Meta ads or Google ads? Which is best for MSPs?

Three MSPs this week have seperately asked me if they should be putting their money into Meta ads or Google ads.

The answer is... it depends! On what job you want the ads to do. Because they solve completely different problems.

How I believe you should think about it.

First, a reminder of the core principle: People only buy when they’re ready to buy

This is the single most important thing to understand before you spend a penny on any kind of advertising. It's the reason that managed service sales are soooooooooo slow.

Nobody switches MSP just because they saw an advert.

Instead, they switch when something has made them ready to go through the pain of moving. Maybe a really bad experience or a security scare. But more likely that their relationship has just deteriorated slowly over time. They perceive that service levels have got down as the price has gone up or the people that they used to enjoy dealing with have moved on

Advertising doesn't make them ready to buy. What it does is either build awareness for the day that readiness arrives, or capture people at the exact moment it already has. Those are two completely different jobs. And you have to pick the most appropriate advertising platform for those different jobs.

Use Meta for top of funnel and remarketing

Meta is fundamentally an interruption platform. People aren’t on Facebook or Instagram looking for an MSP. They’re scrolling, relaxing, catching up with friends, watching cat videos. And your ad interrupts that.

That makes Meta genuinely excellent for two specific jobs.

First is filling your funnel. You can use a modern lead magnet to get people into your CRM.

And the second is remarketing. Showing ads specifically to people who’ve already visited your website or engaged with your content, gently reminding them you exist while they move through their own decision making process in their own time.

What Meta is not good at is capturing genuine urgency. You will not find large numbers of business owners on Facebook right now thinking “I need a new IT provider today.” That’s simply not the mindset people are in on that platform.

Use Google Ads for identifying intent and capitalising on urgency

Google Ads is a completely different animal, because it captures intent.

When someone searches “IT support near me” they are actively, right now, in an urgent buying mindset. That is an extraordinarily valuable moment to be visible in.

The problem is that this intent is expensive to capture. Cost per click on competitive MSP search terms typically runs somewhere between $3 and $5, though specific keywords in busy markets can spike higher.

Cost per lead for managed services generally lands between $1,500 and $2,500. Maybe more, maybe less, depending on your market and your funnel. Plenty of MSPs report spending meaningfully more than that to generate a single qualified discovery call.

That sounds eye watering on its own. But here’s the question you need to ask yourself.

If a new client is worth $100,000 in lifetime value to your business, does spending a few thousand to acquire them still make sense?

Almost certainly... yes.

This only works, though, if you know your numbers properly.

• Your average client lifetime value
• Your close rate from discovery call to signed client
• And therefore what you can genuinely afford to spend per lead and still be profitable.

The budget reality

Most MSPs don’t run any paid ads at all. And it comes down to spare cash. If you don’t have budget sitting free to invest, don’t force it. Keep building your organic marketing consistently instead.

But if you do have some cash available, think of paid ads as a way to speed things up rather than replace what you’re already doing organically.

Meta is the more affordable entry point if you want to start experimenting. Filling your funnel and running remarketing at relatively modest daily spend.

Google Ads is where you go when you have real cash available and you want urgency and growth right now, provided you’ve done the maths on your client lifetime value and know the numbers genuinely work in your favour.

Which one are you currently running, if either? Let me know. I read and reply to every email😃