The online world of advertising as we used to know it has changed over the recent decades. Where banner ads used to earn about a 44% CTR, today, these ads have to work much harder if they want to get the attention of an audience, and convince that audience to progress into action. Although trying out new creative solutions and thinking outside of the box with your banner creations can help, one of the best solutions for developing successful banner ads lies within the welcoming arms of Google Analytics.
If you've been spending your advertising budget on just about any kind of advertising, then one of the most important things you'll need to ensure that you're not simply wasting your money, is follow and analyze the performance of those ads. Although you may not necessarily make your banner ads directly through Google analytics, you can use those analytics to improve the banner creatives you do create, and increase your chances of click-through and conversions.
Using Google Analytics can be an ideal way to develop your banner ads, as it gives you a direct insight into what's working, and what's not for different banners, audiences, goals, and demographics. All you need to know is how to use the built-in tracking programs available, and apply the results to your banners.
Start by Setting Goals
It's impossible to improve the performance of your banner advertisements, if you can't tell whether they're achieving anything in the first place. This is why you need to set up goals - or indications of what you want your banner ads to achieve. Setting up goals in Google Analytics is simple enough, you simply head to the menu, and select the account you want to evaluate, from there:
- In the "Website Profile" section, click on "edit"
- Go to the "Conversion Goals and Funnel" section and edit one of your goals
- Select "Head match" and pull down "match type"
- In the first text box, place your "Thank you" page for conversion
- In the "Goal name" box, type a title for your goal
Doing this will mean that whenever a visitor goes from your banner ad, to your conversion "thank you" page, analytics will know that the ad has achieved its goal. At the same time, you'll be able to see which banners achieve the best results, so you can carry through techniques into the next creatives you make.
Know Which Data to Track
While some of the data you can gather through Google Analytics can be a great way to improve your banner creation strategies, some of it is likely to lead you astray or have you worrying about metrics that don't really matter. Fortunately, with Google Analytics you can keep track of your banner results easily:
- Go to Google Analytics
- Click "Traffic Sources" in the left-hand-side bar
- Choose "Campaigns"
- Select the Campaign that you want to track - this will be the campaign name you designated in your goals above.
- Click on the "Goal conversion" tab to see how the campaign is working towards each of your goals.
Although this may seem complicated to some people, the truth is that tracking all of these metrics through banner advertising on Google Analytics can enhance your marketing strategy significantly. The more metrics you record, the more you'll be able to see which parts of your banner are having the best impact on your audience.
Google Analytics Allows For Split Testing
In simple terms, Google Analytics helps you to develop your banner advertisements by giving you an easier solution for A/B or split testing. While attempting to split test your creatives alone can often lead to confusion, banners that you have shown throughout your Google analytics strategy will automatically be tracked for results that impact your end-goals. In other words, you can spend less time trying to figure out what worked for you, and more time adapting and upgrading your ads into the creatives that will best appeal to your audience.
For some people, the process of setting up Google Analytics can be somewhat complicated, and the first time you set it up, you may find that you have trouble understanding all of the different aspects you might need to consider. However, you'll soon be able to track and improve your advertising with ease, while ensuring that you're not wasting crucial marketing resources on advertisements that simply don't work.
Remember that creating the perfect banner ad is going to take some time and persistence, so don't be put off if you don't get it right the first time around. The more you learn, the better your creatives will become, and those creatives could work to boost other aspects of your marketing scheme too, such as social impact and brand awareness.
