Welch 26:26
you can take that, yeah, somebody grab that one and send, send Caleb a check for royalty.

Caleb Agee 26:32
You can, yeah, you’d call the dent the dent fixer. And, no, I like Papa, den, Papa den. I feel like Papa didn’t feel like it needs, like an Italian Papa didn’t pop it in. Yeah?

Brandon Welch 26:43
PDR, company and you want to rebrand. We got half the work done. Just give us a call. Yeah, it’s gonna be really cheap. So okay, we those ads write themselves. But you got a dent in your car you haven’t taken out in a while? Yeah? Papa dent comes along says, I’ll give you a special offer. Intercepts, earns your attention, right?

Caleb Agee 27:07
Yeah, you need it, but you can ignore it. I’ll

Brandon Welch 27:10
give you another one. Moms who are secretly like, been going, Oh man, I wish my kid was in music. I wish they could play piano or whatever, and but they ain’t got the time of day to call. The music store doesn’t even know who to call. Yeah, music store comes up and says, music less is starting, you know, Friday or this next week or whatever. That’s a timely offer, right? That’s she was in tomorrow mode, and that nudged her over into today mode. She might do something about it.

Caleb Agee 27:36
Okay, so that’s the nature, if it’s not clear, that’s the nature of this Facebook. Audience is they are straddling the line between tomorrow customer holding on waiting and we are going to push them into this today. Customer land, sometimes with

Brandon Welch 27:52
an offer creativity or otherwise creating desire that they can’t say no to. Yep, we have to make we have to make doing something more attractive than continuing to not do something on Facebook. So

Caleb Agee 28:02
pros for Facebook, you’re often in the first one to reach them because they’re higher in that funnel. You’re not holding the net at the bottom. Yes, you’re reaching them a little bit sooner than the finish line. You get to be the one that beats everybody who’s waiting for Google, the Google Search to happen. You get to be there a little bit earlier? Yes,

Brandon Welch 28:21
yeah, you’re you’re before the finish line, and in a lot of categories. Still, yet today, as of 2024 there are a lot of local service type companies or good, you know, high end products that aren’t aggressively using Facebook near as much as they are Google, like Google is the commoditized, transactional bear that we all have to deal with. And even though Facebook’s not new, there’s a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot a lot of inventory, like millions of minutes spent every day on Facebook. And so therefore every fifth or sixth scroll through is an ad, and there’s a lot of inventory there, so you can simply reach more. And remember we said the Google, CPM, the cost to reach 1000 people was, like, at least $800 Facebook can be 10 to 20. And so just think about that’s that’s literally 80 times more people they’re reaching. There’s a give and take on that we’ll get. There’s give and take. Now, they’re not as hot and ready to buy now, however, you can reach a lot more of them for cheaper money, which which leads to a lower cost lead. Okay, yeah. In the meantime, in between that, you’re not just showing them text and saying click now because they wouldn’t, you’re showing them a video that’s compelling, that’s creating a desire that showing how pretty it is, showing how great their life’s going to be, writing nice, long form, big, beautiful text that Leslie taught you how to do a few episodes back about how to, you know, get them to imagine taking action with you. You are. You

Caleb Agee 29:56
can test multiple headlines. You can test your. Really test different ads and landing pages. That’s the cool thing about Facebook ads. You can A, B, C, D, E, F, test these things. That’s right, and find out which one works.

Brandon Welch 30:09
You’re using sound too. Yeah, that’s not a component of a Google Click. You are also getting the benefit of people who chime in and comment on that ad, the social proof and how many likes and hearts does it have next to it? How many times has it been shared? And you get this added benefit of people who go, Yeah, that’s a cool company. Oh, this is so cool. You

Caleb Agee 30:27
get a little bit of you get a little bit of an algorithmic boost there too. Yes, people start sharing it, liking it, face, not Google. Facebook will actually give you more for your money, in that case, because they find you more relevant. Google can’t do that. Yes, you’re just stuck when somebody searches pretty crazy, undoubtedly.

Brandon Welch 30:44
So you got the rich media, you got the social proof, you got the social sharing. You got the ability to quickly retarget because Facebook, the thing about Google is when I when I search for something and I find it today, I don’t ever go back to Google for that thing again. Facebook, I could look at something today. Get busy, get bored, not take action tomorrow, Facebook. And I will just tell you this moment in time, Facebook has really, for a while, their algorithm sucked. It’s really, really doing a great job of following Caleb around, because he stopped to look at a drum set, and now he’s seeing other drum sets immediately. And it happens to all of us. Used to be pretty sophisticated and chiseled to do that as a marketer. Facebook’s kind of doing it on its own. Yeah, so it’s doing a really good job of knowing pretty quickly, hey, you’re considering this product. Let’s show you the others. Let’s show you the others. And specifically, if your ad got clicked on, you will be one of those that gets shown and it’s just the quality factors going up that. So that leads to a very cheap cost of exposure, comparatively, and a very cheap lead. Some benchmarks we are seeing providing that the landing page was well done, and we’re doing all the things well. In the messaging department, we can expect one out of six of the Facebook leads that we get to convert to some sort of an appointment or like sales presentation, yeah. Okay, Welch, go

Caleb Agee 32:09
ahead, which is different from Google. And what was, what was the rate on Google? Remind us, well,

Brandon Welch 32:14
we were talking earlier about leads on Google costing at least $200 like. That’s that’s not out of the norm for a service based company that has those kind of profits, profit margins. Facebook leads not at all unreasonable to get a 25 to a $30 lead. We’re doing it all day, every day here for our campaigns for a local based business, right? That’s really, really good. So, but so, but the appointment costs, remember earlier, at $200 a lead, because only half of them set to an appointment is $400 for an appointment. Now, even if I get, even if five of them are bogus, and by the way, with Facebook, you have to follow up, and you know, you have to really work these leads more more. But even if only one of them out of six sets, I’ve got $150 cost per appointment. Okay, so good. So it’s a lot more grind to get there, but the media to sales opportunity is the less money. And if I close those at the same rate, and that’s just that’s a salesmanship thing, then I’ve got three or $400 well, 300 of those at that math, but three or $400 is not unreasonable at all to make $3,000 on a, yeah, on a on a roof or a set of Windows or siding or whatever I’m selling. So the but there the caveat, you got to have more labor and follow up. So you’re paying somebody hourly, or somebody be on the phone. More. Be on the phone more. You don’t tie up your bandwidth, and if you don’t, if you don’t have the right mindset for that person or the right person doing that, or the patience, or the patience to

Caleb Agee 33:47
wait for those leads to come from that today category and slide over, or it’s for sorry, from tomorrow to slide over to today. Yes, we’ve got to make sure that you have the patience to to know this is a Facebook lead. Not all of them are hot and ready to buy right now, correct?

Brandon Welch 34:04
Yes. And you have to have that mindset, yeah. And if you don’t, you’re, you’re going to be tremendously frustrated with Facebook, and you’re going to quit it, and you’re just going to be like, ah, these are junk leads. And it didn’t work. Shut up about your cost per lead. You know, Mr. Marketer, and put it all back on Google. At least on least on least I can get a hold of people there. Yeah, you’re gonna have a bunch of people who can’t get a hold of on Facebook. However, those people that you, quote, unquote, couldn’t get a hold of are still valuable. Put them in your CRM. Drip on them. Guys. I’m seeing clients of mine that started Facebook lead gen, let’s just say it was earlier this year, yeah, 678, months later, the profitability continues and continues and continues to improve, and they’re selling $10,000 jobs that they were like, you know, six months ago. They were like, screw these people. I can’t get a hold of them. Yeah, I can’t get them. And now they’re like, yep, you’ve been calling me and that now, you know, I’m ready to go and. And it’s like, guess what? They were first. They were first on the list. That’s always good, right? Yep, he who gets the most time with a customer wins. They got the most time with the customer. They’re they’ve been emailing them all along. They’ve been nudging them over the line, circle

Caleb Agee 35:15
back in your phone, your phone schedule, yes, call them again.

Brandon Welch 35:18
A lead is a person with a need, and Facebook leads have needs, they just may not be needs yet. Yeah, Google leads are needs right now. Facebook leads are needs just not yet. Yeah, but you do the right thing, which, by the way, in between that those email touch points and those extra calls and those systematic follow ups are touch points that make you, like, 50 times more credible than every other donkey on the list,

Caleb Agee 35:46
fly by night. Yeah, you are there and you’ve been there for six months. Yep. And so when you for bond, when you first start these Facebook leads, if you haven’t started them, you will feel this like, Ooh, I don’t know the lead quality. That’s what you’re gonna say. Lead Quality is not grateful that that may feel true, but hold on for a minute, because you will, the cost is way lower, so it’s okay. We can, we can go through a couple more to get the same result. That’s okay. But then also the compounding result of that, those five that didn’t pick up, or said Not right now you are, you have them in your system, and you’re going to continue to grow them. You’re going to keep watering them after month, and you will see those turn into leads next year, maybe. Yeah,

Brandon Welch 36:29
those are seeds planted in the fall. They come up in spring, right? Last thing, cherry on top, you reach 10s of 1000s of people just, just because they didn’t respond, your lead doesn’t mean they didn’t see the ad. Yeah, that doesn’t happen on Google. No,

Caleb Agee 36:42
if you only measure Facebook as a lead gen yes, you’re running lead gen ads. That’s the objective. You tell Facebook, that is the goal. You tell it to do you, but you still got to show your ad to 10s of 1000s of people along the way, and that

Brandon Welch 36:56
was a micro impression that made them think of you, maybe hopefully, like you and trust you in the long run more. So you got a tomorrow factor out of it. So Facebook’s a good in between today and tomorrow. Media, you get a little bit of the best of both worlds. And if you have the propensity to follow up and take them to that buyer’s journey, you’ll win the customers will pay for the media. And you got the get the cherry on top, for free, you got the 10s of 1000s, hundreds of 1000s of people over a month advertising for free. So

Caleb Agee 37:26
we were asking at the beginning of this episode, which one’s better?

Brandon Welch 37:31
Conclusion, Google wins if you can pay more than your competitors for a customer, if you can offer the bigger discount, and if you can respond the fastest to the lead, Facebook is better if you can afford to create ads that are entertaining, if you can demonstrate that you have the best value, and if you can afford to wait for the right time for the customer to act, take a self assessment. Where are you on that spectrum? If you are just down and dirty, you don’t have a big, fancy ad agency. You don’t have creative that is ready to rock, probably wait for a good writer or a time you can find or afford somebody to do Facebook the right way and just lean into Google, yeah, because we get a faster result to be more predictable. But if you’re going, Hey, I’ve got Google under my belt. I know what I’m dealing with. I can get that transactional customer when I want it, but I want a little bit more of a premium, curated opportunity for my people to go sell products to Facebook is going to be a better platform for that, right?

Caleb Agee 38:31
And we’ll tell you, for most of our more established clients, it’s both. We’re not we’re not picking one or the other. We are doing both because we want to reach people at both times, at both ends. The the last thing I’m going to say before we sign off here, pay attention to where this lead came from, and what that user mindset was. You’re so, so important. Your person calling these people back needs to know exactly what mode, whether they were a Facebook lead that’s in tomorrow sliding into today mode, or did they search for I need you right now? Yes, and choose you fill out the form the I need you right now. Conversation should go much differently than the I think I might need you here in the near future. I’m just curious, tipping my tone. I just want to know how much the cost is. That is a different conversation, and you need to make sure that your people on the phones are having that conversation very differently. If

Brandon Welch 39:29
you put the human being, their needs, pains, hopes and fears and their life and their context and their situation first, you will win with both platforms, and you will make tons of money. You’re going to be filthy rich. We can’t wait to see it happen.

Caleb Agee 39:40
Tell us about hey,

Brandon Welch 39:41
somebody’s listening and they’re going, Yeah, but I can’t make my Facebook campaign do this, or I haven’t been able to make my Google campaign do this. We want to help you. If you are having problems with lead conversion, if you’re having problems with quality, and you’re going, what’s missing in my equation? There’s a lot more to say about each of these platforms and how to do it right. Send us an email to Maven Monday. At Frank and maven.com we’re going to pull it out. We’re going to either give you a quick answer or we’re going to say, let’s put that question on the show and dissect it and give you some ideas to try and we’ll make you more successful. That’s what we’re all about here, achieving the big dream to eliminating waste in advertising, growing your business. We’ll be back here every Monday with answers to your real life marketing questions, because marketers who cannot teach you why are just a fancy lot. Have a great week.