These days, popular ad networks like Google and Facebook tend to be a lot expensive and firm with restrictions. This situation has prompted marketers to seek new options with advertising their businesses online.
Sounds like you?
Whether you’re an experienced per-per-click advertiser or you’re new at it, there’s always a chance to explore a different and possibly better ad platform for your marketing. One thing you should know, though, is that every ad network is different in terms of audience, targeting options and bidding systems (costs too!)
So how do you find the right one for your business?
Today, we are looking at several alternative marketing channels that you can advertise on if traditional networks are too expensive or just aren’t the right fit for you. Let’s get right into it.
1. Quora advertising
Alternative Marketing channels: Quora advertising
First on our list of alternative Marketing channels is Quora.
No matter your industry, Quora is one of the best platforms where you can grow your audience and market your service. With over 300 million unique monthly visitors worldwide (students, professionals, investors, and experts from diverse backgrounds) Quora holds a lot of marketing potentials for advertisers.
Users seeking to use the platform for marketing purposes can leverage Quora for Business, a cheaper alternative to Google Ads.
Quora Ads is a self-serve platform where marketers can create ads and target active users. This feature enables advertisers to influence serious buyers using relevant, highly targeted ads.
Users can create two types of targeted contents on Quora: specific topics and questions (called contextual targeting) or create and target audiences based on pixel data (known as behavioral targeting). Ads can be text or image based.
One of Quora’s unique features is that it allows you place ad copy between posts in a relatable way, while you target new leads. Ads can be launched in minutes: select your objective; define scope (budget, audience & bid); create your ad (basically two lines of text and a landing page); then add payment details.
You’re set to go!
There are four main benefits that advertisers can enjoy from using the Quora platform:
- Large & engaged audience
- Quality content
- Higher user intent
- Ads measurability
These four factors are almost guaranteed to make an advertising campaign deliver profitable results.
Visually, Quora Ads are similar to Google Text Ads. The main difference is in their written formats. While Google Text Ads appear as capitalized title, Quora Ads are presented as written sentences preferably answering a question.
What targeting options are available on Quora, you may ask? There are different ad set targeting options, organized into four distinct groups.
1. Audience targeting
This is responsible for who or the type of user that sees your content on the Quora platform. The targeting types are Website Traffic Audience, Lookalike Audience, and List Match Audience.
2. Contextual targeting
Helps you control ads relevant to specific topics, keywords, or questions. The targeting types are Topic Targeting, Keyword Targeting, and Question Targeting.
3. Behavioral targeting
Displays ads based on user-specified interests or according to question history. Users will be able to see your ad based on their actions on Quora. The targeting types include Interest Targeting, Keyword History, and Question History.
4. Broad targeting
This option displays ads widely across the platform to max out potential impressions. The targeting type is Broad.
Compared to other alternative marketing channels, how much does Quora Ads cost? Well, signing up is free. You will only pay when someone clicks on your ad. Different factors are considered when determining your CPC, since the ads are charged on a cost-per-click basis.
Advertisers can control how much they spend and can adjust spend according to their needs, through Daily or Lifetime campaign budget options.
Finally, while Quora is a great marketing tool that thrives on a unique question-and-answer system, it’s important to remember that its paramount mission is to provide relevant and meaningful answers to questions, rather than just assaulting the community with advertising messages.
2. Twitch advertising
Alternative marketing channels: Twitch advertising
Next on our list of alternative marketing channels is Twitch.
Twitch is a live streaming platform intended for gamers and gaming influencers. In recent years, Twitch has included not just gaming but live streams for other contents like entertainment, music, sports, food, and lots more. Streaming duration range from just a minute to 8-plus hours.
The functionality of Twitch depends on your purpose, how you’re accessing the platform, and what digital device you’re viewing from. Specific streams can be found using target keywords and by browsing through categories. Once you find a streamer you like, follow their channel for regular updates.
Why should marketers care about Twitch?
As an Amazon-owned platform and with an active monthly user population of 140 million and a daily user count of 15 million, Twitch is a great marketing platform.
In Q3 2020, users watched 4.7 billion hours of live streaming on Twitch, giving this platform a whopping 72.2% market share in video game streaming. About half of Twitch users spend 20+ hours a week streaming live videos and games on the platform, with a daily hourly duration of around 1 – 2 hours.
At the point, putting into account all these Twitch statistics, perhaps the more appropriate question would be “why would you not leverage Twitch’s HUGE marketing potential?”
Minus figures, there are still other noteworthy reasons to use Twitch for your marketing. Two stand out particularly:
1. Live interactions
The Twitch community has two types of users: the creators and the viewers. The platform makes it easy for both to engage in real-time, creating a personalized and trusting experience for all.
2. Community
Twitch creators are typically dedicated and passionate about not only sharing their video game activities but also taking a healthy interest in getting to know their audiences and building a good relationship with them.
Streamers on this platform are also generous with their content, using free content to endear themselves to their viewers even further.
With Twitch, brands have a ton of marketing options. Ad types generally include: cross screen video, desktop video, homepage carousel, homepage headliner, medium rectangle, mobile video, super leaderboard, surestream, and multiplayer ads. Aside these options, however, brands can also partner with influencers and streamers on Twitch.
The cost of advertising on Twitch would depend on factors like the number of concurrent viewers, age and gender of viewers, seasonality, content type, and viewer location.
Twitch also allows partnerships with Twitch influencers. These variables make it hard to give exact figures on how much Twitch ads would cost. However, Investopedia estimates it at between $2 – $10 per impression. And now, let’s take a look at the next on our list of alternative marketing channels:
3. Reddit advertising
Like Quora, Reddit is one of the most interesting alternative marketing channels for advertisers, and a platform where users share information content and engage with others. With more than 52 million active daily users, it’s a platform you shouldn’t overlook when it comes to your brand’s marketing.
Again, like Quora, users can upvote or downvote posts, thus controlling the algorithm to (in the former case) push the most interesting posts to the top. What this means, essentially, is that if you’re using Reddit the right way, you can greatly boost exposure for your business.
Reddit focuses on niche communities, also known as subreddits. This helps you set up ads with a laser focus that makes it visible only to your chosen demographic and psychographic. When the right people are seeing a good ad, it’s easier to drive traffic, conversions and profits.
Ads on Reddit can come in the form of text, link, video, and/or gallery/carousel. While you may find one of these options is better suited to your specific marketing efforts, they’re all affordable and less risky, especially for small businesses.
Reddit supports self-serve advertising which functions by auction. How so? The auction model allows advertisers the chance to bid against one another to compete for impressions through CPM (cost per thousand), CPC (cost per click), and CPV (cost per view) bids. These ads typically cost just around $0.20 per bid.
4. Capterra advertising
Alternative Marketing channels: Capterra Ads
Our list of alternative Marketing channels continues with Capterra.
For marketers in the B2B SaaS industry, Capterra is a great place to list your products. B2B SaaS refers to a company that sells or provides software to other companies as a service, for example Slack, Salesforce, MailChimp, or HubSpot.
Capterra has a strong reputation as a software review website and for its solid organic & paid search rankings. A lot of users are using the network as a reference when looking for technology to buy.
As an established company, Capterra can significantly add to your lead generation funnel. If you’re a startup, it can help you in your first step to building demand before you find the perfect marketing channels and work on improving your website’s SEO.
Capterra has options for both free and paid listings. By default, it prioritizes categories starting with paid PPC listings, but the filters can be changed to “highest rated” or “most reviewed” products.
This means that if you’re not using Capterra’s paid service, your product can still rank at the top of you get impressive reviews on all of the 3 Gartner’s networks: Capterra, GetApp, and Software Advice.
One of the best benefits of Capterra’s PPC service is the link back to your website. With free listings, your profile page will only be displayed to users for reading of reviews.
Other Capterra advantages for marketers include:
- Ability to track competitors
- Quality paid traffic
- Conversions & CPA from paid listing
- Excellent customer service
Capterra’s average cost-per-click (CPC) can be compared with of platforms like Google AdWords or Bing Add. Typically, the price for a click is between $10 – $20.
5. Waze advertising
Alternative Marketing channels: Waze advertising
To finish the list of alternative Marketing channels, we have Waze.
Waze is a GPS app that helps you navigate to where you need to go by providing the fastest route possible. The software uses data crumbs from a user’s cell phone to determine traffic and road conditions in real time and how to how get past it to fastest by keeping you off saturated roads.
Waze has a highly engaged and loyal community of more than 130 million drivers worldwide (and growing!) Without question, this makes it a great place to advertise on if you’re into transportation or in need of one.
There are other amazing benefits to using the Waze app. You will likely be enjoying monopoly advertising on this platform, since the app doesn’t have much competitors.
The best part is that your ads will only be charged when a user is using the app’s navigation service. You will also like the non-disruptive nature of Waze, regarding ads; users are less exposed to ads while using the app.
Waze offers four different types of advertising: Branded Pin, Promoted Search, Arrow Ad and Zero Speed Takeovers. Let’s examine each.
- Branded Pin
Similar to a store sign, Pins inform and remind customers that your business is available and close to their route.
- Promoted Search
Waze makes your business rank top and visible to customers browsing for businesses like yours on the platform.
- Arrow Ad
Arrows help customers increase the association between a particular location and your brand, by indicating that your business is nearby.
- Zero Speed Takeovers
This option is an online billboard. It’s displayed when vehicles are at a stop to create awareness and action at important moments.
How does Waze work?
Once the Waze app is downloaded and installed onto your smartphone, you will be able to access some really cool features, such as the following:
- Live traffic update
Live traffic conditions and detour alerts
- Voice guided navigation
Request directions from drivers while they’re in their cars.
- Map view
Helps you see how long it will take to get to your destination via different routes.
- Others
You can also use the search address online to find the best routes for your trip based on what other users have shared about their experiences. There’s also a “share current location” feature, which can allow for easy pick-ups and tracking.
How much does it cost to use Waze?
It depends on how well you advertise. Typically, you have more chances of being seen if you have a large audience. With Waze, you can choose to tailor your ads only to regular Waze users, as this will probably help you save cost with just advertising once per week. Other marketers may prefer to pay extra money so that they can target a specific demographic.
Alternative Marketing channels: conclusion
Done correctly, ads on any of the above alternative Marketing channels can be a powerful element of the overall marketing strategy for your business. The key is to take time to explore each platform and decide which works best for your unique marketing needs. Once you are familiar with your chosen channel, you will be able to create incredible ads.
Again, no matter the platform you use, the focus should be to create targeted ads, as this can help you gain massive exposure for your brand and the products/services you offer. Before long, you will be enjoying a boost in traffic and sales.
Do you have any alternative Marketing channels on your mind that we may have missed? Leave us a comment below!
Do you want to learn some of the main reasons why you need to invest in Digital Marketing? Check this article!
