Don't think marketing costs are too high for social media giants? Niche platforms like Reddit are also very attractive!

During the epidemic, the development of offline stores was restricted, and e-commerce flourished. In order to attract traffic to their stores, many sellers and brands flocked to social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram to promote their products.

According to eMarketer, digital advertising spending is expected to grow 13% in 2021 and 33% by 2023. The largest digital advertising spending comes from the retail industry, accounting for 21.9% , followed by automotive ( 12.3%), financial services (12.1%), telecommunications (10.4%) and consumer goods (8.6%).

However, as the marketing track becomes more and more crowded, it has become more difficult for sellers to stand out among a large number of "advertisers" without realizing it, and the cost of acquiring an audience of the same size has also increased.

Moreover, according to Shopify's "The Future of E-Commerce in 2021" report, although the user scale of social media platforms such as Facebook is still large, the decline in general social trust has still had a huge negative impact on brands.

Is there any way to save costs and achieve twice the result with half the effort?

A relatively niche social media platform may be a good choice. And successful brands themselves need comprehensive and multi-channel marketing methods, including emerging channels such as Snapchat, Pinterest, TikTok , as well as mature channels such as Google, YouTube and Facebook , as well as emails, SMS and Messenger that can help activate old customers .

In addition to the above-mentioned marketing channels that are familiar to everyone, Forbes also lists some marketing channels that are easily overlooked:

Twitch , a live streaming platform for gamers ;

Hulu , a video streaming site that can serve as a YouTube alternative and charges lower advertising fees;

Reddit , a news aggregation site , gained many new users after the GameStop stock frenzy, and most of its 48 million users are young people;

Music service platform Spotify has a very high social media exposure, but Pandora 's number of users has reached 257 million;

The question-and-answer website Quora has 300 million users . When consumers go online to seek answers, the discussion results on the platform are often ranked first among all search results.

Chat app Discord has more than 250 million users.

These smaller but more effective advertising channels can help small businesses in the growth stage, especially DTC brands, free themselves from high marketing costs, so that they can plan capital allocation more rationally and achieve faster performance growth.

Therefore, before placing advertisements, sellers may wish to learn more about various social media channels, enter the market prudently, and formulate targeted marketing strategies, so as to spend money wisely and ultimately achieve twice the result with half the effort!

Niche social media platforms