- Google Ads are continually rising in cost.
But what if I told you I have a really cool solution
that'll give you a much better ROI in the long run
than Google Ads.
Hey everyone, I'm Neil Patel,
and today I'm going to share with you
the best alternative to Google Ads.
(digital music)
What most people don't realize is,
you don't have to spend money on Google Ads
to create a multibillion-dollar company.
Have you heard of Dropbox?
Of course you have; the chances are it's on your computer.
Did you know that when Dropbox first came out
they tried to grow by doing Google advertising?
And what they found is, even though they had
a product that costs around $5 a month,
which is around $60 a year per customer,
they were spending roughly $200 to $300
to acquire a customer from Google Ads.
Can you see how those numbers don't work out?
Not only are they spending more to acquire a customer
than what they're paying in the first year,
just because someone's paying you $5 a month,
it doesn't mean that $5 is pure profit either.
So, what did Dropbox do?
They leveraged growth hacking.
They figured out a way to get users to come to their site
and generate more customers.
They did this by creating a free product or a service,
and that's a better alternative to Google Ads.
If you look at Dropbox, you look at Slack,
heck even look at Amazon; Amazon's not really doing free
but with Prime membership you get
free two-day air shipping.
By creating something that's free or such an amazing offer,
think of it as like your carrot that you're dangling,
you're going to get so many people over to your website
that then when you upsell them
into your paid products or services, it's so much easier
because they're already using your product or service,
you've already built that brand loyalty,
that connection, that rapport with them.
It's much easier to get that upsell.
And here's what most people don't understand;
they're like, "Whoa Niel; if I spent all this money,
"getting people over to my website,
"by having a 'free' product or service,
"it's going to cost me a lot of money," and it does.
I recently released a tool called Ubersuggest.
If you look at Uber suggest, I'm spending $150,000 a month
releasing a lot of the features you see
in tools like Buzzsumo or SEMrush, for free;
150 grand a month, that's my cost.
My cost isn't going down, it's continually rising.
But you know what, if I had to do paid advertising on Google
to get those visitors, my estimation shows
that I would be spending a bit more than $600,000.
Do you see how giving something away for free
that costs me $150,000 a month
is much better than spending $600,000 a month on paid ads?
You do not have to spend money on Google Ads
to create a big business; again, look at Dropbox.
Leverage growth hacking, and then as you have
these free tools, these free products, these free services,
and it may not be the best ones out there
but something that people are used to paying for,
what you can do is do things like create invite flows.
Dropbox has it: you want more free space, invite more users.
I can do the same thing with Ubersuggest; I don't,
but I can say "Want more free usage? Invite more members."
You can get creative with your marketing,
leverage growth hacking.
Just don't put all your money into Google Ads,
and the reason I say that, it's not
because I don't like Google Ads.
Ideally you should be doing both.
But the reason I say this is, the moment you stop Google Ads
you don't have any more traffic.
By creating something that's free,
and it doesn't have to continually cost a ton of money,
like HubSpot, they have this free email signature generator.
It doesn't cost them much money;
they only spent a few thousand dollars creating it.
They don't even spend any money maintaining it
each and every single month.
But they found that it can drive
over seven figures worth of revenue
to their business per year; not too bad from one free tool.
So if you have questions on
what you should be releasing for free,
leave a comment below; I'll answer it.
I'll give you some ideas and hopefully
that'll get you off to the races.
Thank you for watching; feel free to like,
subscribe, comment, and share.
Thank you very much.