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7 Secrets for Increasing Internet Banner Ad Click-Through Rates
By Michael Fleischner | Marketing
Expert, Internet
Marketing Secrets*
Increasing the performance of your online banner ads
is essential for improving your Internet marketing ROI. By following these
simple steps, you can optimize the performance of your banner ads and
improve that rate at which prospective buyers take action.
1. Design Your Banner for Specific Sites.
Targeted marketing outperforms mass marketing 2 to 1. If you’re
planning a specific banner advertising campaign, then chose a specific
website where your prospects are visiting and design your banner for that
website.
Banner ads that closely mirror the look and feel of the site
upon which your ad is placed usually have the highest click-through rates.
However, you may also try a design that is of stark contrast, to see if
it produces greater results.
2. Animate Your Banner.
Research supports the fact that animated banners outperform static ones
by a significant margin. This is because an animated banner is more likely
to get noticed. There are various techniques you can employ such as blinking
or movement when designing your banner. Try to stay away from static banners
that only change when the page is reloaded.
3. Keep Copy Brief and Provocative.
Using words like “Free”, “Act Now”, “Click
Here”, and so on are effective at getting a browser’s attention
and encouraging them to click through to your offer. Try a number of different
headlines or action verbs and see which results in the highest click-through
rate.
4. Test multiple Design formats.
Create more than one version of your banner and numerous version types.
The most complex banners (those which resemble Windows dialog boxes, scroll
bars, submit buttons or blue-colored underlined hyperlinks) generally
get the highest click-through rates. Some have even been known to receive
more than 7%.
Test each banner for a period of 72 hours and see which has the greatest
click through rate. Use this as your control and continue to experiment
in an attempt to enhance your click-through rate by changing one element
of the banner at a time. If you change multiple elements, and a change
in click-through rate results, you won't know which element had the most
significant impact. This is why it is important to take a slow and deliberate
approach to updating your banner ad.
5. Use a Professional Graphic Artist.
Creating a banner ad today is much more complex than 3 years ago. You
really want to source the creation of banners to a professional graphic
artist. You can also visit some helpful sites with searchable databases
of Marketing
Experts like MarketingScoop.com or Elance.com to find a designer who
can design a banner in the size you need it. It should cost you no more
than $100 per banner and the results will be worth it.
6. Reduce The Graphic Weight of Your Banner.
If your banner is too heavy, it can reduce the speed at which a webpage
loads. As a result, you can lose potential browsers of your banner ad.
Attempt to make your banner file size less than 15k. Although this weight
is a bit unrealistic for rotating banners, it’s a good benchmark.
7. Evaluate Performance Daily
Review the stats of your banner on a daily basis. Most banners show an
average click-through rate of about .5%. These days, a traditional click-through
rate of 2.0% is good, but sometimes difficult to achieve. If after 3 days,
your banner hasn’t produced an acceptable return rate, then switch
it out with another version.
Continue to optimize your banner by changing only one element at a time
as discussed above. Also, be sure to advertise on multiple sites to see
which produce the highest click-through but also the highest ROI. Some
sites generate a lot of clicks but no-one buys. Obviously you want to
reallocate your spend to those that show the highest click-through rate
AND conversion.
Summary
By leveraging these simple banner secrets, you can make your web banners
really perform. Be sure to use these techniques for online advertising
buys as well as affiliate advertising. Wherever your message is posted,
get prospective customers to click-through and take action.
In addition to optimizing your banners, focus on optimizing your landing
pages. Just as banners benefit from compelling copy and design, so do
landing (offer) pages. As described above, begin by measuring your conversion
rates and change your landing page elements one at a time to increase
your overall conversion percentage.
* Michael Fleischner is an Internet
marketing
expert and the president of MarketingScoop.com, the Internet’s
biggest source of marketing information and free marketing resources.
He has more than 12 years of marketing experience and has appeared on
The TODAY Show, Bloomberg Radio, and other major media. Visit Marketingscoop.com
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