Can Banner Advertising Work For You Or Is It Just For Big Companies?

Banner advertising, if done correctly, can work for anyone. You see more and more small online and offline businesses funneling banner traffic to their websites.

As you have noticed, online banner ads vary in size and content. Although the common size is still 468 pixels wide and 60 pixels in depth.

Assuming that you already have a banner, can you purchase space at an affordable rate? Yes, especially in our present economy when many of the big guys are pulling back on their marketing budgets leaving an opportunity for smaller companies.

There are basically three ways to purchase banner advertising space:

1. On a cost per thousand (CPM) impression rate. Usually once you make this type of purchase, your banner will go out through an advertising network to a group of small websites who would get a slice of the banner ad revenue. Of course, you could also purchase this space on a CPM basis from a heavily trafficked website. CPM rates may vary but suppose you pay $50 for 10,000 impressions (or showings of your banner) and you have a click-through-rate (CTR) of ½ of 1% or 50 clicks. Your cost per click is: $1

2. On a pay for performance (cost per click / CPC) basis. Here is where you pay nothing unless someone clicks through to your website (i.e. guaranteed traffic or you pay nothing). Suppose you agree to pay .75/click. Now if 50 visitors click through to your site, you will pay $37.50 for that traffic. In this example, buying banner space on the CPC basis would be more cost effective than on the CPM basis.

3. On a “term” placement basis. A smaller website, getting very little traffic may offer you a deal to keep your banner on their site for a week, month or longer term but their rates are usually considerably more than the two other programs. The benefit of this would be if you were targeting a local market and you knew they drew local traffic. For example, if you were a dealer of photocopy machines and wanted to reach the local businesses in your immediate area, you could contact your local Chamber of Commerce and ask if they sold banner advertising on their website. Usually their website would have less traffic and banner advertising would cost more however the traffic that it did have was the exact match for those most likely to purchase your photocopiers.

In the CPM example above (#1), you might be concerned over such a low click-through rate. Well, that is the nature of the beast. I would always refer to this as the spillover rate. Were you to advertise on television, not everyone would pay attention or take action once your commercial airs. Or look at the percentage of people who respond to a newspaper ad. In each of these cases they also have a huge spillover rate. (I remember a quote from William Black, founder of Chock full o’Nuts coffee that when he was told by his ad agency that he had to realize that fifty cents out of every dollar he spent on advertising would be wasted. Black responded that he only wanted them to spend the fifty cents that would not be wasted.)

You might be wondering who will put your banner ad together for you? For a snazzy, animated ad look to your supplier. You can also place an ad for a banner ad designer on one of the freelance websites such as elance.com. For a basic banner ad, use a search engine and search for something like: online banner ad generator and do it yourself.

You might find banner advertising a useful traffic building tool. Or you might find it not as cost effective as other forms of advertising for your website. In either case, you will not know unless you try.

Here is a tip for you. I learned this years ago while writing advertising copy for billboards that works as well for banners. Keep your word count to 4 – 7 words. Those few words should be powerful enough to get attention and increase the click through rate to your website.

Can you describe what you do in 10 words or less?

If I were to ask you what you do for a living or what is your business, how would you respond?  Would it be a lengthy dissertation?  Or would it be a succinct response that gives me an exact idea of what you do?

We rarely think of formulating an answer to a question as to what we do.  Perhaps that is why we tend to drone on and on grasping for the best way to explain what we do or how we do it.

I like the elevator chat style of an answer.  Picture this.   You are on an elevator when it stops at a floor to take on another person.  That person looks at you, nods and asks: “So, what do you do?” Five seconds later the elevator door opens and that person gets out.  Were you able to respond to that person’s question during your brief encounter?

Let me try it.  I am in an elevator when it stops at a floor and picks up a person.  The person enters, nods at me and asks: “So, what do you do?”  I respond: “I market financial education products to business owners and professionals.”  The elevator stops, the door opens and the person starts to leave, turns and hands me his business card telling me that he owns a court reporting business on that floor and would like to know more about my business.

Bottom line is you have no more than ten words to market yourself and/or your business.  Give those ten precious words a lot of thought as they can open doors of opportunity for you.  

Think about the ten words I chose for my “elevator chat” (which, by the way, I use many times a day to describe what I do):

“I market”…I did not say “I sell”.  People do not want to be “sold” anything.  People love to “buy”.

“financial education products”…this phrase tells potential buyers that I offer products that will educate or teach them about financial matters.

“to business owners and professionals”…I identify who the typical buyers of my products are.  These market segments tend to be high earners who would want to know more about how to make their money work harder for them.

I once attended a church service were a sermon consisted of only eight words.  Out of all of the times I attended church (every Sunday all of my life) no other sermon has impacted me as have those eight words: “Pray for your enemies because you made them.”  Compare this to a sermon that goes on and on and on.  

We are living in a world dominated by brevity.  (No one has time to listen to what the other person has to say.  Just ask my wife about my listening skills.) A classic, current example of “elevator chat” is the popularity of limiting conversations to 140 character messages on Twitter. 

Can you describe what you do in an “elevator chat”?  As a matter of fact, leave a comment and  convincingly tell us what you do in ten words or less.  Good luck.