"Should we start with Google or with Meta?" is the first question I get from a business that has never run ads. The answer depends on one thing: are people already searching for what you sell? Everything else, including which platform has cheaper clicks this month, comes second.
Before either platform
Type what you sell into Google the way a customer would. If competitors run ads and the results page is full of stores, people are looking for it, and Google Search can put you in front of them today. If the results are articles and forums and no ads, few people search for it yet, and you will need to create the demand.
Then ask whether the customer needs to see the product or asks for it. When a pipe bursts, you call a plumber by name; an armchair from a brand you don't know, you want only after you see it. Products people search for by name or by problem belong on Google. Products people discover while scrolling belong on Meta first.
The last question is how the customer buys: a phone call, a cart, a quote request, an app install. The answer decides what you measure, and it rules out some platforms straight away. A business that closes over the phone gets little from a platform where the ad leads to a feed post.
Three businesses, three starts
A plumber who lives on phone calls. Someone with a burst pipe searches, taps the first phone number that looks trustworthy, and calls. The first budget goes to Google Search with call-based conversions. Before that, the plumber fills in a Google Business Profile and collects real reviews: it costs nothing, and local customers find it on Google Maps and in Search. Meta comes later, if ever, for reminders in the service area.
A furniture store whose customers search by size or model: a 220 cm sofa, a 120 by 80 dining table, a bed frame by its model name. The customer knows what they need and types it. Shopping ads and Performance Max on Google come first, because Google matches the product to the exact search. Meta comes in later, to show the same products again to people who visited and did not buy, and to reach people who look like recent buyers.
Few people search for a new furniture brand yet, because they haven't heard of it. Google Search would spend the budget on generic queries and lose to bigger stores, so Meta goes first: short videos and product photos shown to a broad audience, with a purchase as the goal.
A small budget goes to one platform
With a small monthly budget, the worst plan is to split it across both platforms "to see what works." Each platform then gets too little data to learn from, and after a month neither has enough conversions to judge.
What counts as small depends on the country and the product. For an online store selling to the US, my working minimum is $50 a day on Meta and $50 a day on Google. I have accounts that got to good results on $10 a day on Google and $30 a day on Meta; they got there, it took longer. In the UK I run an account on £25 a day with a cost per lead I am happy with. If the budget does not cover both minimums, it covers one platform, and that platform gets all of it.
Clients sometimes choose differently. One online store went with Meta where I had recommended Google, and the forecast held: the account took longer and more money to get going, because some platforms need the business and the account to look trustworthy before they deliver steadily, and a small budget makes that slow.
Adding the second one
The second platform makes sense once the first has a stable cost per result and raising the budget there stops improving it, once you have enough visitors and buyers for the second platform to build audiences from, and once tracking works well enough to judge both by the same numbers. It also needs someone with time to watch two accounts.
When you do add it, give the second platform its own job. Google finds the people who are searching, and Meta reminds the people who visited and introduces the brand to people who look like them. Read each platform's report against that job, and against the store's real revenue divided by total spend, because both platforms will claim the same orders.
At the other end of the scale the question disappears. One store I manage went from $20,000 a month in ad spend to $30,000 within a month, and the plan is $50,000. It runs Google, Meta and Pinterest at the same time, because at that spend every platform gets enough data to learn from and each one has a job of its own.
My tip: the first question I ask a new client is: are people already searching for you? If yes, we start with Google. If no, we start with Meta. Launching both at once on a small budget is the fastest way to learn nothing about either.
If you are about to spend your first ad budget and want the decision checked against your numbers, that is what a one-hour consultation is for.
