7 Effective Facebook Marketing Alternatives

Often, you hear people advice, “don’t put all your eggs in one basket.” That holds in many scenarios, and the case is not different when it comes to Facebook marketing. If you’re a regular marketer on Facebook, you’ll agree to the fact that the cost of running adverts on Facebook increased lately without a corresponding increase in impressions. You need to take this in account when run a dropshipping business.

It’s not good for any business to rely on one form of customer acquisition process. If you do, you might bump into issues one day. In fact, you’ll be missing out on a lot more advertising models that also yields impressive results. Get this; people use more than Facebook, and you need to tap from these number of users too.

In this article, we’ll be showing you an overview of about 7 various channels that offer great advertising alternatives to Facebook. Let’s hit the road already!

1. Google Ads

This is the first Facebook advertising alternative on our list today. When it comes to digital advertising channels with numerous U.S digital ad spend, Google tops Facebook. When you consider the fact that Google processes over 4.5 billion searches daily, you’ll have to agree to the aforementioned.

So, for your advertising projects, you may want to use Google Ads to place your adverts on their Display or Search Networks. When you advertise on Google’s Search Network, your ads will be shown on Search Engine Results Page (SERP). Now check out the sample below:

On the other hand, advertising on Google Display Networks means that your ads will be displayed on websites that make use of Google Adsense.

Here are some benefits of Google ads:

• Better control of ad budget
• Quick results
• Extremely measurable
• Remarketing tools
• Optimized targeting

Do well to note that Google ads are footed on a pay-per-click system.

2. Instagram

Instagram is an entirely different advertising beast, in as much as it’s owned by Facebook. With over one billion active users every month, it offers great advertising opportunities. Little wonder advertisers are making moves towards Instagram.

Businesses outside the United States tend to benefit more from this advertising channel as about 80% of Instagram users are not based in the states. Guess what? A large portion of Instagram users is Millennials. To be more specific, about 31% of Instagram users are between 18 and 24 years, while around 30% fall within the age bracket of 25 and 34.

Here are some Ad options you can choose from when advertising on Instagram:

• Video Ads
• Slideshow Ads
• Video Ads
• Stories Ads
• Carousel Ads

If you’re an existing Facebook marketer, it’ll be easy for you to run Instagram ads because all works are done right from your Facebook’s ad manager.

3. YouTube

YouTube records over 1.8 billion users who are active monthly. As the most popular Google service, it has people watching videos for over 1 billion hours daily across the world.

Did you know that YouTube reaches over 18-49 year-olds more than any cable network existing in the U.S.?

While it’s hoped that video content will dominate about 80% of web traffic, come 2019, it’s wise to tap from YouTube advertising. Apparently, many people prefer to purchase a product or service after watching related videos than mere write-ups. In the same vein, many businesses attest that they make more sales with video advertisements.

YouTube is a good alternative to facebook when it comes to advertisements as it flaunts advanced targeting features, remarketing features, among others.

You can use any or a combination of the six listed YouTube ads:

1. Sponsored card Ads
2. TrueView Ads
3. Display Ads
4. Overlay Ads
5. Bumper instream Ads
6. Non-skippable instream Ads

With these, you can be more creative with your adverts and messaging.

With YouTube, you can choose any of the following as your marketing objective.

• Brand awareness and reach
• Leads
• Website Traffic
• Product and Brand Consideration

4. Twitter

Although there seems to be a decline in Twitter’s growth lately, it still has over 335 million active users every month. Also, about 42% of Twitter users check their accounts daily to tweet or retweet. Although Facebook beats Twitter as regards the number of users, the latter still has about 24% of U.S adults using it.

A record from Twitter and Research Now shows that over 90% of Small and Medium-sized Business (SMB)’s followers have plans of buying what these SMBs offer. If your business targets more of Millenials, then Twitter is for you. Take a look at the chart below to see things:According to Twitter, 80% of its users are Affluent Millennials, and this entails that it has Millennials who are ready to buy. Indeed, Twitter is a good alternative to Facebook you should try.

You can run your advertisement on Twitter in two ways:

• Promote Mode
• Twitter Ads

With Promote Mode, you can easily promote your tweets and account, and it’s quite easy to use. However, this option is only available to those in Japan, U.S., and U.K. On the other hand, Twitter ad campaigns are way better and more customizable.

To begin, select a campaign objective, and do your targeting. While targeting, you need to sort by age, gender, location, behaviors and who your target audience follows on Twitter.Twitter charges differently, all depending on each advertiser’s campaign objective. If you’re advertising to boost your site traffic, you need to use the pay-per-click system (you pay anytime someone clicks your ad). But if you’re promoting a video content, you have to pay anytime a user views it.

5. LinkedIn

LinkedIn has more professional users and boasts of over 562 million users. It’s a top channel for B2B marketers. It may surprise you to know that 80% of B2B marketing leads come via LinkedIn.

Basically, there are two ways to advertise on LinekdIn;

• Self-serve Ads
• Partner Solutions

While Self-serve Ads let you create and publish your ads via LinkedIn Campaign Manager, Partner Solutions offers a better option for larger businesses to access premium advert options. However, these two options are good advertising alternatives to Facebook.

You may choose from these three types of Self-service LinkedIn advertising options:

1. Text Ads
2. Sponsored Content
3. Sponsored InMail

Sponsored ads appear on user’s feedsText ads are displayed in the sidebars of users’ LinkedIn messenger and feedsSponsored InMail allows you to send messages just like the usual InMail, to the inbox of users.With these three types of self-serve ads, you can target users across different devices considering different factors like gender, age, job function, company, school, among others.

6. Snapchat

Ranked as the sixth most-renowned social media platform, Snapchat is a social media platform that some people still don’t understand its marketing powers. Yes, its content doesn’t last more than 24 hours, and it has no feeds to scroll through. Suffice it to be that Snapchat is an ideal blend of social network and messaging app.

Snapchat allows users to chat with their friends by sharing video clips, snaps (photos), and youths can’t get enough of what it offers. Snapchat has over 188 million active users daily, and about 71% of them are more than 34 years old.

If your target audience is Millenials, then you can always reach out to them on Snapchat. You may promote your business with three ad products:

• Lenses: Your branded lens
• Filters: Your branded filter
• Snap Ads: Video Ads

Snapchat also allows four major customizable ads that can be added to Snap ads. You can increase app installations, drive traffic to your site, drive views or Snapchatters.Just like many other social media platforms that support advertising, Snapchat lets you select your objective.

7. Pinterest

With over 200 million active users every month, Pinterest stands out as another great alternative to Facebook.Pinterest lets you choose from three different ad formats:

1. Video Pins
2. Promoted Pins
3. Promoted App Pins

Also, Pinterest flaunts 5 various campaign options:

1. Awareness campaign: Lets you pay per 1000 impressions while people who never knew about your offering get to know more.
2. Traffic campaign: Lets you send people to your site directly, then you pay per click
3. Engagement campaign: Lets you entice Pinners to communicate with your content, and you pay per engagement.
4. Video awareness: This uses Promoted Video Pins, though it’s similar to the standard awareness campaign
5. App install campaign: You pay per click or install, while you get many installs for your app.

Bonus Alternative to Facebook Advertising: Influencer Marketing

An influencer, as you may know, is one with a large online audience and followers. Influencers might be celebrities, industry experts, micro-influencers, mainstream celebrities among others.

To tap from this, you’ll need to collaborate, pay and possibly partner with an influencer to promote your service or product to their followers. Prior to the boost of the internet, influencer marketing was mainly for top brands that could pay huge amounts to have their offerings promoted by film stars and rockstars.

Lately, influencer marketing has turned out to be a popular and efficient marketing strategy that many businesses tap from, despite their sizes.