How To: Create the Perfect Banner Ad Marketing Campaign – Part 1

How to Create the perfect banner ad marketing campaign - Part 1

The Reality

All types of people from affiliate marketers to full companies always struggling in the beginning, let’s be honest – Who doesn’t? Unless you have a lot of luck on your side, a lot of hard work is needed to succeed. An expensive solution to getting your site, product or service noticed is a marketing campaign, but marketing campaigns come in all shapes and sizes, some are straight to the point, other campaigns are quite unique in the sense that it gets people thinking. A good example of this is the recent Cadbury advertising campaign and one of their adverts was a gorilla playing the drums. The question companies and people have to ask themselves when considering a marketing campaign is “Who am I reaching out to?” and “What point do I want to put across”. You have to put yourself in a customer’s shoe and ask yourself questions about what you understood, what you know, what you don’t know and what more you would like to find out.

Advertising Campaigns on the web are also another major success as far as the advertising industry goes; a lot of money is spent on online advertising each year and it’s not too expensive to come by if you know where to look properly.

 

Are Banner Ads ‘Worth It’ Financially?

You can use your banner ads in many ways, common methods include CPM where you pay per 1000 impressions, or there is CPC where you only pay when somebody clicks on your banner ad. But the first thing you need to consider before even buying advertising space is where or how will you get a custom banner ad for your business? Remember that you have to either do it yourself – which might mean you don’t have a successful result or you can pay that professional designer who knows exactly what is hot and what is not as far as banner ads go.

A great example is a live case study from Campaign Monitor; they documented on their blog a campaign for a web designer content management system. They tested out 3 banner ads and 3 landing pages, and tested which gave the best conversion rates from the advertising space. There are some ‘common’ ads out there which seem to always have high conversion rates. In this specific example they used a blueprint layout, a chalkboard and a post-it note. The blueprint custom banner ad was the most successful and had a 3.51% conversion rate compared to the second highest being the post it note at 2.36% and the chalkboard being bottom at 2.09%

 

Banner Ads Aren’t Everything for your Campaign

Just because somebody clicks your ad does not mean that click will turn into a successful sale. You also need to consider your website content, when the user clicks on the ad, where do they land next, this landing page needs to be a crucial sales page which really shows off your product. The aim is to deliver as much information in the most simplest form possible, this is quite like road signs – they portray a good amount of information just from a simple shape, outline or word. A good way to keep people interested is a call to action. Make the user interact with the banner ad by having a “Click here” button and then also have another call to action on your landing page. The best performing landing page from Campaign Monitor shows that when the user enters the page, they are greeted by a big landing image which asks them a question and is asking for their response. This keeps the user engaged and interested in the site and will keep your average time on the site quite high.

 

Planning out the Campaign

You need to consider quite a few things when researching and exploring the campaign. You need to ask yourself a few simple questions

  • What message am I trying to give from this?
  • How can I portray the most information in the simplest form possible?
  • Can I be clever and have something that makes my banner ad unique?
  • When my visitors click through on the ad, what greets them, is it a half built page or a fully working landing page?
  • Can the customers make a relationship between themselves and your brand, company, site before purchasing anything?
  • If the customer wants to find out more, can they easily contact me or can they easily see our community on facebook and twitter?

A banner ad marketing campaign isn’t just about sticking up some images which say BUY NOW. It requires technical planning and a lot of creativity. The best way to get a good idea is draw your ideas down on paper. This will help you see a visual representation of what you want to show through your banner ad. A designer is only as good as their brief.

 

Creativity at its Best

Banner ads again are not thrown together on Microsoft paint in 5 minutes; designers spend a lot of time thinking of clever ways to portray this information in the best way possible. Some people see this as a science as it requires brains and expert knowledge to get the best results possible. You need to consider a few things when designing a banner:

  • Are the colours eyes friendly? Can somebody look at them comfortably but do the colours still stand out?
  • Does the banner ad match the house style of my website? Do they match up?
  • Is the message easily understood on the banner?
  • Would you personally want to click the banner ad if it was amongst a lot of other banner ads?
  • Is there a call to action? – making the customer engage with the ad

 

Part 2 coming soon!

 

Make sure to check us out over on Facebook and Twitter for up to date information. And don’t forget to subscribe to our RSS feed!

 

 

 

This entry was posted in Ad, Ads, Advertisements, Banner Ad Marketing, Banner Ads, Banner Ads Design, Banner Advertising, Banner Design, Custom Banner, Internet Banners and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

3 Responses to How To: Create the Perfect Banner Ad Marketing Campaign – Part 1

  1. Brandon says:

    I learnt a lot from this, thanks! Will subscribe to your RSS feed!

  2. Pingback: How to: Create the Perfect Banner Ad Marketing Campaign Part 2 | Custom Banner Ad Design | Web Banner Design | BeautifulBannerAds.com

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