Digital Media News

Establishing your own unique personality and brand identity online is a crucial part of managing a successful digital marketing strategy. Although there are various areas that you may need to focus on when it comes to maintaining brand identity, one of the primary things you'll want to concentrate on - is how you're going to distinguish your banner advertisements from those of your competitors. According to Business Insider, you're already fighting against tough odds if you've decided to use banner advertising as your primary form of online representation, but the truth is that poor design is often the cause of poor results. If you know how to make your banner distinct, innovative, and interesting, you can prove the statistics wrong and achieve a fantastic new rate of traffic and conversions. Following are four ways that you can optimize your banner advertisement design and leave your competitors in the dust.

As businesses rush around searching for new ways to advertise their company and increase product awareness, many brands seem to forget that web banner ads are still a key form of online advertising. Banner ads are one of the most prolific forms of display advertising used in the online World today. Almost every company utilizes them in some form because they are easily measurable, affordable, and effective.

Of course, like any form of marketing campaign that you may choose to pursue, the success of your banner ads will depend on how engaging, attractive, and enticing they are. For your banners to work, they need to be able to lure visitors to click on them and visit your landing page. Because of this, a good web banner should create not only a strong interest in the user to see what's happening on the advertising page, but also the potential to convert visitors into leads and buyers.

Online advertising tends to be one of those things that you either get right spectacularly well, or horribly wrong. Banner ads perhaps represent this situation perfectly. Online advertising and banner ads enjoy their fair share of trends and it’s important to keep up to date with what’s hot and what’s not. Having said that, there are 5 staple bits of information about banner ads that will stand the test of time.

1. Make sure that your banner ads are laser-targeted.

It’s common sense, yet a common mistake. There’s no point creating a banner ad if it’s not going to reach your target market. Therefore, picking which websites your banner ad sits on is crucial. Do some research!

Let's face it, quality content is hard to create and keep fresh, be it on a website or within a banner advertisement. We might all agree that a website or blog fed daily with fresh content will probably capture and keep more loyal fans than a web presence that never changes. Furthermore, content that engages visitors and creates a dialogue is even more powerful. But there are challenges and trade offs between static and dynamic advertisement content. 

Let's take a look at some examples and list the pros and cons.

Static Content

Examples: website pages; social media profiles; eBooks; whitepapers; ppc ads; social media ads; banner ads;videos and one-way webinars.

The eagle eyed amongst you may think that videos and webinars or rotating banners are‘dynamic’ because they move or change over time, but each of them is really one event that doesn't change, with a beginning, middle, end and a single purpose.

How to Avoid Making Ugly Banner Ads That Are Annoying as Kimmy Gibbler on Speed. You know, Full House—aka best show ever except for that menacing Kimmy. Any way, in order to prevent your target market from shrieking in horror and retreating from your banner as soon as possible, we are going to go over a few tips on how to create and design the best display ads.

Be Concise

Like a billboard, you don’t have much space with which to express the gamut of your emotions—or gamut of words explaining your product, deal, promotion, brand, etc, etc, etc. See how I went on and on right there? It’s annoying isn’t it? Well your ad will be annoying to your target market if you barrage them with words (or photos or flashing anything). Basically, don’t go overkill. The more concise and clear you can be, the better.

Good

Bad

Think about what is the most pertinent information to include, and if you have some room for creativity then go for it. But don’t go for it too much and always try to . . .

A rather unimpressive 2% of shoppers will convert during their first visit to an online store. This means that 98% of your customers could be slipping through the cracks - and that's where retargeting comes in.

The concept of retargeting in advertising focuses on allowing your brand to zero in on those 98% of visitors, giving them a second, third, fourth and fifth chance to convert. It allows you to show tailored ads to potential customers via social media, search engines, and other websites. They see your advertisements, click back into your website, and convert. Retargeting is a way for you to stay connected to your potential customers, feeding all of the stages of your marketing funnel with engagement, brand recall, and conversions.

Of course, the more amazing your retargeting campaign is, the more successful you are likely to be. Though this is a concept that has been proven to be effective, it's also worth noting that a poorly conducted campaign could hurt or hinder your marketing efforts. With that in mind, here are some best practices to follow when you're wondering what makes for a good retargeting campaign.

Be better at online media buying. That isn't just friendly advice, it's essential if you want to get your hands on a piece of success. You might have a great display advertising campaign in the works, but that doesn't mean you won't be searching for ways to enhance your tactics for direct-response. Buying display ads, banners and/or text can be a fantastic way to engage customers.

The way that you manage your campaign is up to you. You may focus your advertising scheme to be oriented to direct-response, including product sales and lead generation. On the other hand, you may focus your advertising completely on branding, in an attempt to build name recognition and brand awareness over time.