Why Google Ads works better than Meta for most of our B2B clients

We have had this conversation with probably fifteen clients in the last year. They come in wanting to run Meta ads because they understand Meta. They use Instagram. They see ads there. They feel like they understand what they are looking at.

For B2B, this is usually the wrong instinct. Not always, but often.

The intent question

The fundamental difference between Google Search and Meta is intent. On Google, someone searches "industrial cooling equipment manufacturer Pune" because they need industrial cooling equipment. That is an active moment of purchase intent. The person is already in the decision process.

On Meta, that same person is watching a reel or scrolling through updates from people they know. They are not in a purchasing mindset. You can interrupt them with an ad, and sometimes that works, but you are fighting the context of the platform.

For a manufacturing company trying to reach procurement managers, Google Search is reaching them when they are looking. Meta is reaching them when they are not. One of these is significantly easier to convert.

Where we have seen this play out

We ran a campaign for a B2B packaging supplier in Delhi. They had a Rs. 40,000 monthly budget. The previous agency had split it between Google and Meta roughly equally. Results were mediocre.

We moved everything to Google Search, narrowed the keywords to high-intent terms, added negative keywords to avoid irrelevant queries, and let it run for 90 days. Leads per month went from 4 to 11. Qualified leads (their sales team's classification) went from 2 to 8.

We have repeated this on four other B2B accounts with similar results. The exception is when brand awareness is the goal rather than lead generation, or when the product has a strong visual component that plays well in a feed.

Meta is not a bad platform. It is the wrong platform for certain jobs. B2B lead generation from search-driven intent is not its job. Google is built for that. Putting the budget where the intent is is not a complicated idea, but it requires resisting the instinct to go where you personally spend your time.