Thus far, digital marketers have extolled the virtues of advertising on search engines and social media platforms like Google and Facebook. While that is all well and good, it’s worth bearing in mind that these platforms are businesses that profit off simply capturing and retaining attention.
In fact, Google’s advertising business generated nearly US$150 billion in 2020 alone while Facebook’s advertising model earned it US$ 84.2 billion that same year.
While both platforms will get you the audience you look for, there are other options for you to consider when parking your advertising budget. Here’s three of the most important ones.
Outbrain
If your company has the foresight to invest in content for your website, Outbrain can help to drive traffic your way. The native advertising company works by letting business owners display their content on media publishing sites. That means, as a business owner, you can embed your articles, blog posts, photos or videos on popularly read media like CNN, Time and The Washington Post just to name a few to drive traffic to your site.
According to Nasdaq, “In 2020, Outbrain provided personalized content feeds and ads to approximately 1 billion monthly unique users, delivering on average over 10 billion recommendations per day, with over 20,000 advertisers using its platform.”
Tiktok
If there is one social media platform that emerged as a rising star the last two years, it has to be Tiktok. It’s widely known as a space for Gen Z and millennial content creators and indeed, if that’s your business’s target audience, then this is where you need to be.
Being a relatively new platform, The New York Times reports that it made less than $1.3 billion in annual ad sales but that number seems set to grow. Kantar reports that the number of people exposed to TikTok ads has grown to 37 percent from 19 percent last year.
Being a social media app that places a primacy on videos though means you will have to invest in video assets and all that it entails: decent visuals and a proper narrative to showcase your product or services.
Advertising on TIkTok might not be appealing if your brand has a premium feel to it or offers services more relevant to the B2B audience. For that, consider LinkedIn for lead generation. The portal for jobseekers functions very much like Facebook and digital marketers can similarly create native ads or promote visual or text-based posts in the main newsfeed.
Caroline Forsey, LinkedIn’s VP for marketing writes, “Studies have shown that LinkedIn is the top paid and organic social channel for B2B businesses, and 82 percent of B2B marketers report finding the greatest success on the platform.”
