Banner ads are dead, right? Wrong! In fact, banner ads are often where the “big players” graduate to once they have tested an ad to the limit and want to get even more conversions. In this article we will look at the myth of banner ads being dead, and how you can use them to drive traffic to your site.
The Myth of Banner Ads Being Dead
The myth of banner ads being dead for direct response online marketers comes from the fact that most business owners have tried banner ads at some point, only to be very disappointed with their results.
But like most marketing techniques, they take time to track and test, so they are not for the impatient. The biggest mistake that business owners make is in using them to test offers, when in fact, they will get better results if they use banners to roll out already successful offers.
If you have a new product and you don’t know if it will convert, first test your traffic on AdWords or Facebook. If it starts to convert well, then it is time to start planning your banner ads.
Why Banner Ads Can Be So Profitable
Banner ads are profitable because they are very visual and an eye catching banner can convert like crazy, especially if it is being shown to the right audience, a hungry, eager one related to your niche. There is such a thing as banner blindness, where the site viewers do not click, but that generally tends to be in relation to ads that are not contextual. In other words, if a guy is on a site about sports cars, he does not usually want to see a banner about the latest brand of diapers. If a mom is on a popular parenting site, she does not want to see banners for popular dating sites or singles resorts in most cases, unless she is a single parent.
The AdWords program allows you to choose your audience, and Facebook ads, which need to include an image, are a sort of hybrid format, a mini banner, if you will, that can help you test images for your banner and the right words to entice people to come to your site and take action. Thanks to the AdWords program, you can show banners in a number of sizes and orientations, from the usual horizontal banner, to a tall skyscraper, and you can show them on a range of sites, including their own site YouTube, which is immensely popular, with thousands of viewers every second in almost every niche you might be working in.
How to Test Small With Banner Ads
There are three steps to testing with banner ads.
The first step is to test the offer and the conversion rate itself. It’s best to test this with Google AdWords rather than banner ads. The traffic is cheaper, more targeted and converts better. If you can’t get AdWords to convert, chances are you won’t get banner ads to convert.
The second step is to create your banner. There are many free creation tools online. Try http://banner.fotor.com/ if you need range of sizes, or http://www.bannerfans.com/banner_maker.php for basic banners.
Check out the sizes available in AdWords to make sure they are compliant. The more unusual the size, the fewer sites will show the ads, but you might get higher conversions because you are getting a larger chunk of real estate.
You might also wish to create more than one version of the same banner and split test them to see which gets the most clicks.
Once you have created and uploaded your banner, check your pricing. Will you go cost per click or cost per thousand views. Then track and test to see your click through rate and conversion rate.
NEVER rely on Google automatic settings for your campaigns, since they can often devour your ad budget faster than a swarm of hungry locusts. Also never turn on your campaign and then not check it. Set aside time for the launch and follow up. Test small, make sure you have a really great campaign before you roll out, then test your banners.
Keep an eye on clicks, views and conversions, and as soon as you have any statistically significant numbers, pull the lower performing ad and use the good one as your control. Then try to improve your results by rotating in a new banner ad and again tracking and testing the results. If you are not happy with the campaign, just pause it until you feel you are ready again.
The whole point about banner ads is to drive traffic and get people to take action at your site, so create compelling ads, test them, turn the winners into eyecatching banners, and track and test your results. If you are not great at graphics, hire a freelancer on fiverr.com to design one for you and see what a difference it can make to your business.
Banner ads will require a small budget, but can lead to big return on investment.
FURTHER READING
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