Internet Marketing Blog

If if you are serious about your online marketing and advertising campaign, banner ads are a method that is costly, but if they are placed in the right spots around the Internet, they can provide a huge return on the investment and can beat traffic from search engines.  Here are a few things to keep in mind when it comes to putting together a successful banner ad for your marketing efforts.

One of the first things to remember is that a banner ad is meant to accomplish one central function. The banner ad is to grab the attention of the reader long enough to entice the individual to click on the ad to learn more about what you have to offer. As such, you need to be very careful about how you put together the ad.

A very common mistake that people make with banner ads is to try to cram too much information into a very small space. Keep in mind that the ad is not supposed to provide a lot of fine reading. Nor do you necessarily want to make it a point to include your company name or logo in the ad.

What you do want to do is use a short and sweet slogan that acts as the ideal teaser. Keep the amount of words as few as you possibly can. Don’t think that you need to make use of full sentences. You are selling an idea at this point.

Using the right words to convey that idea is far more important than correct grammar. If you find that two words will create a slogan or catch phrase that carries a lot of power, then go for it.

While a company name or a logo can be helpful, chances are you will do much better without cluttering up the banner ad with that information. Logos on the ads are only helpful when the company name and image are well known to the public, and popular to boot.

While all of us hear that good business means getting the company name out there, the fact is that the Internet has altered that philosophy somewhat.

Keep in mind that keeping the look of the ad simple and effective will create the opportunity for people to visit your site and look around. Your company name and logo will be on every page of your site, so the customer will certainly get familiar with your name in no time.

Thinking about the fonts and colors that you use with your ad is also important. This can be somewhat tricky, as you want the banner ad to stand out as it pops up on the screen. The ad should be different enough from the web pages that signal the banner ad to show up, but you also want it to make a point very quickly.

People tend to give a banner ad very little time to make an impression. That means the colors and the fonts can play a big role in providing those critical extra seconds to establish an interest. Bright colors for the background with a contrasting color for the fonts will often make a good impression, and entice the visitor to click through to your web site.

Don’t be afraid of getting too bold with the choice of colors, but do be aware of the type of image you want to cultivate. For example, if you sell natural health products, you may want to make good use of greens in your banner ad. They will help set the tone for your web site.

On the other hand, if you are offering high tech products, electric blues and reds may prove to be fun and winning combination.

Finding the right locations for your banner ads is also important. There is one school of thought that dictates that you worry less about the type of web site and focus more on the amount of traffic that the site generates. Of course, this does not mean that you want your ad associated with content that is completely inappropriate for your products and services.

For example, if you sell faith-based products, you would probably not want your banner ad to show up on an adult dating site. Still, you would want to define a broad range of sites that would be right for your ad, check into the average daily and monthly traffic that is generated by the site, and then make some decisions about placing your ad.

Keep in mind that depending on how you go about arranging for the creation and placement of banner ads, the cost may be minimal or it may be significant. Weigh this information against your budget and determine just how much of your advertising funds can be allocated to the use of banner ads, without hurting the other components in your program.

If you find that banner ads really work well for you, there is always the chance to expand your use of these ads once there is a larger revenue stream to work with.

To your success,

Steve Eilers

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This entry was posted on Saturday, August 23rd, 2008 at 11:20 am and is filed under Advertising, Internet Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.