23 September 2026 · 6 min read · Oscar Markham
Meta or Google: which should a small business run first?
Almost every small business asks this and almost every agency answers with 'both'. That is usually self-serving. With a limited budget you should start with one, do it properly, and add the second when the first is working. Which one depends on a single question about your customers.
The question that decides it
Do people search for what you sell at the moment they need it? If your boiler fails, you search. If your roof leaks, you search. If you need a solicitor, you search.
But nobody searches for a hot tub, a new kitchen or a landscaped garden at the moment the idea occurs to them. Those are shown, not sought. That distinction decides the channel.
Start with Google when demand is urgent
Emergency trades, repairs, professional services with a deadline, anything with a legal or safety trigger. The person is typing the words, they want it solved today, and intent is as high as it ever gets.
Google costs more per click and converts far better, because you are catching somebody at the end of the decision rather than the start.
Start with Meta when demand is created
Home improvement, anything visual, anything discretionary, anything seasonal. Also anything in a rural county where search volume alone will not fill a campaign.
Meta reaches people before they are searching, which is the only way to reach them at all for a category people do not think to look up.
- Google first: boiler repair, emergency roofing, drain clearance, solicitors, vets
- Meta first: kitchens, landscaping, blinds, valeting, salons, gyms, tourism
- Either: most trades in a large city, where both have enough volume
The budget threshold
Below roughly a thousand euro a month in ad spend, splitting across both channels usually means neither gathers enough data to optimise. One channel with a real budget beats two with half a budget each.
Above that, adding the second channel is normally the highest-return move available, because you start catching the same customer at two different stages.
What actually goes wrong
Most campaigns that fail do not fail because the channel was wrong. They fail because the website did not convert, the phone was not answered, or the lead form asked nothing useful.
Fix those before switching channels. Changing platform rarely fixes a problem that was never about the platform.
Written by Oscar Markham, founder of Dublin Growth Digital. We run lead generation for Irish estate agents and trades, reported every Friday in enquiries and booked work.