The Lawn, Landscape, & Outdoor Living Business’s Guide to Facebook Ads & Google Ads: Which To Use and When
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The Content Team,
HALSTEAD.
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If you’re trying to decide whether to spend your lawn, landscape, and outdoor living business’s ad budget on either Facebook Ads or Google Ads, you may be approaching digital advertising with the wrong mindset. The question is not which to choose but how to leverage both to help you meet your business goals.
Both platforms target users at different stages of the customer journey. They’re complementary to each other, each serving different business objectives. Investing your ad spend on both platforms will help you reach new people and nurture existing leads.
User Intent and Its Correlation to Facebook Ads and Google Ads for an Outdoor Living Business
While Facebook tends to reach an audience with passive intent, Google targets an audience with active intent. Google is explicitly focused on what a user intends to do and serves ads to people based on their keyword searches. Facebook serves ads to people based on characteristics and general preferences. Put simply, Google focuses on keywords, and Facebook focuses on the audience, including their interests, behaviors, and demographics.
For example, when someone performs a Google search for “landscape design near me,” they’re likely searching for a local company that offers landscape design services. They have an active intent because they’re interested in landscape design and are near the bottom of the sales funnel. They’ll likely do some research on specific landscape contractors and then be ready to make a purchase.
When someone sees a Facebook Ad based on marketing targeting initiatives, they may not have intent or interest in landscape design but are within the company’s target audience. Still, the ad “plants a seed,” and they’re prompted to Like the business’s Facebook page or complete some other specified action to view more.
They may see a beautiful poolscape on the company’s website and imagine what it might be like to have a resort-style backyard. They’re intrigued yet not ready to purchase, putting them at the top of the sales funnel. Facebook Ads can drive leads to clients immediately, in the midterm, and the long term.
Studies show that consumers spend an average of 79 days gathering information online before making a purchase. The Facebook scenario demonstrates day one of that journey, while the Google scenario demonstrates somewhere around day 79. While Google Ads often convert faster than Facebook Ads because consumers tend to be in a later stage of the journey when they see a Google Ad, Facebook has a higher ROI due to its large audience and detailed targeting capabilities.
When Should an Outdoor Living Business Use Facebook Ads?
With 70% of internet users active on at least one Meta platform, including Facebook Ads in your digital marketing strategy can be effective. Since Facebook helps you reach customers near the top of the sales funnel, it’s an excellent tool for generating brand awareness with your target audience.
With first contact ads, Facebook Ads help you reach people who may or may not have heard of your business before—helping extend your reach to a highly qualified audience. Plus, today’s consumers are willing to discover new brands via social media. In fact, almost 55% of users follow or research brands using Facebook.
Leading lawn, landscape, and outdoor living businesses have at least three ad sets for cold traffic campaigns, with each set having at least three to five active ads. While most campaigns are traffic campaigns, using brand awareness is the second option if traffic campaigns aren’t working as effectively as you had hoped.
Special Offers & Service Awareness Campaigns
Facebook Ads can help increase exposure if you have a special offer running, such as offering a free pizza oven to anyone who books a paver patio project by a specific date. Perhaps your company offers irrigation system winterization. You could use Facebook Ads to increase awareness about this service, and since they are shown based on audience targeting parameters, you’re likely to reach potential leads.
Professional Visual Content
If you have professional videography or photography of a complete backyard transformation, Facebook is the perfect platform for sharing this visual content because it has more engaging ad creative options. Virtually all Facebook ad types allow for visuals, including ad types such as images, videos, slideshows, carousels, collections, and instant experiences.
With Facebook Ads networks, including the Facebook feed, Messenger, Instagram, and the Audience Network, this visual content fits seamlessly into these platforms that are already predominantly image and video based. Campaigns with videos should focus on video views as the top metric.
Lead Generation
With Facebook’s Lead Ad option, you can place a form directly in your target audience’s newsfeeds. They can enter their information directly within the platform to learn more or book a consultation. Plus, you can integrate your CRM system with Facebook Ads—to create a streamlined lead-generation process.
Retargeting Campaigns
Integrating the Meta pixel and your company website will enable you to retarget potential customers who have already visited your website. You’ll be able to segment website visitors by the specific pages they’ve visited, how long they’ve spent on the page, and several other behaviors and actions. Since this won’t be their first engagement with your company, the ads can help move the prospect through the sales funnel. It may include a link to the contact us page, feature a customer review, or information about financing or warranties.
For example, suppose a website visitor viewed your deck-building service page. In that case, a Facebook retargeting ad might show and link to a case study featuring a beautiful deck project, using location and the website traffic audience ad set. Each campaign generally has a minimum of three to five ads. These campaigns help warm up your leads and can lead to faster results and increased ROI.
When Should an Outdoor Living Business Use Google Ads?
There is no question that SEO is an effective method of improving rankings for organic searches, but it’s a long-term strategy that builds over time. For more immediate results, pairing search engine optimization efforts with Google Ads spending will yield the clicks you’re looking for. Considering 63% of people have clicked on a Google ad, people do take action on these types of ads.
Google offers a level playing field for businesses—the largest budget doesn’t automatically win. Instead, the user experience is the most important factor, making the quality and relevance of your content essential. Copy needs to be concise with a clear call to action at this stage, so you don’t risk losing potential sales. Since Google Ads tend to drive immediate leads, you’ll want to make it easy for the prospect to call or schedule a consultation.
Service-Based Campaigns
Google Ads tend to perform well for businesses in service-related industries, making them effective for businesses in the green industry. 82% of consumers say they’re likely to use a local service if it’s advertised on Google. You can implement this strategy by having a Google My Business account and connecting it with your Google Ads account.
These campaigns perform well because the businesses can receive a badge of trust from Google, which helps ensure prospects that they’re making a good choice. Google reviews provide the social approval factor, making them serve as modern-day referrals. The number of reviews your business has and your review score affect how your ads rank—garnering customer reviews and an effective reputation management strategy is essential.
Reaching Prospects Who Are Engaged in Research
Google Ads are especially effective at reaching prospects within the research phase of the customer journey. Your green industry business will show up on the search engine results page (SERP) when qualified consumers search for your services. Since consumers at this phase of the customer journey are nearing the “ready to buy” stage, it’s important that your ad copy is clear and concise and that you have plenty of positive Google customer reviews. As a result, you can increase your website traffic and receive more form submissions and calls.
Reaching Prospects Who Are Ready to Buy
The keywords used are the most important factor in whether you will make or break a Google ad. Reaching prospects in the ready-to-buy stage requires targeting the right keywords to reach them where they’re at.
For example, targeting the keywords “patio builders near me” is more specific than using the keywords “landscaping ideas.” When someone searches the former, their search intent leans toward transactional (ready-to-buy), whereas the latter keywords are more informational and used in the research phase. At HALSTEAD, we recommend using single keyword ad groups (SKAG) for more detailed data and to ensure that your ads aren’t competing against each other.
Setting Google Ads and Facebook Ads Goals
Both Google Ads and Facebook Ads involve a learning curve. While Facebook Ads is user-friendly and easier to learn, it doesn’t offer the same reporting and analytical data that Google Ads does. Both require significant time for effective management, which is why leading contractors recruit the help of a marketing agency for the task—helping them have a higher ROI on their marketing efforts, which requires a deeper dive into both platforms.
All ad campaigns should begin by clearly identifying your goals and who your target audience is. When you set SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based) goals, you’ll know when your campaign has been a success. At HALSTEAD, we focus on leads to gauge how many sales we bring in for our clients. However, there are a variety of goals that you can set. Do you want to increase brand awareness? Increase conversions? There are numerous analytics for which you can set goals and are essential to monitor.
Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
PPC is a digital advertising model where you pay each time someone clicks on your ad. Google Ads and Facebook Ads are PPC platforms and include all the platforms beneath each umbrella, such as YouTube and Instagram.
Quality Score
This Google tool is designed to show you how your ad’s quality compares to the ads of others. It is measured on a scale of one through ten and can be seen at the keyword level. Your Quality Score determines how your ad should rank based on factors including CTR (see below), keyword relevance, landing page quality, and past performance on SERPs.
Conversion Rate (CVR)
The CVR is calculated by dividing the number of conversions by the total number of impressions and then multiplying that by 100. What conversion you’re tracking can vary, but often will be when a prospect fills out a form, books a consultation, or makes a call.
Click-Through-Rate (CTR)
Your CTR is the number of clicks your ad receives when it appears in the search results. It is calculated by dividing the number of clicks by the number of impressions. CTR is an excellent way to gauge how well your ads are performing, as it shows prospects are taking action in response to your ad content. The higher your CTR, the better quality ad that matches the search intent and targets relevant keywords.
Cost-Per-Click (CPC)
Your CPC is the amount you pay per click for one of your PPC ads. CPC depends on your maximum bid, your Quality Score, and the ad rank of other companies who have bid on the same keyword. Ideally, CPC is $4 or less for residential. Commercial CPC is much higher, sometimes $50 or more.
Cost-Per-Mile (CPM)
CPM measures the cost per 1,000 ad impressions, which is why it’s often referred to as cost-per-thousand, despite the CPM acronym. CPM is calculated by dividing total ad spend by the number of impressions and multiplying that by 1,000.
Cost-Per-Engagement (CPE)
CPE is a pricing model referring to the amount you pay when someone takes a predetermined action with your ad. It is calculated by dividing your total amount spent by the total number of measured engagements.
Google Ad Rank
Your Google Ad Rank determines where your ads are shown on a page relative to other ads or if your ads will even display at all. It is calculated using your bid amount, auction-time ad quality (including expected CTR, relevance, and landing page experience), Ad Rank thresholds, the auction's competitiveness, and the search context. Simply put, Ad Rank is your max bid multiplied by your Quality Score.
Determining Your Google Ads and Facebook Ads Budget
Once you have identified your goals, assess your budget. Leading green industry companies invest 2%-5% of their top-line revenue into marketing. Google Ads spending tends to be higher than Facebook Ads because Facebook Ads spending goes further.
Your strategy will consistently change based on your business goals and current trends. Facebook Ads and Google Ads reporting will provide factual data proving your campaign's effectiveness. Analyze the results to help determine your next steps, creating clearly defined goals again.
Optimizing Your Landing Pages for Google Ads and Facebook Ads
Leading lawn, landscape, and outdoor living businesses never link from an ad to their website homepage. Instead, they link to an optimized landing page. The page where the user ends up after clicking on your ad impacts conversions. For example, suppose a prospect is interested in lawn fertilization services. In that case, they don’t need to see information on the landing page about building outdoor spaces, even if it’s a service you offer. They only need information about lawn fertilization and can navigate to other pages of your website if they want more.
75% of website credibility comes directly from the website design. While SEO optimization, professional photos, videos, and copy are essential, it also requires excellent website design. Loading time is critical, considering 74% of mobile users abandon websites that don’t load within five seconds.
Copy is another crucial component to optimizing your landing pages. Make sure to use headlines that are relevant and include the keywords you’re targeting. Copy must demonstrate your company's value and have a clear call to action (CTA).
Using Ad Extensions (Assets) for Google Ads and Facebook Ads
Ad extensions, also called assets, are pieces of information that can be displayed alongside your ads for free. They give prospects more reasons to choose your landscape-building business over your competition.
These assets can include headlines, descriptions, links to specific landing pages, call buttons, and location information, just to name a few. Using more content in your ad leads to more visibility and a higher ROI.
Assets are approved or disapproved, so adding an asset doesn’t guarantee that it will display with your ad every time. Assets are displayed when they are predicted to improve the ad's performance. Plus, your Ad Rank needs to be high enough for assets to display.
Ad extensions can increase your CTR and conversions, so incorporating your phone number is necessary. Since 70% of mobile users call the business directly through a mobile ad featuring a linked phone number, these assets are effective.
At HALSTEAD, we use call tracking for our clients with a local phone number specifically for your Google Ads and another for Facebook Ads. This strategy allows us to see the effectiveness of each campaign using factual data.
Choosing the Right Keywords to Increase Your ROI
Keyword research is integral to the Google Ads process. Google offers a Keyword Planner that makes the research a little easier. This tool provides suggested bid estimates for each keyword and then adds them to your advertising plan.
For example, choosing the right keywords will help you get the CPC on Google Ads as low as possible. Targeting relevant keywords that are low-cost and pausing expensive keywords to help lower the CPC will help you increase your ROI.
