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Kiera Abbamonte on July 24, 2019 (last modified on May 3, 2022) • 19 minute read
When it comes to advertising online, the vast majority of marketers look to the same handful of digital ad channels.
Theyâre popular because they workâbut that popularity also makes for competitive ad space.
With all thatâs out there in the digital landscape, we knew there had to be hidden gems where marketers could win traffic and leads, without all the competition and big-budgets. So we asked 61 marketers about the most effective, lesser-known digital ad channels they use, and they didnât disappoint. We heard about 24 different ad channels where marketers can get real results.
The marketers we spoke with offered a wide variety of ad channels that have the potential to drive real acquisitionâbut there were a few key categories that stood out. Namely, social media and paid search.
Those are pretty standard types of digital advertisingâthe kind youâll find in most marketersâ arsenals. Still, we heard about several unexpected ways to leverage those channels to avoid the competition of traditional digital ads.
While plenty of companies are active on LinkedIn, fewer take advantage of the paid advertising side of this social network. According to Chantelle Stevenson of ClearPivot, âLinkedIn is a very underrated digital advertising channel.â
As Conversion Hutâs Dale Broadhead explains it, âThe problem with Facebook Ads and Google Display is that it’s restrictive in terms of the targeting for B2B audiences. Advertising on LinkedIn,â Broadhead added, âallows you to build amazingly accurate audiences of prospects that are the ideal buyers for a product or service.â
Amanda Foushee of Marsden Marketing says theyâve seen great results from LinkedIn Sponsored Content, too. âLinkedIn Sponsored Content has a great engagement rate that drives leads. With the ability to segment audiences by job title, we’re able to get our content in front of the people it would benefit the most. It acts as a small-scale ABM engine for our company.â
Editorâs note: Want a better way to measure and report on LinkedIn Ads campaigns? Download this free LinkedIn Ads: Campaign Performance dashboard to track key metrics like impressions, average CTR and engagements by campaign, and more.
If youâre thinking Facebook is far from a lesser-known ad channel, youâre right. But there are actually several ways to advertise on Facebook that are underutilized since most companies focus on Timeline and sidebar ads. The two we heard most about were:
âFacebook Groups give us huge visibility as a brand with pinned posts, live Q&As and more,â said Devin Stagg of Pupford.
âEveryone knows about Facebook, but thereâs an advertising channel inside Facebook that a lot of business owners aren’t aware of, and thatâs sponsored messages,â said Ronald D’souza of Angel Jackets. âThese type of ads allow you to send specially crafted messages to a user’s inbox. It’s an excellent tool for driving engagement and actions related to your business while reducing bounce rate.â
As Deirdre OâDonoghue of G2 pointed out, everyone knows about Snapchatâbut most of the hype is around story and Discover ads. But as OâDonoghue explained, âGaining brand awareness through a trusted friend’s Snapchat is much more effective than a disruptive banner ad.â
âThe Snapchat Geofilter is a less expensive way to organically target your audience in,â OâDonoghue added. âIt works because when people take a Snapchat, if your brand has an interesting filter, theyâll post it regardless of whether itâs an ad or not.â
âPinterest is a great channel to drive traffic and generate leads,â said Jonathan Aufray of Growth Hackers. âThere are more than 250 million active users on Pinterest but still many companies neglect this channel.â
Marco Baatjes of Bottom Line Cents advised, âIf youâre marketing heavy on a single social media channel, you should diversify your traffic sources by redirecting a certain percentage of your budget to try Pinterest.â
âThe great benefit of Pinterest versus Facebook or LinkedIn Ads is that it’s very cost-effective,â Aufray added. âSince there arenât as many advertisers on this platform yet, it makes the CPC low.â
McKinzie Bean of Moms Make Cents echoed Aufray, saying, âBecause many advertisers haven’t utilized Pinterest yet, CPC and CPA can be incredibly low. I consistently get email sign-ups for $0.25 â $0.30.â
Venkatesh C. R. of Dot Com Infoway pointed out that Promoted Pins have a leg up on other types of social media advertisingâbecause they donât disappear almost immediately. âUnlike Facebook posts, Pinterest pins donât get lost in a sea of billions. The average half-life of a pin is 3.5 months, which is huge for lead generation as it doesnât blur out of the spotlight like Facebook posts.â
James Watkins of PHS highlighted the relatively new Pinterest âBuy Itâ button. âUtilizing the âBuy Itâ option in Pinterest,â Watkins said, âallowed us to gain more customers without putting extra barriers in their way.â
Despite the ubiquity of Twitter, the audience there is still quite considerably smaller than ad networks like Facebook and Google. Many marketers overlook Twitter Ads for that reason, but Jason Thibault of Massive Kontent doesnât agree.
âWhile the available audience on Twitter is only 10-12% the size of Facebook and Googleâs, itâs a highly active audience that provides you with quick feedback on your campaigns. I run promoted tweets to custom audiences for brand new posts, videos, whitepapers or any other content assets coming down the pipeline,â Thibault explained.
âIf your promoted tweet features educational, useful, or entertaining content, you can pick up quite a lot of additional engagement along the way.â
Editor’s note: Track and visualize your Twitter Ads performance, including metrics like overall impressions, impressions by campaign, clicks by campaign, and more, in this free dashboard.
YouTube is another well-known name thatâs curiously underused by most advertisers. âYouTube is yet to be utilized properly by many brands out there,â noted Oliver Roddy of Catalyst Marketing, âThe main reason is the fear of needing to create video content.â
âYouTube video ads are amazing,â said 310 Creativeâs Chris Leach. âAdvertisers [should] love it because you can format the CPA so that you donât pay unless the video plays for at least 30-seconds.â
âOne of the reasons YouTube Ads work is the low competitionâfar fewer businesses use YouTube to advertise compared to Google, Facebook, and Instagram. Meaning the space is cheaper to bid for,â Roddy said.
âWhat’s more, you only pay when your ad is shown for 30 seconds or more, meaning zero cost if someone isn’t interested in what you’re selling. This can make the testing phase of launching your ads very cheap, allowing you to create laser-targeted ads in a short space of time.â
If thereâs one painfully overlooked digital ad channel, itâs the sibling of Google paid search: Bing advertising. Itâs value is simpleâthereâs way less competition for keywords on Bing, so youâll pay much less per click.
âThe cost per click is usually significantly lower than what you would pay for traffic from AdWords,â said Marc Andre of Vital Dollar. âAlthough the volume isn’t nearly as big as what you can get from AdWords, it’s still possible to get more traffic than you might expect from Microsoft Advertising.â
Not to mention, itâs easy to use Microsoft Advertising if youâre already acquainted with AdWords. âThe platform is similar to AdWords,â Shorb said, âso if you’re an AdWords user there wonât be much of a learning curve.â
Editorâs note: Looking for a better way to visualize your overall Bing Ads performance? Download this free Bing Ads Overview dashboard to see key PPC metrics for all of your Bing Ads campaigns.
âThe local search directories (Google My Business, Yelp, Bing, Apple Maps, etc.) have been very effective for driving both traffic and leads to our website,â said David Peterson of HealthMarkets.
âMany people miss out using their Google My Business listing to its full potential,â added Tom Buckland of Choose Wisely. âGoogle posts, for example, will only show for branded searches, but they allow you to take up more space on the results page, with any clicks directing searchers to your website.â
Samuel Solis of Page 1 Solutions echoed Buckland, saying, âMany businesses and agencies don’t take advantage of the robust features in Google My Businessâfrom claiming listings to specifying your business information, to enhanced features like Google Posts.â
Stockton Marketing Agencyâs Blake Stockton also highlighted the Google Local 3 pack.
âWhat most business owners and marketers don’t focus on is the Google Local 3 pack, which shows when someone searches for a broad topic or industry locally. When a business ranks in the Local 3 Pack for high traffic searches, they can exponentially grow customers from online,â Stockton explained.
Editor’s note: Gain more control over how your business appears in search listings. Grab this free dashboard and track the number of searches your business receives, which sources drive the most searches, and more.
Plenty of businesses prioritize search marketing and paid search advertising, but that isnât the best investment for everyone. For businesses in highly-competitive industries (from a search perspective), it can help to rely on another websiteâs search clout. Thatâs where local and niche directories can shine.
âWe’ve had a lot of success using directory listings, especially paid ones in specialized verticals,â shared Bill Rice of Kaleidico. âFor example, in the legal space, directories like Avvo, FindLaw, Super Lawyers, and Martindale can give law firms in a very competitive SEO and PPC landscape a real opportunity to get relatively cheap, highly relevant traffic.â
âA good directory can be hard to find, but the rewards are golden,â Alexa Kurtz of WebTek added. âTheyâre one of the best forms of referral traffic we have. We’re a local business, so the traffic that comes from that directory is super qualified and almost always ends in a good sale.â
Sam White of AC Transmission even recommended one local directory thatâs more than proven its staying power: the Yellow Pages (online, of course.)
âThe Yellow Pages (YP.com) has provided steady lead generation, traffic to our website, and backlinks for us for years. By adding financial backing, weâre able to position ourselves near the top of the search resultsâgenerating steady traffic and leads at a very competitive rate.â
âReddit is a super well-known site,â said Jeromy Sonne of Moonshine Marketing, âThe traffic is crazy cheap, and the targeting can be very specific. Yet most of the marketers I know and interact with don’t really utilize it as a channel.â
Colibri Digital Marketingâs Andrew McLoughlin has noticed something similar. âPeople tend to ignore Reddit as a potential traffic driver, despite the fact that it boasts billions of unique visits each month. It’s a huge platform, but it’s dramatically underutilized.â
Reddit can be a versatile channel, too. McLoughlin added, âYou can set yourself up as an influencer, conducting AMA-type interviews, or reply to threads with useful answers to questions. It’s all the more effective if you can link to informative content or landing pages, as well.â
âWe’ve found that doing a little research on Reddit can lead to valuable new trafficâespecially posting links in subreddits,â added COFORGEâs Eric Melillo. âBy first posting well-written and unique content that adds value to the thread, you have a chance of posting links on follow-up threads to your more expansive post when appropriate. We use this approach all the time and watch the spikes of new traffic.â
âQuora brings us a much lower CPA compared to Facebook,â said Sandi Yu of Swapsy.
Austin Shong of Blip Billboards said, âGetting a new user to our site costs about 30% less through Quora when compared to Google Search Ads.â
Quora was one of the most common digital ad channels we heard aboutâand for good reason. Similar to Reddit, Quora provides an opportunity for professionals to build authority and showcase expertise by answering questions posed by the community.
âIt puts us in a position of expertise and knowledge,â Marissa Ryan of VisualFizz said, âand the answers remain visible on the platform for the foreseeable future. That means that anytime someone turns to a search engine to answer a similar question, they have a chance of seeing our response in the results page. â
âWe’ve used Quora for our clients to answer relevant industry questions with blog-post styled responses,â added Matthew Tudge of WDA Branding Derby. âIf you can string a good response together on a popular question, and include a relevant link ,then you’ll direct quality traffic right to your website.â
Yu explained that the reason promoting your business on Quora can be so effective is because you âget to write more about our services and our company, explain how we do what we do, and why we can do it at a lower price. This is more convincing compared to a picture with a slogan on Facebook or Instagram.â
Shong highlighted the versatility of Quora, too, saying, âWith Quora, you can run narrowly targeted campaigns to drive conversions, by only displaying ads on certain questions, or focus on driving traffic by targeting broader topics or geographic areas.â
Have you ever looked at the digital spaces you own to see how you can better leverage and advertise with them? Most brands havenâtâbut there are likely other ways you can use owned properties (like your website or your email) to gain more leads.
While youâve probably optimized your website to bring in leads, there isnât always an easy way to highlight temporary or time-sensitive information. Thatâs where a tool like Hello Bar comes into play.
âHello Bar is a website service that lets you design messages for visitors and provides tools and features that ensure correct timing of the messages you want your visitors to see,â explained Jackie Tihanyi of Fisher Unitech. âSince using Hello Bar, we have garnered 116 leads through the service.â
âPeople don’t like talking on the phone anymore, but they want their questions answered quickly,â noted Anastasia Iliou of Medicare Plan Finder. âSo, instead of finding the answers they need by looking through your content, they’ll use your live chat function to get a quick answer.â
As Iliou put it, âBoomâyou have a lead!â
âChatbots are set up to gain rapport with your clients and give them the information theyâre seeking,â Lisamarie Monaco of PinnacleQuote explained, âWhich then leads to a sale.â
This channel is almost too easy not to try. As Stan Tan of Selby’s explained, âIt works wonders considering the amount of effort you need to put in. For us, we place a link to a page which shows our full product range in our email signature.â
As Tan notes, the key benefits are obvious:
âCapterra, GetApp, and Software Advice have been solid channels for us. While we typically get fewer leads from these channels than other sources (such as Google Ads), the leads we do get are often more qualified and ready to buy, leading to a faster sales cycle,â said Wes Marsh of BCA Technologies.
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Spire Digitalâs Nick Farmen echoed that sentiment, adding Clutch, Manifest, and GoodFirms to the list. âWe see 10+ leads through review sites each month.â
Martin Khan of Morningscore.io seconded the performance of Capterra for their digital advertising, raving, âI absolutely love the numbers I’m seeing in our analytics as the conversion rate is quite unmatched by any other channel.â
In highlighting the competition for many organic searches, Khan added, âif you’re running a smaller company, you can take advantage of their paid advertising.â
In addition, Luke Wester of Miva suggested seeking out even more niche review websites. âThere are review/directory sites that focus solely on one industry. For example, G2 focuses on business software. These sites are known to produce purchase-qualified leads as user intent is more specific.â
âViralContentBee is a triple treat for me,â David Leonhardt of THGM Writers said. âIt has both a free and a paid version, or you can mix it up by paying for some exposure and earning additional exposure.â
âHere’s why it’s a triple treat,â Leonhardt explained. âFirst, I get direct referral traffic from the platform. Second, my content gets shared by people in the community. This exposes my content to a ton of people, including an audience thatâs skewed toward potential clients. Third, VCB is great for SEO.â
Credifulâs Chane Steiner shared one of the more unique ad channels we heard about: job boards.
âWhile many people go to job boards to seek specific services, itâs also a great platform to advertise your services and draw attention to your brand.â
âThe key,â Steiner added, âis posting your services in an area where potential customers are likely to see your post. So if youâre a content marketer, for example, try advertising your brand on a job board for writers.â
âThereâs potential for thousands of people to see your message this way.â
Being and ad-free platform, Medium was an unexpected recommendation from TopLine Filmâs Heather Baker. âWhile Medium is ad-free, weâve recently found that it can be an effective indirect tool for driving traffic to your site, which we did with a recent campaign.â
Explaining the process, Baker said, âWe announced the campaign on our blog, then produced a supplementary (unique) article for our Medium publication. As soon as that article was live, we actively promoted it through social advertising on other social networks. Within 24 hours, Medium was promoting it organically.â
Ultimately, Baker shared, as much as 22% of the traffic to their Medium post was driven by the platform itself.
âWith geofencing, we trace a virtual fence around our clients’ competitors and/or locations where they know they can reach their customers. When someone enters the fence, theyâre served an ad for our customer through apps on their mobile phone,â explained Chelsea Vaal of FUSIONWRX.
âWeâve found that this channel is great for building brand awareness for our clients, itâs highly trackable, and allows us to be much more targeted than with other methods. It also provides our clients with additional insight into their customers’ habits based on which locations perform well,â Vaal added.
Acknowledging that affiliate marketing is one of the less oft-used channels out there, Tom Mortimer of Adzooma said, âObviously, the lifeblood of any business is a constant stream of new customers, so anything you can use to acquire more customers quickly and cost-effectively has to be worth a closer look.â
Highlighting the key benefits of working with affiliates, Mortimer explained:
âBrave Ads is a great complementary channel to reach those privacy-conscious and techy audiences, since the Brave browser blocks all tracking and invasive ads by default,â Lukas Bekr of CDN77 said. Explaining, Bekr added, âWith Brave, users have to voluntarily opt-in to view ads and they get paid with BAT cryptocurrency (Basic Attention Token) as a reward for doing so.â
Since users have to opt-in to ads, engagement has proven to be much higher than averages across other ad platforms. âThe latest Brave announcements are reporting click-through rates of 20% for all advertisers across the board,â Bekr said, âand our experience so far confirms these rather unbelievable numbers.â
âThe key to finding a platform that fits your company,â explained Shayne Sherman of TechLoris, âis niching down on your audience demographic. We leverage Twitch to get in touch with our audience: PC fans and gamers.â
âTwitch is perfect for us because everyone on Twitch has high-performance demands of their system. Our content is geared toward an audience thatâs tech-savvy or tech-interestedâall of whom want to optimize their machine’s performance.â
If thereâs one benefit of advertising online itâs the sheer magnitude of potential ad channels you can leverage. By breaking away from the popular and competitive channels that everyone and their brother advertises on, you can secure traffic and leads from a more targeted audience, with better cost metrics to boot.
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