7 Alternatives to Google Ads That’ll Save Your Business.

If anyone knows anything about how much success you can get from using Google Ads (Adwords) and how horrific it can be to suspended by them, it’s me. Having felt the shock of having them close my account twice, I was forced to find alternatives to keep my online business alive, and I did. 

In fact, despite Google Ads eventually reinstating my account years after they suspended it, I hardly use it now and many of the alternatives I’ll tell you about in this article have now become my go to for my online business’s advertising.

There’s at least 7 alternatives to Google Ads I have to share with you and I’m sure by reading this article, you may have possibly suffered the same problem/s I did or are at the very least worried about a potential suspension.

 

Let me share my personal Google Ads horror story before showing the alternatives:

In 2010, I experienced one of two suspensions over my time in the internet marketing world from this program and after experiencing some ridiculously high level success in the 6 figure range. 

Prior to that suspension, I figured that through Google Ads, I could easily put together my online marketing skills, that I received from a program called Wealthy Affiliate and use the Google Ads program to get high performing ads, and make sales for it for the rest of my life.

Well many thought that too, millions in fact, until Google Ads “changed” things and those millions, including me, suffered a no chance of return suspension.

All we received was an email stating we were out of the program and this was final.

Any attempt to restore our accounts was met with automated emails looping you back n forth without any chance of speaking to someone and if you were lucky enough to do it, they still gave you the same “no hope” answer.

Today it’s a lot better and you can actually speak with real people via Google, but the program known as Google Ads is still a tough one to get through to and it is no surprise that nowadays, you see LESS ads on Google and far more businesses advertising, because they like that more so than the old school ads they used to allow. 

But I digress. My point in writing about that experience above was to explain what my history was with this and after suffering the dreaded ban, if I had ANY hope of retaining/regaining my profits, I had to look at other programs/opportunities out there and so I did.

Today I have a list of 7 places you can utilize as a blogger, affiliate marketer, business owner, ect… if Google Ads isn’t allowing you to work through them and through these 7 places, I would argue that even using multiple ones (not all 7) may provide you with MORE profit for your business if you use them correctly.

1) Bing Ads.

This platform is still a great one to use if you’re into affiliate marketing and even want to advertise your business. There’s still a huge chunk of the internet that uses this search engine and the ad network which it offers allows for some awesome opportunities. 

To this day, I still use Bing Ads and a double digit percentage of my business profits come from it (I do affiliate marketing mainly).

Now if you are more of the local businessman, the options below may be more suitable for you, but do not neglect Bing. You can easily put up ads and test them out to see if they get clicks. My experience with advertising a local sites on Bing ads has not been very successful, but this is anecdotal evidence and you should at least try it out. It’s cheap advertising and I know many locations around the world who still prefer this search engine over Google.

Affiliate marketers though, here’s my message to you: USE it. Here’s a link to it.

And if you are an affiliate marketer, use this awesome guide to learn Bing Ads.

2) Create online citations. 

This one isn’t for affiliate marketers, but more so to business owners looking to get their establishment’s name out there (including on Google itself).

Also if you’re an SEO person and find a client who wants to get their establishment up on this search engine, look into citations and backlinks. Here’s what you need to know about citations and backlinks. 

Creating citations is free, unless you use services like White Spark (which are great and worth trying since they’ll automate citation building). 

3) Google my business.

This is NOT part of the Google Ads network, but it’s a branch of the company which allows business owners to have their business show up NATURALLY on the search engine. Here’s a link to trying Google my Business.

Even if you got banned from Google Ads, you can still use this program, as well as another program that’s a branch of this called….

5) Facebook fan pages and Facebook ads.

Honestly, if you do citations and outsource services to the place I recommend (White Spark), they should set this up for you, but if not, it’s free to set up a FB fan page for your affiliate marketing site/establishment website. Running ads however is different.

Marketing on FB and running ads there is very different than marketing on Google, and I wish I had more to tell you about this, other than it’s a great opportunity to target niche audiences.

At the very least, you SHOULD have a FB fan page set up to gather likes and recommendations from people who visit your page, like your site and tell their friends about it. I use a FB fan page, do not run FB ads, but slowly my fans/likes are growing. 

6) YouTube videos and 7) YouTube ads.

Visual media and YouTube in general show no signs of lessening in popularity. If nothing else, social media and visual content has had nothing but an upward curve in the past few years.

Now you do need an Adwords account to run YouTube ads, so in this case, you may want to consider opening a new account, OR trying to reinstate your existing (banned) account. Read below on how to do this it’s one of the 2 bonus options).

As an establishment owner/blogger/affiliate marketer, you absolutely should do some sort of videos advertising your website and/or use the the ads you can run on that network to funnel people to your site.

I have created many YouTube videos (case study) in the past and have seen great traffic/rankings from it. With the exception of the ads, you can really make videos easily these days and get free traffic, so you’re looking at a cost efficient alternative right there.

Here’s a tutorial on YouTube you can use for help with this.

And for YouTube Ads, here’s another great tutorial.

7) Good old SEO! 

While you may not have been able to get approved on Adwords, that holds no “bad credit” for someone who wishes to rank their site (which may have been banned from the network) on the natural listings of Google. 

And to this day, getting a HIGH, natural listing on THIS search engine is still the best way to get free, huge traffic. The problem though is that it takes a lot more time to do it, but in my opinion, the benefits of taking the time to rank a site naturally on this search engine outweigh any other option above.

Now I do want to point out that directly/indirectly, citations, FB fan pages and Google my Business do help the ranking of your website if used properly, but in the end, the best way to grow your website is to do the following:

My final thoughts: 

Do not think that just because your website isn’t compatible with Google Adwords (and if it is, good, you have 8 options now), that it’s the end and you can’t do anything about it. I though that too when my account was suspended and this triggered me to work harder and look for the alternatives I now recommend to you. 

Above all, to me, as an affiliate marketer, nothing has been more profitable than #7 (SEO) and again, a substantially large minority of the profits I get come from Bing, so if you’re into affiliate marketing like me, Bing and SEO may be the most suitable for you.

As for business owners, honestly, all 7 will really help you out.

Now I fully understand that there’s more than 7 options out there, but I’ve done a general tutorial on the biggest networks/opportunities for the 2 most likely groups of people that will benefit from them: affiliate marketers and establishment owners. 

If I missed one or more networks that suites these groups, do let me know 🙂

2 more alternatives to Google Ads:

1) Pinterest.

I have begun to try and experiment with this place and I like it a lot. Pinterest is a great place to promote your business, whether it’s a nice site doing affiliate marketing, drop shipping and other similar things. Here’s a link to Pinterest.

2) Actually restarting a Google Ads account.

Try giving their support a call and explaining the situation. I actually had my account reinstated by doing this and now run ads through it again, mainly via YouTube.

The only thing I would recommend NOT doing if this strategy works is using the same old banned site again from before.

Let me know if any of these alternative options work for you!