How Facebook, AdWords can work together

Facebook has been taking a beating recently about attribution, the worth of ads placed on the site and the change in algorithms that has some businesses seeing little return even on status updates. But one expert advises brands not to give up on social and instead to look at it differently.

by Kristina Knight

"While we are seeing plenty of last-click sales for our clients directly attributable to Facebook, there is no question Facebook has an attribution problem. But, this presents an opportunity for savvy marketers," said Bob Buch, CEO, SocialWire. "Much of [the Google and retargeting] spend is targeting people that would have purchased anyway - they have already expressed intent to buy by either visiting the site or searching for the product. The value of Facebook is that it can be used as a platform to grow demand - something that Google and retargeting are both uniquely ill-suite to do."

Opportunities like multi-touch attribution solutions that look at more than where that last click takes a shopper. Buch notes that Facebook and Google's AdWords solution can work together, with Facebook picking up where AdWords ends.

"Think of AdWords and Facebook in the context of apple farming. AdWords is highly efficient at producing apples, but once you've picked them all, throwing more apple pickers at it won't yield any more apples. Facebook is the equivalent of planting more trees," said Buch. "Let's say you sell shoes online - if you buy the keyword "riding boots" on Google, no amount of additional spend is going to cause more people to search for "riding boots." But if you take your 100 riding boots SKU's and promote them on Facebook, you will not only get some folks to buy them directly from the ads, you will cause more people to search for riding boots by creating demand."

More from Buch and SocialWire later this week, including how to use promoted posts to reach people outside your fanbase.

Image via Shutterstock

Tags: advertising, facebook advertising, google adwords, integrated marketing, socialwire