What kind of advertising is included in your marketing mix? Traditional media like TV, radio and billboards? Or perhaps some digital media like social media marketing? Depending on your industry, each of these tactics has it’s benefits but one tactic that can be customized to all markets and audiences and one that produces good results most consistently is digital advertising.

Banner advertisements more specifically are a graphical form of advertising that can be presented to highly targeted groups of individuals on a broad range of websites. Banner ads come in a wide range of shapes and sizes giving you flexibility to present your campaign in a variety of creative formats.  Of all the available sizes, we have found that square and rectangular formats tend to perform better than traditional leader boards or towers. Our theory about this difference is that square ads tend to appear in the “meat” of websites, in the thick of the content where eyeballs are more focused, whereas traditional banners tend to appear more often at the tops or bottoms of websites where they are easily missed and/or ignored. For brand building, banner ads can bring value in just a quick glance, creating familiarity with a company’s logo, name, colors and images relating to the feelings you are trying to convey. A picture is worth a thousand words, so in a split second you can showcase your brand, get your message across, and promote your business…..all without a prospect ever clicking on the ad…in other words, for free. Here are a few of the benefits of running a banner campaign for your business:

 

Brand Awareness: With banner ads, it’s easy to showcase your brand because you can reach a huge, relevant audience quickly and easily. Every view your ad receives moves your prospects down the early part of the sales funnel – from unaware to aware to engagement, even trust. None of these require a click. By including banner advertising as part of your larger strategy, your company is appearing in multiple places and beginning to build itself as an authority in your industry. With banner advertising, you can also reach prospects before they initiate a search and beat your competitors to the punch.

Increased Web Traffic: The main goal of banner advertising is to generate awareness around a brand, and create a connection with the viewer. A second and very important benefit is driving traffic to your website. It’s the “part two” of banner advertising. Banner ads can be a pure brand building play or they can include a direct response mechanism designed to generate engagement. With the click comes a move from branding to engagement. Overall we see that click rates for these campaigns are lower, simply because those who see the banners aren’t searching for your products or services at the moment. That doesn’t mean that these visits aren’t valuable. In fact, clicks to your banner ads require a person to interrupt what they were doing and are extremely valuable.

Increased Offline Sales: Most people who take the time to go to a store know exactly what they are shopping for. An impulse buy is far more likely if they are familiar with a company or product or recognize the brand. Banner advertising helps impulse buys and helps improve the effectiveness of your other marketing efforts because they are more likely to recognize your company and like and/or trust your product or service.

Value First: One aspect of banner ads that always stands out, is the concept that value is delivered to the viewer before they even click on the ad. In a split second they can understand who you are as a company, recognize your logo, see the unique offer you provide, and create a great first impression. Customers love getting things for free, or learning as much as they can about a product or service before actually paying for it. Offer something of value right in the ad. To encourage better engagement, consider offering a solution or idea at no cost as part of the offer in your banner ads. Make sure to use calls to action that indicate some type of purchase intent such as “Download the Whitepaper”, “Read the Case Study”, “Set up an Appointment” rather than non-committal calls to action like, “Click Here” or “See the Pictures”.

Higher Conversion Rates: Since value is brought to the viewer in the beginning stages of seeing the ad, clicks to such ads are more likely to convert on your website. Another reason that banner ads have higher conversion rates is because of their relevance. Contrary to popular belief, banner ads can be highly targeted by age, gender, income, location down to a one mile radius, based on prior search history, website content, and even targeted by a customer CRM list. With banner ads offering both super low cost of brand building and direct response from a highly relevant group of targeted prospects, banner ads remain a highly effective form of digital marketing for all industries.

If you would like to learn more about banner advertising or get some ideas about other digital marketing tactics that may perform well in your industry, give us a call or schedule a meeting with one of our experts.

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