Banner Ad Design Tips
When the Internet first started really taking off in the consumer realm, banner ads were all the rage. There were the simple ones with just text and a link underneath and then the fancy ones with animation and text or even a drop down box. But as email and search engine marketing began to evolve and develop, banner ads began to fade from the Internet marketing scene. Although they have very much faded from the mainstream, banner ads remain a viable and inexpensive marketing tool for people just trying to increase the visibility of their site and business. Here are a few tips that will help you to create more effective banner ads:
The most important aspect of any ad is a call for action.
A simple “click now” will work but you want to add a little more incentive. Instead, try saying “click now to receive your discount”. This is still fairly simple but it not only prompts action, it provides motivation to the reader to take action.
In general, people are not inclined to click on banner ads
in the first instant so you need to get straight to the
point in as few words as possible. The real advantage of
banner ad is that it will capture the attention of the
viewer for a very short space of time, maybe a second or
two. So there is no time to waste with any form of long
copy or ‘wordy ad’ What you need is to capture enough
interest or curiosity to tempt the viewer to click the ad
so they will be forwarded to another place where you can explain in full all the benefits of the service offered.
It is indeed the clear benefits that you need to stress.
The full features that the service offers can easily be explained in detail on your website. In your banner ad, you need to tell the viewer that your service will provide something positive in their life. For example, if your company is a staffing agency you may offer resume writing assistance to applicants. But in a banner ad, you only want to say something like, “For a great job today, click here!”. See the difference? People don’t want to know about the specific job details or even how they are going to get a great job. They simply want to know that by clicking on the banner ad is going to get them a great job. Tell them about your resume writing services in the proper place ie. the website, not on the banner ad.
Banner ads do indeed work. Surprisingly, the most effective ones are the simplest. They are the static banners with a simple call to action that conveys some benefit to people if they click on the link. While you may not want to rely on banner ads for all of your marketing, there is no doubt that you will generate traffic and visitors by using it correctly. And besides, it is one of the least expensive methods out there in Internet marketing and if it works, why not use it to the fullest?
Desmond Mantor is the Marketing Manager for
Have Traffic
a business specializing in producing highly targeted
website traffic for commercial websites. For more details please visit http://www.havetraffic.com