Tweet

How to be successful with banner advertising?

Guest post by: Ghyslain Lefebvre

Article Overview: Banner advertising is a great way to advertise your business, product or service. It is quite inexpensive and can be quite powerful if done correctly. There are several steps you should follow if you are considering using banner advertizing 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 get busy…

How to be successful with banner advertising?

Banner advertising is a great way to advertise your business, product or service. It is quite inexpensive and can be quite powerful if done correctly. There are several steps you should follow if you are considering using banner advertizing 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 get busy...

First what is banner advertising? 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.

A banner advertising campaign is fairly easy to set up. It will take approximately 3 hours 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. Usually the results will be slow at first but will gradually increase. 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).

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. 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. 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. Step Two: 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 money.

To your success

Ghyslain

Related Articles
  Marketing Strategies - Banner Advertising and How to Choose Your Placements
  Marketing Strategies - What Should a Banner Advertising Campaign Look Like?
  Using Banner Advertising to Promote Your Product Or Service
  Banner Advertising - CPM vs CPA Costing Methods
  Understanding Banner Advertising
  My Product's Edge - How Can I Sharpen It?
  Tips for Building a Better Banner Ad Campaign
  Marketing Strategies - What to Know About Banner Advertising
  Banner Ads Basics: How It Works For Online Business
  Banner Advertising – A Cash Generation Opportunity
  Banner Ads – the Unique Marketing Tool. How to Benefit from Selling Advertising Space!
  General Points of Banner Advertising
  Become a Banner Ad Expert Starting Today- Series V
  Banners Are the Quick and Inexpensive Way to Get Your Message Seen
  Become a Banner Ad Expert Starting Today- Series VI
  Google Adwords Advertising Strategy
  Website Traffic - Vital Aspect Of Your Online Home Business Success
  Home Business Expert: How To Advertise On The Internet
  How to Recruit People To Promote Your Business For FREE
  How To Find Targeted Websites For Your Banner Advertising Campaign

Article Tags: banner advertising, become successful with banner advertising, How to be successful with banner advertising, successful with banner advertising



Related Forum Posts
Re: How can we provide a better forum moderator experience? - Ahh... I was hoping someone could help me out here... LOL. Perhaps maybe a small banner ad right below "Evan's Latest Video?" I don't think this would detract from the links on the sidebar, and it would be the only advertising on the entire sidebar. I think a 250 X 250 banner would fit. Just a thought...
Re: Do You Know A Good Banner Designer? - Hi GT, Thanks for the feedback about banner design. The "human element" was a good point. I wondered about those key-holding hands, so I'm glad you like them!! Banners can be effective in a number of ways. If you are writing a review of a programme or product, for example, a good banner can add a strong visual element. I would include both text links and banners in any product review. Another banner tip... If you use traffic exchanges, don't neglect to make use of your banner credits! As well as getting more visitors to your webpages, you will get a lot of interesting feedback on banner view/clickthrough rates and that will help you to find out which banners seem to be more popular.
The two important steps for internet marketing - There are two pillars of an effective web marketing strategy. The first step is effective website design and the second step is driving traffic to the site. The two more popular methods of driving traffic are search engines and banner advertising. With a little creativity, much greater site traffic can be achieved than is possible with search engines and banner ads. In our case, we are a tourism promotion company. We will have a drawing in which we will give away 50 vacations to the local ski resort in our community. Each of the 1,000,000 entry forms for the drawing will have the web address prominently displayed on it. We expect to drive a large volume of traffic to the site using this technique.
Re: Top Banner Help - Hi David - constructive advice is always welcomed! 1) The banner was done to match the standard banner size that we use across the website (on the homepage it's the famous entrepreneurs, for example) so we wanted to maintain a consistent look. 2) I like it - we have had a number of suggestions about the top banner and do need to change it! 3) The homepage was designed mainly for branding as well as SEO purposes instead of navigation. Most of the people who find my site don't end up on the home page - they end up on an article or forum post because of the SEO work that we've done. The goal of the homepage it to make the website look like an authority site and make people (partners, advertisers, authors, viewers) want to learn more.
Re: Top Banner Help - Hi Shri, We haven't done a freebie yet (partly because figuring out the logistics of how to do so is complicated technically - might be easier though with the new version) I would like people to not only sign up but be active and ask questions. The goal with the top banner is to community that people should ask questions but I'm wondering if what we have now is the best solution - any other ideas for what the top banner should be?


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

Executive Blind Spots

Are You Reaching Out?

Steps For Starting A Small Business

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.