Meta ads suit products and services that people take to simply by seeing a photo or video. Restaurants, beauty, schools, housing and events are typical: industries where look and atmosphere are what sway the decision. Conversely, for industries where people search because they have a problem, Google Ads works first. If you're unsure, decide based on whether your customers search for you or fall for what they see.
Meta ads help people who aren't searching yet discover you
Meta ads are the ads shown on Instagram and Facebook. Rather than appearing in response to searched words, they deliver photos and video to people selected by criteria such as age, area and interests.
The difference from Google Ads is whether the customer is already looking.
| Item | Meta ads | Google Ads (search) |
|---|---|---|
| State of the viewer | Not looking yet. They notice the ad while browsing | Already looking. They are searching for words |
| Means of communication | Photos, video and short text | Headline and description text |
| Strengths | Getting known and getting liked | Reaching people who want it right now |
| Suitable products | Things chosen for their look and atmosphere | Things searched for by problem or purpose |
It isn't about which is better; you use each according to the state your customers are in when they learn about you. Many companies combine both: people get to know you through Meta, then later search your shop name on Google, where your ad reaches them.
Industries that suit Meta ads, and why
They suit industries where appearance, atmosphere and personality are the reasons people choose you.
- Restaurants. Photos and video of the food are the biggest motivation to visit
- Hair salons, beauty salons and nail salons. The finished look is the deciding factor. Note that there are advertising rules on how results may be described
- Schools and lesson studios. Seeing the trial sessions and the teacher's personality makes people want to attend
- Housing and renovation. Photos of completed work create the desire to enquire
- Events and seminars. Well suited to announcing dates and inviting applications
- Online sales of homeware, apparel and food. The appeal of the product comes across in photos
- Locally rooted shops. Because you can narrow the delivery area, you reach only people who can actually visit
What they share is the need to be seen and liked first, before anyone searches for you.
Industries that don't suit it, and what to consider first
For the following industries, consider Google Ads or search optimization before Meta ads.
- Things people look for in an emergency. For a water leak repair or a lock problem, people who want it solved right now use search
- Things that are always researched and compared through search. Insurance or correspondence courses for qualifications, for example, are decided after searching and comparing
- Highly specialized things whose appeal is hard to convey in images. When buyers are limited, such as for specialist B2B components, you need tightly targeted delivery
It's less a matter of being unsuitable than a matter of order. If your ad budget is limited, first put in place the ads that reach people who are already looking.
Choose your campaign objective by working backwards from results
With Meta ads, you choose the objective first. The objective changes how the people shown your ad are selected.
- Getting known. The stage of having people see your shop or product for the first time
- Getting visits to your website. The stage of having people look at your site
- Getting enquiries or sign-ups. The stage of collecting LINE registrations, bookings, brochure requests and the like
- Getting purchases. The stage of aiming at online sales revenue
Choose the objective based on where your business stands. If you've just opened and aren't known yet, start with ads that get you known. If you're already known and want applications, make enquiries or purchases the objective. If you start without deciding an objective, you can't judge the results.
You also need measurement set up so results can be counted. By installing tracking on your website and telling Meta what counts as a result, the ads are delivered more accurately to people likely to convert. If you leave this setup to an agency, decide together at the outset what will be counted as a result.
Images and video decide most of the outcome
With Meta ads, the quality of the images and video determines the results. Even with identical settings, changing the creative alone changes the response dramatically.
The steps for creating assets are as follows.
- Narrow it down to one message. With too many messages, nothing gets across
- Put an eye-catching visual in the first one to two seconds. For video especially, this is what decides it
- Show not just the product itself, but the situations it's used in and how the customer will feel
- Keep the text short. If there's a lot of text in the image, it won't be read
- Run several assets at the same time and keep the ones that perform
- Response falls if you keep running the same asset for a long time, so swap it out regularly
Check whether shooting and producing the assets is included in the management service or charged separately. Some arrangements cover management only, with you supplying the assets; others include video production as well.
Some expressions require care under the ad policies
Meta has advertising policies, and if you don't follow them your ads will stop being delivered. Particular care is needed with expressions that touch on physical concerns or changes in appearance. There are restrictions on how before-and-after images may be shown and on wording that refers directly to the viewer's physical characteristics.
In the beauty, health and medical fields there are also legal advertising rules: medical advertising guidelines for medical ads, and laws such as the Act against Unjustifiable Premiums and Misleading Representations for claims about effectiveness. Even when you outsource management, ultimate responsibility for the ads rests with your business. If you have doubts about the wording, check with the relevant authority or a specialist before running the ads.
Four things to check before outsourcing Meta ad management
- Whether your industry suits Meta ads, and whether they will tell you frankly if it doesn't
- Who produces the creative assets, and whether that is charged separately
- Whether they will set up measurement and define results together with you
- Which figures they will show you in the monthly report
An agency you can rely on is one that, when the numbers are poor, explains whether the fix lies in the creative, the targeting settings or the website.
Define your audience along three axes
With Meta ads you can set the criteria for who sees your ads. Three axes form the basis.
- Area. Narrow it to the range people can travel from. For shop-based industries this is the most effective criterion
- Age and gender. Narrow these when the people who use the product skew in one direction. Cast too wide a net and the ads show to unrelated people
- Interests and behavior. Narrow by interest in topics related to your product
If you narrow the criteria too far, few people see the ads and you won't gather enough data. A sound approach is to start a little broad and then narrow down after seeing who responds.
You can also reach people who have already visited your website, or people similar to your customer list. Showing an ad again to someone who has visited once makes an application more likely.
How to decide between outsourcing and running ads in-house
Meta ads are something you can start on your own. The table below is a guide to deciding.
| Situation | Suitable approach |
|---|---|
| Small budget, want to try it out first | Start in-house with a small spend |
| You can make time to create assets | Run it in-house and outsource only the advice |
| Your core work is busy and you have no time to make adjustments | Leave it to a management service |
| You want to run several ads in parallel | Leave it to a management service |
| You're unsure about counting and analyzing results | Leave it to a management service |
Ad management is a job of making small adjustments every day. Decide whether to do it in-house or outsource it based on whether you have the time to keep it up.
How to run small tests in the first month
Meta ads suit an approach of testing small and then scaling up.
- Prepare three types of asset. Vary the angle: a product photo, a scene of use, a person's expression
- Run them at the same time on the same budget
- After about a week, keep the assets that perform and stop the ones that don't
- Create new assets based on the ones that remain
Repeating this cycle is the foundation for improving results.
Diagnosing the problem when results don't come
When your ads are running but results don't come, look for the cause in this order.
- The ads aren't being seen. If impressions are low, the targeting may be too narrow
- They're seen but not clicked. Change the first second of the asset, or the short text
- They're clicked but don't lead to applications. Check whether the ad's wording matches the content of the page it leads to
- People drop off at the application entry point. Reduce the number of form fields
Working through the causes in order narrows the fix down to a single place.
FAQ
With Meta ads you can run on both at once. While looking at your customers' age range and usage patterns, we confirm with the numbers which one responds better.
You can, but with a small budget it's harder to gather enough data to make judgements. The realistic approach is to narrow to a single objective and start with a tight delivery area and audience.
If yours is an industry where customers search, start with Google Ads. If yours is one where people choose by look and atmosphere, start with Meta ads. If you're unsure, we'll advise you after hearing about your business situation.
You need a page beyond the ad that takes applications or bookings. The better your website or landing page, the more likely the ads are to produce results.
We start by discussing whether it suits you
We manage Google Ads, Meta ads (Instagram / Facebook) and more. Pricing varies with the size of the budget and the scope of management, so we provide a quote. To find out which suits your business, start by telling us your industry and your goals.
