Banner advertising is a great way to advertise your business, product or service. If done well, it can be quite profitable. This is a well written article by Ghyslain Lefebre that will give you the basic of banner advertising.
There are several steps you should follow if you are considering using banner advertising as a method of marketing for your business. I will be taking you step by step on how to set up your banner advertising campaign. How to be successful with banner advertising? Alright let's get busy...
Banner advertising, what is it? A "web banner" or "banner ad" is a form of advertising on the Internet. This form of online advertising entails embedding an advertisement into a web page. It is intended to attract traffic to a website by linking to the website of the advertiser. The advertisement is constructed from an image (GIF, JPEG, PNG), JavaScript program or multimedia object employing technologies such as Java, Shockwave or Flash, often employing animation, sound, or video to maximize presence. Images are usually in a high-aspect ratio shape (i.e. either wide and short, or tall and narrow) hence the reference to banners. These images are usually placed on web pages that have interesting content, such as a newspaper article or an opinion piece.
Setting up a banner advertising campaign is not difficult. 3 hours at first to set up for the first few times but will get easier and shorter as you get more experience. There is minimal maintenance once your campaign is started. Your results will get better with time This is very similar to television advertising where advertisers know that it take on average for a potential customer to see your add 3 to 7 times before they take action.
It is important that you know how banner advertising works. Learn the terminology...
Impression: Each time your banner ad loads on a website, this is considered an "impression."
Click: Each time someone clicks on your actual banner; this is counted as a "click."
Conversions: When someone fills out the form on your website, this is considered a "conversion" (or lead).
Click: Each time someone clicks on your actual banner; this is counted as a "click."
Conversions: When someone fills out the form on your website, this is considered a "conversion" (or lead).
CPM - Cost Per Thousand: This is a method of measuring how much you will pay for a banner ad. Often times you are charged "on a CPM basic" which means you are charged for every thousand impressions. A "$2 CPM" means you pay $2.00 for every thousand impressions your banner ad receives. Be wary of sites that charge more than $4 to $5 CPM for banner ad placements. $2.00-$2.50 is ideal, but we've seen sites out there charging up to $15 CPM, which is very high.
CPA - Cost Per Action: This is a method of measuring how much you will pay for a banner ad, based on the actions taking. An action can be considered a click, or it can be considered a conversion. If a website offers banner advertising on a "CPA basis" this means you only pay when someone actually clicks on your ad (as opposed to impressions).
CTR - Click through Rate: This is the ratio of impressions to clicks. For example, if there are 1000 impressions (or page views) on a website and 10 people click on the banner ad, that would be a CTR of 1%.
Cost per Conversion: How much it costs you to get one lead. If you spend $30 and you received 8 leads, than your cost per conversion is $3.75.
Cost Per Action - If your specified action is a "click," and you spent $30 to get 100 clicks, than your cost per action, or cost per click, would be $0.33.
Publisher: These are the websites that accept advertising on their site.
Advertiser: The individual or company placing the banner advertisement (you).
A few tips to keep in mind. Always make sure your ad is above the fold. What this means is people don't have to scroll down on the website to see you add. Some website will try to take advantage to new entrepreneurs and will charge you $3-$15 per 1000 impression. Never pay more than $2 per 1000 impressions especially when you are new. You want to be able to see which one of your ad works and which one doesn't without investing too much money.
3 steps to your banner research:
Step One: Understanding How Websites Make Money: Closely examine the websites you look at to decipher if they're selling advertising space (i.e. banner advertisements, text advertisements, Google's AdSense ads, etc.), selling a product or service, or a combination of the two.
Step Two: Create a List of Websites to Research
1. What Sites Do I Visit? Start by looking at websites and blogs you personally visit.
2. Choose a Target Market: This can be anything... teachers, motorcycle enthusiasts, college football fans, investors, entrepreneurs, small business owners, dancers, golfers, etc.
Step Three: Research Websites
1. Alexa.com: Go to Alexa.com and type in the URL of the website you're researching. You can find a wealth of research on websites on Alexa. Specifically, however, you are looking for the overall traffic rank as well as traffic rank by country, related links (you can get ideas for other websites to research here) and keywords (it's helpful to know what search terms are used when the site comes up in a search). In very general terms you are looking for websites with a traffic rank between 1 and 100,000.
2. Examine the Website: Quality Content: Does this website offer the reader valuable content or does it look like the Las Vegas strip with a flood of blinking and flashing banner ads?
3. Place Your Banner Advertisement
a. Step One: Understanding Advertising Rates: Most websites post a "rate card" on their site letting potential advertisers know how much they charge for advertising space.
b. Second: Understanding Placement: Without question you want to be "above the fold"
c. Step Three: Start Small: While you may be pressured for a long-term contract at a "special rate", it is always advisable to start with a smaller budget for shorter time period.
d. Step Four: Submit Banner
This is how to be successful with banner advertising in 1000 words or less. Again banner advertising can be quite profitable as long as you use this technique to the letter. If you start throwing money at it like you are the craps table in Vegas, you will not be successful. Do your diligence, take your time especially at first and go make some cash.
Remember, your banner advertising is often the very first impression people receive of your business. Take a good long hard look at your internet adverts, and ask yourself if that really is how you want your business to be perceived by your potential customers.
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