Website Promotion
Banner Advertising
We've all seen them, infact the majority of sites you visit are likley to display some sort of banners on their pages.
Do they work? yes they can infact be extremley effective, but once again it requires some thought if you want to maximise the investment you make and genrate any decent amount of business.
This is the first of two banner advertising methods we'll look at, where basically other websites display your banner ads in return for a fee.
The Banner
The first thing to consider when thinking about displaying a banner advert on other websites is the banner itself.
Not everybody has the talent to create fantastic looking graphics, and although banner ads don't have to be extremley complicated or graphical in order to be successfull, they do have to be eye catching and most importantly, look professional.
In my own opinion it's worth every penny to invest in one or more good quality banners that promote your website.
Firstly, they are not perishable you can make use of them now or in six months time, they will still have the same effect. There's a huge number of websites and graphical services that specialize in creating banner adverts, typically you can normally expect to pay somewhere between $25 and $100 for a good quality 460x80 banner.
Always ensure that whichever company you look at to design your adverts has a varied portfolio of previous work that you can view before you buy, it's also always best to enquire how many "revisions" they will offer on the design. Revisions are basically changes, if you don't like what they come up with first time round most companies will offer a certain number of free revisions, after all you don't want to pay out for something you don't like.
A Middleman?
There's a number of services that act as a middleman for people selling banner space, and those looking to have their banners displayed. If it's possibile it can be a good idea to try and aviod these services and deal directly with the websites you're wanting to display your adverts on.
First of all you're likley to be able to agree a better price if dealing directly with a webmaster that will be displaying your banner, it also makes the process much easier in regards to payments or if you need to change your ad at anytime.
The opportunity to do this will really depend on where you're looking to place your ads, if you have a budget that will allow you to put your banners on large, high traffic commercial sites then you would normally not have any other choice than to arrange things through a third party service that handles the websites advertising.
Targetting Websites?
The next consideration is where? where do you want you banner ad displayed?
This often requires some thought as you need to try and target your banner advertising to websites who's traffic would be interested in your services, but obviously you're not going to be able to advertise on your compettitors sites.
The best tip i can give is forums and message boards, many people seem to overlook them but there are normally severall very successfull forum communities relating to the industry you're in or the product you sell, for example if your product is computer accessories then looking at advertising space on various computer related discussion forums is one of the best ways to target your adverts, as the traffic viewing your ad is obviously interested in the product you sell, so it will greatly increase the chances of people clicking your banners, rather than if you were advertising on a website where the content was non-computer related.
How much do banner ads cost?
This will depend very much on the site that you're looking to place banners on, and the location in which they will be displayed.
Obviously the general rule is that the busier the website, they more they will charge for any advertising space, but very often you'll get more success from cleverly targetting the type of sites who's traffic would be interested in your product. You may get more visits if you're advertising on busier websites but if the people clicking your banner are not interested in your services, there's little point.
The location of your banner on the website will also have an effect on the cost, for example banner space at the very top of a website on the main page, will normally demand greater costs than banner space being offered at the foot of the page or on subpages.
Which should you go for? well that depends on a few things, firstly your budget which is something that should always be determined before you look at advertising, and secondly if the extra investment required to get a "prime" placement for your ads would generate enough extra business to make it worthwhile. Sometimes that is only something you can learn over time, after seeing how effective your adverts are on certain websites.
Monitoring
Something that's often overlooked, it's extremley important to monitor how well your banners are working. If you don't know which ad placements are generating business and which are not, you can never know what ajustments to make in order to maximise your profits.
If you're placing your adverts through a company that deals especially in advertising, then you'll normally be given some sort of control panel that allows you to monitor the success of your banner, and the people that are clicking it.
If you're going directly through a webmaster, some also offer a form of monitoring, but if there's nothing available you may want to ensure that you have something at your own website that allows you to see exactly what traffic is coming from your adverts.
How do they charge?
Once again different websites will have very different methods in regards to charging for banner placements.
Some, usually the smaller more independant websites will offer a fixed rate for a fixed period, for example x amount to display your banner in one spot for a month.
The most common method of charging for online banner ads is by cost per click (cpc) this is based on a fee being charged for every one thousand impressions or clicks to your banner.
Both of these methods can be profitable, you'll often find small to medium sites that are willing to display your ad for a fixed amount of time at a good rate, and with larger sites, paying a fixed price for a certain number of impressions gives you a little more control over your budget by knowing exactly what you're getting.