Services / Google & Meta Ads / Cork
Google & Meta Ads in Cork
Cork is our second home market. The work here leans technical — pharma and med-tech companies around Ringaskiddy and Little Island who need internal tools and portals, alongside consumer businesses across the city and harbour towns.
Two platforms, one budget, one report. Google puts you in front of people already looking for what you sell; Meta puts you in front of people who do not know you exist yet. Most businesses need both, in a specific order, and almost nobody needs as much of either as they are being sold.
MANAGEMENT FROM
€99 / month
MINIMUM AD SPEND
€999 / month
COUNTY
County Cork
CALL
+353 89 255 9931
EMAIL
info@mavstechnologies.com
Who we do this for in Cork
Pharmaceutical and med-tech, engineering and manufacturing, food and drink producers, and a healthy run of independent retail and hospitality.
Recent clients include ADS Design Studio, Greenwich Sandwiches and Bar, LocaToca Restropub, Stillorgan Gas and Electrical and Emmanuel Motors.
ALSO COVERED FROM CORK
Douglas · Ballincollig · Carrigaline · Midleton · Cobh · Mallow
SOUND FAMILIAR
When ads are the right answer
And when they are not. We would rather tell you before you spend than explain it in month three.
You launched and nobody knows you exist.
WHAT WE WOULD DO
Meta first, to build an audience and find out which message lands, plus a small Google campaign on your own name. SEO started in the background, because it will not carry you for six months.
The phone is quiet and you need work in three weeks.
WHAT WE WOULD DO
Google Search only, on the handful of terms that mean somebody is ready to buy today. Tight geography, tight budget, and a landing page built in the first week.
You have an agency and cannot tell what it is buying.
WHAT WE WOULD DO
A free audit of the account before you change anything. Nine times in ten the spend is real and the tracking is broken, which means nobody — including them — knows what is working.
You sell something people do not know they can buy.
WHAT WE WOULD DO
Almost entirely Meta. Nobody searches for a product category they have never heard of, so search volume is not the constraint — explaining it is.
Your best month is December and you need to fill it.
WHAT WE WOULD DO
Build the retargeting audience in October while traffic is cheap, then spend into it when everyone else is bidding. The audience is the asset; the December budget just cashes it in.
Your margin is thin and your order value is small.
WHAT WE WOULD DO
Possibly nothing. If a click costs [€4] and your average order makes [€9], paid search will not work no matter who runs it. We will say so, and talk about the website and SEO instead.
WHY BOTHER
Why run ads at all?
If SEO compounds and ads stop the day you stop paying, why pay? Because the two answer different questions. SEO answers "how do we still get customers in two years". Ads answer "how do we get customers this month" — and they answer a third question nothing else can.
THE TWO PLATFORMS
One catches demand. The other creates it.
This is the distinction that decides where your money should go, and it is the one most agencies leave vague. Google and Meta are not competing versions of the same thing. They do opposite jobs, and running one without understanding the other is how budgets get wasted.
Paid ads
Two jobs, two platforms
Catching demand
Google Ads
Someone has already decided they want this. They are typing it right now. You are paying to be the answer.
- SearchThe bottom of the funnel. Someone typed "emergency plumber dublin 8" and you are at the top of the page they read next.
- Performance Max and ShoppingFor a catalogue. Google places the product itself, and gets paid when it sells.
- Local and MapsThe call button next to your pin, for people who are near you and ready now.
- Brand defenceCheap, and it stops a competitor buying the space above your own name.
- Intent, priced honestlyWarmest traffic on the internet, and the most expensive clicks. Both facts are the same fact.
Creating demand
Meta Ads
Nobody on Facebook or Instagram is looking for you. The job is to make them want something they had not thought about this morning.
- Cold audiencesShown to people who match your best customers, not people who searched. Cheap to reach, hard to convince.
- Creative is the targetingMeta’s machine finds the audience. What you control is the thing it shows them, which is why the creative pipeline is the work.
- RetargetingThe people who visited and left. The cheapest conversions on either platform, and the first thing most accounts get wrong.
- Visual proofIdeal for anything that has to be seen to be wanted — a product, a space, a before and after.
- Demand you can growGoogle’s ceiling is how many people search. Meta has no such ceiling, which is where growth comes from once search is maxed out.
Meta creates the demand that Google then captures. Run Google alone and you are limited to the people already looking for you. Run Meta alone and you spend to create interest that nobody is there to catch. Which is why, when a budget is tight, we usually start with Google and add Meta once the searches are being answered.
THE BIT NOBODY WARNS YOU ABOUT
What ads do to your website
Turning on paid traffic does not just bring visitors. It applies pressure to the site they land on, and it finds every weak spot within a fortnight. This is the half of the job that is not in the ad account at all — and the half we can actually do something about, because we build the sites too.
THE HARD PART
How you stand out when everyone is bidding
Every competitor has the same platforms, roughly the same targeting and often the same agency playbook. Almost none of the difference between a good account and a bad one is in the settings.
A specific offer beats a louder ad
"Free quote" is what everyone says, so it is worth nothing. "A fixed price in 24 hours, or we pay for the callout" is a reason to click. The offer is the highest-leverage thing on the page, and it costs nothing to change.
Say the price
Most competitors will not. Publishing a number — even a range — filters out the people who were never going to buy and pre-qualifies the ones who were. Your cost per lead goes up, your cost per customer goes down, and only one of those matters.
Creative volume, not creative perfection
On Meta the account that tests eight ideas a month beats the account that polishes one. We shoot and cut in batches, because the winner is never the one anyone predicted.
Answer the objection in the ad
Whatever makes people hesitate — price, tie-in, how long it takes, whether you cover their area — belongs in the ad, not three clicks later. It costs you the clicks you were going to lose anyway.
Be the one who follows up
Most leads are lost after the form, not before it. A reply in five minutes beats a reply the next morning by a margin that dwarfs anything you can do inside the ad account.
Own the search for your own name
People who see a Meta ad go and Google you. If a competitor owns that search, you paid for their customer. It is the cheapest line in the account and the most commonly missed.
What running the account involves
Build and structure
Campaign structure that matches how you actually sell, conversion tracking that survives a browser blocking cookies, and the landing pages the ads need. Most accounts we inherit are measuring page views and calling them leads.
Creative and copy
Ad copy written from your sales objections, and a batch of Meta creative every month rather than one hero video a quarter. Static, video, and the unglamorous formats that quietly outperform both.
Weekly hands on it
Search-term mining, negative keywords, bid and budget shifts, killing what is losing before it spends the month. This is the boring part, it is most of the value, and it is the part that quietly stops happening on a cheap retainer.
What we will not do
We will not take a percentage of your ad spend. It pays us more to spend more, which is precisely backwards — our job some months is to tell you to spend less. Our fee is a flat monthly number agreed up front, it does not move when the budget does, and the ad account stays in your name with us added as a user. If you leave, you keep the account, the history and the audiences. We have watched too many businesses discover their agency owned all three.
Questions Cork clients ask
Do you actually come to Cork, or is it all calls?
We travel down for kickoff and for quarterly reviews as standard, and more often if the project needs it. Nobody has ever complained about an agency turning up too much.
We are in a regulated industry. Does that change things?
It changes the process more than the price. Validation, audit trails and change control get built into how we work rather than bolted on, and we will want your quality team in the room early.
Can you handle both English and Irish-language content?
Yes, and for public-sector work in Cork it is often a requirement rather than a nicety. Bilingual pages are set up properly with hreflang so neither version competes with the other.
How much should we spend?
Enough that the data means something, which for most local businesses in Ireland starts around [€X,XXX] a month. Below that the account cannot gather enough conversions to learn, and you are paying a management fee to guess. If that number is not realistic yet, say so and we will point you at SEO and the website instead.
Google or Meta first?
Google, almost always, if the budget only stretches to one. Catching people who are already looking is the shorter path to a sale. Meta earns its place once search is being answered properly, or when nobody is searching for what you sell because they do not know it exists.
How soon will we know if it is working?
You will see clicks on day one and that number means nothing. A real read takes 14 days on Google and 3–4 weeks on Meta, because both platforms need conversions before they can optimise. Anyone judging an account in week one is judging noise.
Let's talk about your Cork project.
Send a paragraph about what you need built. You will hear back within one working day from whoever would actually run the work — and if a trip to Cork is the quickest way to understand it, we will come to you.
Start the conversation