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The Add Me! Newsletter *** FOURTH ISSUE ***
"Free Tips to promote your website"
Add Me, Inc http://www.addme.com
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November 7, 1998 Newsletter #4
Article: 14 PROVEN LAWS OF BANNER ADVERTISING
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.....THIS WEEK'S ARTICLE.....
14 PROVEN LAWS OF BANNER ADVERTISING
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Banner advertising unquestionably has become the
industry's most reliable, predicatable, and measurable
method for attracting new visitors. With 60-70% online
ad expenditures being allocated to banner advertisements,
there is little room for question as to the effectiveness
of a well managed banner ad campaign. I have therefore
assembled for your review the 14 principles of successful
banner advertising.
You are encouraged to incorporate these concepts into
your online marketing strategies, to not only boost
traffic to your site, but to leverage it as well.
1. Join two, three, or four quality exchange organizations.
A typical exchange organization will offer you usually
one-half to .7 or .8 credits, each time you host another
member's banner at your site, and a full credit will earn
you the displaying of your banner on another exchange
members site. Some exchanges offer multiple page coding
so you may host members banners on numerous pages throughout
your site. Thus membership in multiple exchange organizations
allows you to leverage visitors not only as a result of
each unique visitor producing multiple credits for you, but
also as a result of visitors who go beyond your home page,
explore your web site, and earn you additional exchange credits
through the impressions they are exposed to on any or all of
the pages you host banners on. It's highly possible to earn,
with a ten page web site, and a visitor who sees all ten pages,
ten or more credits, meaning impressions due you just for
belonging to two exchanges. Now that's leverage. My personal
favorites are http://www.linkexchange.com, and my number one
favorite http://www.bannerco-op.com. The co-op offers a full
one to one exchange plus a unique program paying cash for
click throughs. And you can exclude specific catagories of
competitors banners appearing on your pages.
2. When dealing with seconds, and sometimes fractions
of a second, to grab the attention of the viewer, it's
vital that your ad screams LOOK AT ME NOW. You accomplish
this goal primarily through and in this order, your copy,
color, graphics. Therefore spend as much time on the five
to ten words that little box has space enough for as you
did practicing to ask for that first date.
3. Bright colors almost always out perform the reds and
the blacks which are less effective. Use yellow, orange,
blue and green.
4. Animated banners have multiple advantages over static
or single screen banners. Use them to layer in additional
copy. A three screen animated banner easily provides
enough room for five to seven words per screen. Just
make certain the copy that you choose for the first
screen is compelling and attention getting. Focus on
your web site's premium benefit. Why do people visit
your site? What's in it for them? Build your headline,
ie: the first screen, or your static banner, based upon
your single most prominent, compelling benefit.
5. Banner size, should be maintained at 3-5K which is
ideal if you can accomplish your copy and creative objectives.
If not, up to 7 is OK. Never more than 10 as it takes much
longer to load and you run the risk of the visitor not
seeing your banner at all.
6. I can't stress this enough. There is no reason
not to brand every banner you ever create. Branding
your banner can be accomplished by doing nothing more
that placing your product or company logo on one of
the screens in the animation process, or simply giving
the name of your company, or domain name, or a picture
of your product. With average click through responses
in the 1-2% range, why waste 98% of the impressions by
not telling the viewer who you are or what your product
is? Off line advertisers have known for decades the
power of branding, and with properly designed banners
you can accomplish both direct response advertising
and branding simultaneously. With branding you can
get your name, your product name, continually in front
of your prospects, even if they don't "click" on.
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7. Don't get hung up on hosting banners on your
site for fear that you'll lose a visitor. Listen,
they're going to leave anyways. If they're interested
in your site they'll stick with it until their interest
is totally satisfied. If not, you're going to lose
them in any event, so you may as well get some mileage
out of those visits.
8. Do not try to qualify your visitor. In other
words, let the site do the qualifying and selling
job for you. After all the name of the game is to
get each and every unique new visitor to your site
as possible, thus leveraging credits due you should
you belong to a banner exchange.
9. When building your five to ten word static
banner, or five to seven words first screen animated
banner copy, rely on these themes. Fear, curiosity,
humor, the big promise. Example, Warning, you must
see this before you purchase xxx; never worry about
losing xxx again, learn the secrets of cashing in on
xxx, do you know how to xxx? As an aside, a warning
banner is an enormously powerful approach. Many off
line yellow pages publishers will not even allow them
because the other advertisers complain about the unfair
advantage such an ad delivers. Try one.
10. The number one drawing card in banner advertising
is the use of the word FREE. Put your creative talents
to task here. Write a free report that solves a problem,
and post it at your site. Offer a free drawing, free
subscription to a e-zine. Free advertising, free trial
offer, free download for software, etc., etc.
11. Never assume your viewer knows what to do next.
Always, in one or more places, insert the words click
here, or, click here now, or show a drop down box with
a click arrow prominently displayed.
12. When appropriate to your marketing campaign,
buy click throughs and not impressions. With click
through purchases you can lock in on the cost of
each unique new visitor. Purchasing click throughs
helps to eliminate concern over rigorous and ongoing
testing and new banner design and creation concerns,
as well as the arduous task of ongoing meaning daily,
monitoring of each of your banner's effectiveness.
When purchasing click throughs and paying only for
those new visitors, all of those issues become
someone else's problem. Bannerco-op.com offers an
excellent click through program.
13. Targeting. If you are a niche market advertiser,
or a local or regional advertiser, targeting is vital
to the success of your banner campaign. You'll want
to very carefully select sites or work with an ad
agency that offers the opportunity to reach those
prospects who are the most likely to be interested
in your product or service. On the surface, purchasing
targeted impressions is more costly, however, it represents
the best way to reach your audience. If you're selling
automobiles in southeast Florida, it makes no sense to
place your banner into a national network where only a
fraction of the audience would have any interest.
Instead you'll want to target web sites serving the
community you service, including Chamber of Commerces,
newspapers, radio stations, television stations, and
other local and regional businesses serving the same
geography.
14. Test, test, and test some more. Once you've got
the perfect banner working, design another one because
sooner or later even the best banner runs out of steam.
It's generally accepted that after a prospect sees a
banner for the third or fourth time, the likelihood of a
click through plummets. When testing, always test the
next new design on the same site or on the same network,
so you are indeed comparing apples to apples. Testing
is a continual ongoing, dynamic process. Review your
stat pages on a daily basis and be prepared to act
quickly when results begin to lag. Remember the three
most critical elements of your banner. First the copy,
next the color, and next the graphics. Once a successful
banner has been created, tweaking and modifying these
elements can keep it alive and producing strong click-
throughs for many months.
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Michael T. Glaspie, a renowned direct marketer, author,
and founding director of www.bannerco-op.com (where you
get a 1-1 exchange + cash), now shares his insights
through his Free e-zine available at
www.mysiteinc.com/mglaspie (home of FREE web sites
& $20 cash) or e-mail newsletter@iodmail.com and put
subscribe in the subject block.
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