A local business owner told us he was putting real money into Facebook and Instagram. The ads looked good and the engagement was decent, but the leads still felt thin. The usual Google Ads vs Facebook Ads debate asks which platform wins. His problem wasn’t that. It came down to one gap, and it has very little to do with the ads themselves.
Facebook ads get you noticed. Google Ads gets you chosen.
Facebook and Instagram are very good at getting your name in front of people. Someone scrolls past, clocks who you are, maybe files it away for later. That has real value. But it’s the start of a decision, not the end of one.
When that same person actually needs the job done, they don’t scroll back through their feed to find you. They open Google and type it in.
When someone needs the job done now, they search Google
- The geyser bursts. They search for a plumber and call whoever answers first. If you’re a plumber, that’s the moment Google Ads for plumbers is built around.
- They’re pricing solar. They search, open a few tabs and compare installers — the buying journey behind Google Ads for solar companies.
- They’re comparing security companies. Same pattern: search, shortlist, call. See Google Ads for security companies.
In every one of those, the decision gets finalised on a search results page. If your ads only lived on social, you weren’t there for the moment that mattered. Worse, you paid to warm the lead up — and a competitor who was on Google quietly closed it.
Social builds familiarity. Search captures the decision. Run only the first and you’re paying to warm up leads that someone else finishes.
Why more Facebook and Instagram budget won’t fix thin leads
When leads feel thin, the instinct is to spend more on the channel that’s already running. But a bigger social budget puts your name in front of more people who aren’t ready to buy yet. It does nothing for the page they land on when they are.
And this isn’t the tired “Google vs Facebook” argument, where one has to win. They do different jobs at different moments. The problem is running only one of them.
Google Ads now does both jobs: awareness and search
Google Ads is no longer only the channel that catches people who are already searching. Demand Gen campaigns and YouTube put you in front of people before they’re looking — the exact job most owners hire Meta for. Google itself positions Demand Gen for social advertisers who want visual ads across YouTube, Discover, Gmail and the Google Display Network. Then Search and Performance Max catch people the moment they’re ready to buy.
Here’s the same journey as a quick reference:
| Stage | What the customer is doing | Where you show up |
|---|---|---|
| Before they’re looking | Scrolling or watching. Not shopping yet. | Demand Gen, YouTube (or Facebook and Instagram) |
| Actively searching | Comparing options, checking who’s nearby. | Search, Performance Max |
| Ready to choose | Typing the exact service and location, about to call. | Search, with call and form tracking |
Run inside one Google Ads account, that’s one set of numbers and no arguing over which platform gets the credit.
When Facebook and Instagram ads are still the right call
None of this makes Meta useless. Social is the better tool when:
- Your service is something people don’t yet know they need, so nobody is searching for it.
- Your work is highly visual and you want to be seen, such as before-and-afters.
- You want to stay in front of people who’ve already visited or shown interest.
- Search is already covered and you want extra reach on top.
For most local service businesses — trades, security, solar, legal — the demand already exists: people are searching. In that case our view is simple. Cover the decision first, then pay to build awareness on top of it. The industries we work in are almost all of this type.
Are you missing from Google? A 3-step check for this week
- Search for your service in your town, on your phone, the way a customer would. Who shows up? Are you there?
- Ask your last ten customers what they did right before contacting you. Count how many searched for you or for your service.
- Trace where your leads come from. If calls are your leads and you can’t tell which ads produced them, that’s the first thing to fix — see the seven ways Google Ads wastes your budget.
If the honest answers are “I’m not there” or “I can’t tell”, that’s your gap.
Google Ads vs Facebook Ads: the short version
- Facebook and Instagram ads get you noticed. Google is where the decision gets finalised.
- For most local service businesses, people are already searching, so cover Search first.
- Google Ads can also do the awareness job, with Demand Gen and YouTube in the same account.
- Keep Meta when your service is undiscovered, highly visual, or you want to re-reach past visitors.
It was never about picking a channel. It’s whether you show up for the whole journey, or only the easy part at the top.
If you’re weighing Google Ads vs Facebook Ads for your own business, our free audit checks where you’re missing from that journey. For the budget side, read what Google Ads really costs in South Africa, and see the method against real numbers on the results page.