Advertising Tips

To help you create the best campaign for your business, here is a handful of useful ad tips.

Simplicity sells
There's an old, never-fail rule of direct response advertising called KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid. Those are words to create banners by. Banners are the sizzle of an ad campaign, not the story. They should tempt prospective customers, not hammer them with a lot of text. The graphics should enhance the brief message, not distract from it with attention-sucking colors. Banners with too much going on don't get clicked; they get ignored.

Target your audience carefully
Catching your audience's attention with a creative banner is important, but you also need to make sure that you're targeting the right audience for your message. Targeting a qualified audience doesn't necessarily result in more clicks for your banner. In fact, a finely-targeted banner may have a lower click-through rate. Careful targeting does, however, draw the prospective customers most likely to matter—those who are interested in your message or product and who are thus more valuable visitors. Because 95-99% of banners are viewed by people who don't actually click on them, a targeted banner ensures that the visitors who don't click on it are valuable potential customers who have now been exposed to your brand. In order for targeting to work, you'll need to know who your prospective customers are and what subject categories they're most likely to be interested in.

Less is more
The best way to get a response to you banner ad is to make sure that your message is delivered. Conventional methods for enhancing audience response do not always work online. On the Web, for example, the likelihood of an image being displayed decreases as its size increases: the larger the image, the less often it will appear. Similarly, though animation is effective in television ads, it is not as successful in Web advertising for this reason: the simpler the banner (fewer colors, fewer images), the faster it loads. If the viewer moves to the next page before your ad can load, it doesn't matter how great the messages or graphics are.

The most powerful 4-letter word
Putting the word "free" in your online advertising means that when someone clicks on your banner, you give them something. Amazingly, no matter how small the type you use to display it, the word "free" still commands a huge response. Never place "free" on your banner, however, unless you're actually offering something to the viewer who clicks on the banner: you'll end up with only angry customers.

Sound a call to action
A good banner grabs the viewer's attention. To generate click-through, a banner should also give viewers a reason to click through. Along with a benefit-oriented offer, your banner should feature a "call to action." Calls to action such as "See us now!" or "Build your Web site now!" can improve Internet advertising response rates by as much as 15%. Source: "A Comprehensive Analysis of Ad Response," by Internet Profiles and Double Click Network, 1996

Use analogy
People who have never heard of your product or service may sometimes find it hard to relate to exactly what it can do for them. If you communicate the benefits of your product in a way that likens it to something most people are familiar with, your message will hit closer to home. Almost everyone has watched TV or parked a car. These common activities might have little or nothing to do with the product you are advertising —that's the beauty of an ad campaign that uses appropriate analogies. The product message can be linked to common, everyday activities.

Use simple animation
Unlike billboards or print ads, Web banners are dynamic. Instead of just waiting to be looked at, they're capable of reaching out and grabbing viewers' attention. Animation is an especially effective way to catch someone's eye. Be careful not to use animation for its own sake. Use it selectively to draw attention to your product. Animating the phrase "click here" or the word "free" may be a useful way to highlight important parts of your banner. It is more effective, however, to use animation that is tied to a concept or message that you want the viewer to associate with your product.

Make a sales pitch
A banner can be used as an effective, audience-grabbing device that pulls viewers in to hear the "real" sales message, which the advertiser communicates in more detail on a Web site. For example, a banner can use animation or other dazzling graphics to capture viewers' interest and draw them in to view the Web site.

Tell a story
Everyone loves a good story. Advertisers can lure viewers with an intriguing banner and use a theme to advertise their product creatively

Increase use of Click Here
The easiest way to increase your customers' use of click-through is to prompt them to use it. According to a recent study, the addition of textual or visual cues indicating that a banner leads to more information results in a 44% increase in click-through rates. There are many ways to remind the viewer to click through to more information besides the two simple words "Click Here." You can add arrows or buttons to the banner, or another image, such as the swirl in the banner above. You can also add text that tells viewers that more information is available. Or, as shown in the banner above, you can add text that tells viewers specifically what they will gain by clicking on your banner.

Tease your audience
Teasing people is an old advertising trick that works well in any medium, including the Web. Here are some effective ways to tease a person into clicking on your banner:
- Be provocative and intriguing.
- Ask a question that can't go unanswered.
- Say something unusual, quirky, or weird.
- Pretend that you're talking about something else.
If your purpose is to drive only qualified people to your site, try not to use an unrelated message to trick them into surfing there. If your banner ad is intriguing, but has nothing to do with your product, people will be disappointed and hit the back button, never to return.