As banner ads turn more sophisticated, here are a few tips that will ensure that you get maximum click-throughs
Target, target, target
By utilising the Web's ability to target, you can increase the effectiveness and efficiency of your online advertising efforts. You can deliver your message to specific industries, include or exclude specific geographic regions or cities, target by user interest and even control frequency. Taking advantage of the Web's ability to deliver highly targeted audiences will help you generate leads and sales and create the one-to-one relationships which will extend and build your brand.
Pose questions
Don't just make statements or show pretty pictures. Use questions (‘Looking for free software?’ ‘Have you seen?’). They initiate an interaction with the banner by acting as a teaser. They entice people to click on your banner. More importantly, they can raise click-through by 16 per cent over average.
Bright colours
Colours affect the eye differently. Using bright colours can help attract a user's eye, contributing to higher response rates. Research has shown that blue, green and yellow work best, while white, red, and black are less effective.
Home is not always sweet
All Web pages are not created equal when it comes to eliciting response. While the home page often performs very well, a site may have other pages that outperform it. Depending upon the advertiser, certain pages can deliver a more targeted audience than others. By carefully analysing these pages, you can increase your response by placing your banner on a page that better attracts your target audience.
Location
According to research, banners that appear on first page load are more likely to be clicked on. Negotiate ad placement on the top of page when buying space. The best possible scenario is having banners placed both on the top and on the bottom of a page.
Use animation
Animation can help catch a user's eye. Strategic use of movement grabs attention more effectively than static banners. Using simple Java or .gif animation can increase response rates by up-to 25 per cent.
Use cryptic messages
What did that ad say? What did that mean? Cryptic ad banners can help involve a user in the message. Because the ‘sponsor’ of the message is not revealed, cryptic messages can be very intriguing. But there is a downside. Branding is forfeited on the ad. This may not be an issue if branding is not your main objective. Cryptic messages typically increase click-through by 18 per cent.
Call to action
As in traditional direct response, a call to action is known to raise response rates. Simple phrases such as ‘Click Here’, ‘Visit Now’ and ‘Enter Here’ tend to improve response rates by 15 per cent. These phrases should be strategically placed in the ad, preferably on the right side. This is where the eye will be drawn.
Avoid banner burnout
After how many impressions does click-through rate significantly decline? After how many impressions do people start ignoring your banner? Studies have concluded that there indeed is a ‘sweet-spot’ for user response. After the fourth impression, average response rates typically dropped to under one per cent. This is called banner burnout, the point at which a banner stops delivering a good return on investment. These findings are incredibly significant. Controlling your frequency extends your reach.
Measure beyond the click
Click-through is not always the best measurement of campaign effectiveness. It depends on your objectives. If you are simply trying to drive traffic, the click-through is great. But if you are trying to gather leads, the best measurement is the number of people who clicked through and filled out a lead form. Three per cent click-through and 80 per cent lead fulfilment is better than ten per cent click-through and 20 per cent fulfilment. If you are trying to measure brand impact, conduct an online brand awareness study, or measure user interaction.
Tips for Marketing with RSS
A few tips that will help you leverage the control of the consumer in RSS and ensure smooth sailing for your RSS marketing campaigns
> Identify feed characteristics
All feeds are not created equal. There are many variables when it comes to content delivery with RSS feeds. For example, My Yahoo! only displays the headlines of feeds while Bloglines can show as much as the entire feed item with its full content. And while some publishers offer the full text of their content in feeds, others only offer partial feeds, forcing readers to click through to their website to read the full contents of a news item. Evaluate the feeds in which you are advertising carefully. See what the consumer sees and determine whether or not the feed lends itself well to advertising.
> Tell a story. Don't sell a product
RSS consumers want engaging content. Readers want to learn about the specific topics discussed in their chosen RSS feeds, and this experience should not stop at the publisher's content, but should extend into your advertising as well. The ad needs to tell a story. Present interesting facts or quotes from recent news about the benefits of hybrids, or, end the copy in your ad with an intriguing environmental question that you answer on your website. RSS advertising is much different than search advertising, and the same creative will have a much different effect.
> Keep the creative fresh and new
Once you have established a strategy to communicate a story in your campaign, this format must be maintained and built upon. Consumers and content providers continually update their RSS feeds, and the enclosed advertising is most effective when it is updated at a similar rate as well. A simple rule of thumb is to change your creative for every six new posts in the feed.
> Build a relationship with the potential customer
RSS advertising provides advertisers with a compelling platform to build a relationship with the RSS readers they are targeting. An RSS feed is a pure opt-in medium that consumers return to on a regular basis and this gives advertisers the ability to communicate with them on a deep, consistent level and eliminates the problems posed by spam filters in customer e-mail communications.
> Choose and define your audience wisely
This tip may seem obvious, as it applies to many forms of marketing. But with RSS, where the audience is small but extremely targeted, executing well in this step of the marketing process is imperative. With e-mail marketing, it's about reaching a mass audience while competing with spam filters and trust issues. From a targeting perspective, RSS could not be more different.
|
|
