Unleash The Power of Banner Advertising

Transcription

1 Unleash The Power of Banner Advertising By George McBride Platinum Team Leader

2 This report is for informational purposes only. While all attempts have been made to verify the information provided in this publication, neither the Author nor the Publisher assumes any responsibility for errors, omissions, or contrary interpretation of the subject matter herein. They disclaim any warranties (express or implied), merchantability or fitness for any purpose. This report has been distributed with the understanding that we are not engaged in rendering technical, legal, medical, accounting or other professional advice. This publication is not intended for use as a source of legal or accounting advice. The Publisher wants to stress that the information contained herein may be subject to varying state and/or local laws or regulations. All users are advised to retain competent counsel to determine what state and/or local laws or regulations may apply to the user's particular business. The Purchaser or Reader of this publication assumes full and sole responsibility for the use of these materials and information. The Author and Publisher do not warrant the performance or effectiveness of any sites stated in this ebook. All links are for informational and educational purposes only and are not warranted for content, accuracy or any other implied or explicit purpose. Adherence to all applicable laws and regulations, federal, state, and local, governing professional licensing, business practices, advertising, and all other aspects of doing business in the United States or any other jurisdiction is the sole responsibility of the Purchaser or Reader. EVEN THOUGH THIS INDUSTRY IS ONE OF THE FEW WHERE ONE CAN WRITE THEIR OWN CHECK IN TERMS OF EARNINGS, THERE IS NO GUARANTEE THAT YOU WILL EARN ANY MONEY USING THE TECHNIQUES AND IDEAS IN THESE MATERIALS. EXAMPLES IN THESE MATERIALS ARE NOT TO BE INTERPRETED AS A PROMISE OR GUARANTEE OF EARNINGS. EARNING POTENTIAL IS ENTIRELY DEPENDENT ON THE PERSON USING OUR PRODUCT, IDEAS AND TECHNIQUES. WE DO NOT PURPORT THIS IN ANY WAY AS A GET RICH SCHEME. The Author and Publisher assume no responsibility or liability whatsoever on the behalf of any Purchaser or Reader of these materials. Any perceived slights of specific people or organizations are unintentional. You Now Own Giveaway Rights To This Report By owning giveaway rights, you may freely distribute this report to anyone you wish, or use it as incentive to build your own mailing list. The only restriction is that you cannot modify this document in any way without permission from the publisher. George McBride Copyright 2015 All Rights Reserved George McBride finally.profitsonline.com Page 2

3 Introduction: I love banners and now I want to take a few moments to explain why you should love them too. Banners are often overlooked, misunderstood and even misused so I want to explain why you should be using them in your online advertising and how you can make the most out of your banner advertising. Armed with this knowledge you can then have a great lead on those people who have not bothered to take the time to learn how banners work...and believe me they really do work. Just some of the topics covered in this report will include: What is a banner? What do Banners Look Like? Why are they effective? How do I use them? How do I set them up? What makes a good banner? What makes for a great banner? Why is getting thousands of hits important? Ok so let's get started. George McBride finally.profitsonline.com Page 3

4 What is a banner? A banner ad is quite simply a visual form of website advertising with a clickable link which leads to the program or offer being advertised. They come in a whole range of sizes but are almost always rectangular (or square) in shape. They must serve two main roles: 1. Be visually striking so that people look at them and 2. Be sufficiently interesting or intriguing that a proportion of viewers will go on to click the link to find the page or offer to which they ultimately point. It sounds simple, and it is, but the sad thing is that many people either don't use banners at all or use them wrongly. By paying attention to the information in this guide you should be encouraged to use banners and will be sure to use them effectively in your online marketing efforts. Another really cool thing about banners is that they can give you, the advertiser, a wealth of real-time information. Consider if you place an advert in a newspaper or magazine. Now as long as that newspaper of magazine has a pretty decent readership then you can be sure that you will have a number of people at least look at your advert and at least some of those may go on to take the action you want them to take. With a banner, the website you place it on is the equivalent to the newspaper or magazine, but you no longer have to guess how many people look at your banner or go on to take action as a result of seeing it. Why? Because you can track how people are interacting with your banner advertising. Whenever someone views a page that is showing one of your banners it is recorded as a view and each view corresponds to one banner impression. Whenever someone clicks on your banner that is recorded as a hit (also known as a click or click through ) so now you know that they are viewing the page or offer you want them to see. There are a number of different programs out there (both free and paid) which allow you to you to track banner impressions. You can even go on to track whether these people go on to sign up for an offer or join a program you are promoting. The click through rate is the number of clicks divided by the number of views. To express the click through rate as a percentage just multiply 100 times the number of clicks divided by the number of views. A page may be viewed 1000 times and your banner click 27 times. So the Click Through Rate (CTR) is 2.7%. The higher your CTR the better the banner is at attracting people to click. This is important because no matter how great or how lousy your program is, no one joins if they are not attracted to click the banner. If you have a high CTR and few sign ups the problem is the program splash page or the program itself, not the banner. George McBride finally.profitsonline.com Page 4

5 What do banners look like? You can make a banner of virtually any size you want but there are now several standard sizes and they even have their own names. Here are some of the most popular sizes (in pixels) you will commonly find today: Full banner 468 x x 72 full banner with vertical navigation bar Half banner 234 x 60 Vertical banner 120 x 240 Square banner or button 125 x 125 Skyscraper 120 x 600 Half page ad 300 x 600 Button one 120 x 90 Button two 120 x 60 Micro button 88 x 31 Note the numbers in each are in Pixels and are Horizontal by Vertical. So a 468x60 banner is 468 pixels wide by 60 high. And look like this: George McBride finally.profitsonline.com Page 5

6 Chart showing some standard banner sizes source: Wikipedia. George McBride finally.profitsonline.com Page 6

7 Why is banner advertising effective? This is what TimTech's Chief Marketing Officer Jon Olson said about banners recently: People are so concerned about page views they forget about one of the most underutilized mediums within this business...banners! Use banners everywhere you can. They help your brand, they help you market and they help you bring awareness to everything you do. Jon knows about advertising, he has been a leading light in the traffic exchange industry since there was a traffic exchange industry and he knows the value of banners. Banners, when used correctly, naturally draw the viewer in. They generally don't try to sell anything directly from the page, instead they give a little taste of something and gently draw the viewer in. They make you want to find out more by stimulating your natural curiosity and your desire to find out more. No one clicks a Banner because he has to. He clicks it because he wants to. You will remember that we spoke earlier about tracking click thru rates from those who look at your banners. This is one way of working out if your banner advertising campaign is successful. After all you want people to click on your links and if people are clicking on your banners then that is clearly a measure of success. However that, in itself, is not enough to judge the success of a banner. They are also great at helping you to build your own online brand or to promote yourself, your company or the goods or services you promote or offer. There are countless millions of people marketing online and they are all chasing the same share of the pie don't worry it is a big pie so there is more than enough of it to go round. But one of the real keys to online success is getting yourself noticed and then recognized. You need people to know who you are, what you promote and, most importantly, that you are going to be around for the long term. In an industry where people come and go every day, showing the marketplace that you are still around is vital and banners are a great way of doing this. For example you might have a particular slogan or catchphrase connected either with your own brand or with your online business...it is highly cost effective to use banners showing your face or logo and your slogan to as many people as you can. You will want to do this over and over again at several different advertising sites in order to get the message across that you are online and that you mean business. Now whether people click on your link or not, you are getting success with this banner. As long as people see it then they will know about you and what you promote and, chances are, the next time George McBride finally.profitsonline.com Page 7

8 they are interested in a product that you promote they are more likely to think of you when it comes time to buy. And because banners have been overlooked by so many, and are still overlooked by so many, they are dirt cheap one of the most cost-effective ways to advertise online today. A most effective strategy is to get all your down line advertising like Banners on the same ad sites. You will increase your brand awareness by a huge factor and as a result increase the possibility of a sale. Remember, and I cannot stress this enough, advertising is more about brand awareness than it is about sales. What produces sales? Need. Advertising creates need awareness and brand awareness. Have you ever heard of Coke? When you see a Coke ad, do you go buy one? No. But what do you think of when you are thirsty? What comes right into your mind when you are asked a a restaurant, What would you like to drink? Coke! When a person thinks, I need to start earning a second income online they need to think of you. You are your brand. George McBride finally.profitsonline.com Page 8

9 How to use banners? Ok so you know what banners are and why they are effective, so next you need to know how to use them to maximum advantage. Here are some tips to keep in mind whenever you design a banner or pay someone to design a banner for you. Know what you want your banner to achieve. It is vital that you want to know what you want to get from your banner before you begin to create it or have it created for you. Maybe you are looking for more traffic to a particular site, or trying to drive traffic to an affiliate link or seeking to increase your online presence or build your own brand. Don't try to do too much with a single banner or you will risk diluting your message. Use one banner for just one purpose. In fact they are so inexpensive that it makes sense to have several different banners for different campaigns. Be crystal clear on the message you are trying to promote. You certainly don't want to cram your banner ad with unnecessary words as this is a huge turn off to your potential audience. If your banner looks fussy or complicated without any clear message then people won't want to read it. The golden rule is to keep your message short and to the point. In banner advertising less is most definitely more. But what if I am promoting something with two or three key benefits? The best thing to do is to make three separate banners with each one focusing on one benefit. As an added advantage to this you could compare the results you get from each one to see which banner performs better for you. Make sure your banners actually look good. Not only must your message be strong but the design must look good. Are the fonts you use easy to read? Do the colors clash? Again use the less is more principle for best effect. If design work and color combinations are not your strong suit then hire a professional to do it for you. Start paying attention to other people's banner ads. Really pay attention to the ads you see while you are online. Pay particular attention to whether they are clear to read, whether they make you want to take action or whether they are so ugly you can't bring yourself to look at them for even a second. See if you can find any trends in those ads which appeal to you and in those which don't work so well. Obviously you don't want to copy somebody else's work but there is nothing wrong in basing a design on something you have already seen online. Be careful with the use of animations. You don't need to have your banner text flashing on and off just because it is possible to do so. If animation adds to the message you are trying to get across then consider using it if not then leave it out. George McBride finally.profitsonline.com Page 9

10 How do I set up a Banner? A most all Banner Ads are set up the same way. There is one very important fact, and three important items. FACT: Make sure your graphic and the ad sites specifications match in size. Most Traffic Exchanges work in 2 Banner sizes they are: A Standard Banner which is 468 pixels by 60 pixels. A button Banner which is 125x125 If you banner is not the right size the ad service will make it fit and your graphic will be VERY distorted. Here is a sample that I have seen: A banner made to fit in a 468x60 display area. Nice, huh Now I do not think anyone will take that very seriously. And here is one distorted into a 125x125 button banner. So make sure the sizes are correct. Three important items: It almost works but is a little too squished. The Banner Campaign Name this is only for your information The Banner Image URL this is the link that points to your Banner Graphic The Banner Target URL This is the link that points to your Website George McBride finally.profitsonline.com Page 10

11 You enter this information in a form that will often look like this: Always be sure to include the with every URL. I have an excel sheet that has 60 or more banners. I separate the banners by size and I include the Banner Name, Banner URL, and Target Website URL. That way I can quickly cut and paste each banner into my advertising site. It looks like this: Using free banner advertising on many sites I quickly and easily upload my banners and I have 60 to 80 banners populating over 200 sites. You can too. What makes a good banner? By now you will have an understanding of what makes a good banner and what makes a bad banner. If you have not already done the exercise where you look at other people's banners then take time out to do that now. I have seen banners where the fonts and color combinations are so awful that it is virtually impossible to discover what the message is that the advertiser wants to get across. On the other hand there have been banners I have seen where I am so fascinated that I just had to click on the link to find out more. Here are some more tips on what makes a good banner. A good banner will quickly capture your attention and then keep your interest long enough for you to find out what message it is promoting. It will be easy to understand and not leave you scratching your head trying to work out what it is all about. The exception to this is that if you deliberately want your message to be intriguing. George McBride finally.profitsonline.com Page 11

12 Also remember that you are not trying to sell directly from the banner advert you typically want people to click on a link where they will be taken to an offer, sales page, blog post, squeeze page, or...wherever you want to send them to. Therefore a good banner will not attempt to do any more than it is designed to do. What makes a great banner? A great banner has all the qualities of a good banner but it makes you want to take action right now. Think of it like this when you visit a web page you don't generally do so in order to see what banner ads you might happen to find. You are on that page for some other reason. Even when you visit a traffic exchange you are not primarily there to see what banner adverts you might find. So a great banner advert will capture your attention sufficiently so that you no longer immediately want to do what you set out to do when you visited the web page it is found on. It makes you think something like this: Wow I simply have to find out what all this is about and then before you know it you will have clicked on the link and now you will be viewing the page the advertiser wants you to see. Can you see how this makes the advert great? The advertiser has basically taken you by the hand and said: Hey I know you came online today with the intention to do something else but I would like you to check this out instead. In return you have replied: I would love to check out what you want me to see...thanks for letting me know. There will be more chance of turning a good banner into a great banner by displaying it on a website which is targeted to the audience you want to attract, so make sure you advertise on niche websites to capitalize on this. Put it this way, you might have a great banner aimed at members of the dog training niche but it will have little or no effect, if you advertise it on sites read only by cat lovers. A great advert will also be one where you can easily track your results with the right tracking in place you will be able to easily determine how many people see your banners, how many of those click your links and even the countries they come from. Why is getting a visual hit important? Maybe it is stating the obvious but you actually want people to look at your banner. After all you will have gone to a lot of wasted time and effort if nobody bothers to look at your banner. However if you follow the guidance in this report then you can be pretty sure that you will get eyes on your banner. In fact if you follow the tips in this report the only way George McBride finally.profitsonline.com Page 12

13 you would not get any eyes on your banner is if you advertise on a website with no traffic at all! Remember also that it is your job (or the job of the person who designs your banner) to get people to look at your banner and we have already gone over how you can maximize the chances of this happening. To recap, you do this by making the banner visually attractive, with a clear message which compels the viewer to look at the banner. If you manage to do that then congratulations but don't get too complacent because your work is not done yet. It is extremely unlikely that someone will look at your advert once and then take the action that you want them to take. It might happen but it is extremely unlikely, so you have to be realistic with the results you are going to achieve. This brings us to our next point...you will want many thousands upon thousands of banner views to get any sort of reasonable results. Why is getting thousands of hits important? Let's just imagine for a second that every time someone saw your banner advert they went on to take exactly the action you wanted them to take. If that was the case you could build a list of thousands of people in a single afternoon or rake in thousands of individual commission payments from affiliate websites. This form of advertising would be so breathtakingly effective that nobody would want to do anything at all other than use banner ads and the cost of this form of advertising would skyrocket as a result. It would get to the point that only multi-national companies would be able to afford to use banners on a regular basis. Thankfully that is something which is not likely to happen so what can you realistically expect to achieve with your banner advertising? You are after one or both of the following things to happen: 1. People to click on your banner 2. People to become more aware of you, your brand, your product or your service. There are no hard and fast rules as to what could be considered to be a successful banner in terms of click-thru rates but a rough ballpark figure to aim for would be one click for every thousand or so views. One hit every 500 views would be doing very well indeed and anything better than that would be most encouraging. Hopefully this will allow you to see why it is important to get thousands of hits to your banners and this is why running campaigns which have several hundreds of thousands of views (also known as banner impressions) are not uncommon. One word of warning here when it comes to trying to work out your click-thru rates then you need to ensure that you have a large enough sample size to get any statistically relevant results. This means that the numbers you might get after 500 or 1,000 banner impressions are all but meaningless George McBride finally.profitsonline.com Page 13

14 but by the time you have had 100,000 views then the data will start to be far more accurate. Remember that clicks, as important as they are, are not everything because the other great use of banners is to build awareness. Let's just say you advertise your banner on just one advertising site and you do this so infrequently that any given viewer only sees it once or twice. In this case you will barely even register on their radar, if you actually get to register at all. Now let's say that you decide to target a number of sites where you already know there is a hot market of viewers in your niche. This time you flood your chosen sites with banners for a sustained campaign where your banners are seen so much that they are impossible to miss. When you do it this way people are compelled to take notice of you and there will come a point where many of them have seen your banner so much that they say: This advert is everywhere, I've just got to check it out. Now not everyone will have that reaction but many people will, so the second key function of the banner advert is to build awareness and to maintain awareness. This awareness is increased for your company when several of your down line are all advertising at the same sites. Why banners are often overlooked Many marketers just don't understand banners and don't take the time to understand banners. Maybe they have heard a mentor say that banners don't work and they have just assumed that banners don't work without doing any research of their own. Others may be put off by the click-thru rates which can be considerably lower than, say, a decent squeeze or splash page. You may even have heard the term banner blindness which is the theory that nobody even looks at banners any more these days. All this is bad news for people who think that way but good news for you as someone who uses banners as another useful tool in their overall advertising and promotional strategy. Banners do work and if you use banners well then they work really well for you. I will even let you in on a little secret right now...there are many traffic exchange owners who don't even fully understand the amazing potential of banner advertising. The upshot to all this is that banners are one of, if not the cheapest, form of graphic advertising out there thousands of views for less than a dollar. If more people knew that banners were as powerful as they really are then the cost of banner advertising would be far more expensive than they are now. Banners remain one of the real advertising bargains still out there and you now know how to make the best out of them. George McBride finally.profitsonline.com Page 14

15 Quite simply banners are one of the least expensive ways to do graphical affiliate marketing or personal branding. Don't make the mistake of overlooking them like so many others do. Banner ads and visual images Let's look in a little more detail about the types of visual images you might choose to use on a banner ad. You want the image to be captivating so that it naturally makes the viewer want to look at your banner. You can use a single static image such as a GIF or a jpeg or choose to display an animated GIF image for greater impact. You can even place Flash movies inside your banners if you want to and on larger banners you can use a combination of several different image types. It has been shown that the use of animation in banners can increase click-thru rates because they generally attract the attention of more people than non-animated banners. The logic is pretty simple because more people are actually looking at your banner it follows that more people should actually click on your link within that banner. However don't think that this means you should ignore static banners because both have important roles to play. Sometimes an animated banner just looks out of place on the site you want to have it shown and a static banner could be used to much better effect. Also there are people who don't like the shouty nature of animated banners which tend to scream: Look at me! to website visitors and would be much more likely to respond to a more laid back static banner instead. These are people who don't like to feel that they have been pushed into making a decision and are far more comfortable with the thought that they have looked at a banner and made their own mind up as to what action they would like to take. Also it has been suggested that static banner adverts may work better on blogs than animated images. However test out different banners for yourself and find out what works best for you. Why use Instant Banner Ads? As I said right at the start of this report, I love banners and I know a thing or two about banner advertising. At Instant Banner Ads we take banners, which are already a great deal, and make them even more financially attractive for you. Not only that but we have handpicked some of the best banner-friendly advertising sites in the internet to get your banners seen. As a member you want results from your banners and we want to help you get those results in a most efficient and cost-effective way. George McBride finally.profitsonline.com Page 15

16 We are a banner advertising co-operative which allows you to put together the most effective campaign for your business. Signing up is completely free so you have nothing to lose, and everything to gain, just for checking us out so quit waiting around and see what we have to offer you. We can save you money and we can save you time. Because we buy lots and lots of banners our buying power means we can get very attractive rates and we reflect this in the highly competitive prices we offer to our members. Members can enjoy a much more streamlined service as you only have to enter your banner code into our site and we take care of the rest. You will hear it said many times, We keep it simple. We are about Instant Banners. We are not a complicated site, we are about getting your Banners out there. You can buy banner impressions as and when you need them, choose from a range of packages and choose from our special upgrade options to make your membership even more powerful. We hope you have enjoyed reading this short guide to the world of banner advertising and we look forward to sharing your success as you discover for yourself just how powerful banner advertising can be. Good luck with your banner advertising. George McBride Platinum Team Leader PS If you want a huge discount on impressions there is a new member Promo Code that will get you 20,000 impressions; Just go to InstantBannerAds.com select Set Up Ads and input freebanners George McBride finally.profitsonline.com Page 16