Does Your Banner Ad Have a Call to Action?

Banner ad campaigns are used for many things such as building brand awareness, improving traffic to your web site, increasing sales, gaining new customers, etc. However, no banner ad campaign will be effective without a call to action.

What is a call to action?
A call to action put simply, asks your viewers to do something. This could be anything from filling out a form, to clicking on your link, to participating in an interactive game. The point is that it makes a specific request. For online banner advertising, the most likely call to action is to click on your link and therefore be transported to your web site. On your web site you can have a separate call to action such as filling out a form or making a purchase.

How to create an effective call to action?
An effective call to action can do wonders for your banner ad campaign, your CTR, your sales and your company branding. Advertising banners are for the most part small and viewers don’t get a lot of information from them, so an effective call to action is essential to get them moving towards learning more about your business or your products. When creating a custom web banner or reviewing your current advertising banner, you should make sure to do the following:
Convince the viewer of their need to follow your call to action.
Provide only one call to action – don’t ask viewers to do too much at once. You only want them focusing on one thing at a time.
Be very direct in your advertising banner. Tell the viewer exactly what you want them to do, like “Click Here”.
Make it stand out from the rest of your advertising banner with things like contrasting colors, bigger font or animation.
Offer an added bonus or something extra to sweeten the call to action.
Make it seem urgent, like a limited time offer. By changing your offer, this is a good way to keep your banner ad fresh.
Back up your call to action by providing your potential customers with what they are looking for when they click through on your advertising banner.

Banner Advertising Terminology

When you decide you are ready to dive into web banner advertising it is important to get the lingo down so that you can understand and get the most out of your advertising banners. Here are some important key terms to get you started:

Page Views or Page Impressions: the number of times a page is requested.

Traffic: the number of page views per month to a web site.

Creative: refers to the graphics and design of your custom banner sign.

Rotating Ad: an advertising banner design on the page that changes every time the page is reloaded.

Static Ad: a banner ad creation that does not change, but remains the same every time the page is reloaded.

Text Ads: advertisements made up of text, which are backed by hyperlinks and when clicked on will take the potential customer to the advertiser’s web site. There is much debate about which is better for advertising - text ads or banner ads. We will address that in an upcoming post.

Banner Views: the number of times a page view lasts long enough for a banner ad to completely download.

Click Through: when a potential customer clicks on your banner ad and goes to your web site.

CTR: the click through rate that is measured in percentages, it is the percentage of visitors to a web site who actually click through a banner advertisement. This is typically a very low percentage with anything over 1% being very good.

Conversion Rate: the number of customers who click through to your web site and then actually make a purchase, essentially converting them into customers.

Landing Page: the first page that a potential customer sees upon clicking on your advertising banner. A landing page is like the short version of the message you want to convey, it gives basic information and provides a call to action for the potential customer.

CPC: the cost per click. If you set up a CPC banner ad advertising arrangement, that means that you will only pay for your ad space when someone actually clicks on your banner ad to go to your web site.

CPM: means cost per thousand with the “M” representing the Roman numeral for one thousand. If you agree to CPM banner ad rates, you will be charged based on every thousand page views the web site your banner ad is on receives regardless of click throughs to your web site.

Cost Per Sale: a way of calculating how much cost a company puts into one sale. Banner advertising is included in that cost.

Banner Advertising for Beginners

What is Banner Advertising?
Banner advertising is a form of online marketing. It is the creation and placement of ads on various web pages to direct potential customers to your web site or to create awareness of your web site. Banner advertisements are similar to ads you would see in newspapers or magazines, but, instead of the potential customer having to go searching for your product, an advertising banner can be clicked on and voila! The potential client has landed right on your web site. Advertising banner ads can be colorful, animated and designed entirely how you want them in order to grab a potential customer’s attention and direct them to your web site. Unlike print advertising, online banner ads can change images, have sound clips and more to entice the potential customer’s eye. Banner advertising is a great tool to add to your online marketing arsenal.

How can online banner advertising help you?
First and foremost, you want your custom banner ad to prompt a person to click on your ad, go to your web site and make a purchase. If that doesn’t happen, you want a person to click on your ad and at the very least visit your site to learn more about your service or product.

The second thing that you want to happen with advertising banners is branding. Even if a customer doesn’t click on your ad then and there, you want them to look at your ad long enough to create some awareness of your product. The goal is that the next time a person needs your product, they will remember your ad, feel somewhat familiar with your product and choose you over your competitors.

How can you get a custom banner ad?
There are a few programs out there that can walk you through designing a custom web banner yourself, but to have a really good banner ad, hiring an expert is the way to go. A banner ad designer will be able to take your text and graphics and turn your ad into a unique, enticing and professional banner that will go a long way to help your online marketing campaign.

Contextual Targeting vs. Placement Targeting

Contextual targeting and placement targeting seem to be the buzz words in online banner advertising right now. But, do you really know what they mean and how they can help your banner ad campaign? Let’s explore.

Contextual Targeting
Contextual advertising in its simplest form means to place your advertising banner on a web site that has similar content. The reason behind contextual targeting with banner ads is that it is assumed that if there is a web site that is addressing a specific subject and you place a banner ad on that web site for a product that also addresses that subject then the readers of that web site are more likely to click on your ad and find out about your products.

For example, say that there is a web site teaching teenagers how to have healthy skin and you place an ad on that web site for an acne treatment, the chances of a teenage reader clicking on your banner is way higher than them clicking on an ad for deodorant appearing on the same site.

Placement Targeting
Placement targeting is similar to a contextual targeting, but a little bit more specific. Instead of matching up your advertising banner with a general web site you aim to match your banner ad up to a specific page within a web site and a specific place on that web page. In this case you are concerned with content and visibility in order to generate a higher CTR.

Let’s look at our healthy skin example again. If you want to use placement targeting for your acne treatment banner ad, then you would find a web site teaching teenagers how to have healthy skin, you would find the particular web page that recommends how to treat acne and then you would request that your web banner be placed as the leader board ad, or as a rectangle ad in the top portion of the page. Now your banner ad is even more likely to be clicked on because teenagers that select this page are in need of acne treatment. When they open up the page – ban, there is your advertising banner offering them the exact solution they are looking for.

Which is better?
It’s a toss-up. In contextual targeting you reach a broad range of people that probably already have a passing interest in your product, where in placement targeting you reach a smaller range of people, but a very specific group that is actively seeking a product just like yours. The bottom line is both targeting practices are good and for the best banner ad advertising campaign, you should use both to generate a high CTR.