10 fawesome tips to sell your banner ads
Posted on 21. Oct, 2009 by Franz in Advertising, Web Marketing
If you look around the Internet for advertising opportunities, you’ll come across many. Heck, you’ll also probably come across large advertising networks handling large amounts of websites under their sleeves. We can sift through a lot of non-related websites from there because we have choices from a trustable source. But those are usually the bigger boys.
Being an SME (annual turnover <RM5million) makes you a mercenary for hire – You’ll be up for jobs, probably have your own set of improvised tools and machinery, and could probably handle niche industries in a cheaper, more effective manner. Advertising companies should know one thing about online ad-spends: You can ALSO target smaller players and reap higher conversions; whether it’s lead or sales.
Price Factor Logic: Why spend RM5,000/week or RM10,000/month on banner advertisements in a 4 million pageviews site when you can target niche communities with probably a quarter of the price and double the conversion value? The only price you have to pay is effort and time. And that’s what SMEs’ have.
Volume Logic: Sure, 4 million pageviews/month is much better than 8,000 pageviews. Instead of throwing a bomb to bigger crowds with loads of other interests, why not smaller crowds with targeted interests? 1,000 visits with 10 conversions is WORSE THAN 100 visits with 30 conversions.
Trust Logic: Advertisements don’t hold a lot of consumer trust – Maybe for corporate branding purposes when it comes to “TRUST”. Goto whichever market research company you want – They will tell you the same thing: “Recommendations/Reviews/Opinions carry more weight than Ads.” And with ample resources on and offline, why bother throwing money to see your Google Analytics report spike?
I have seen companies grown in size because of Google’s PPC, display advertising over different advert continents and networks – But if your conversion rate is 3-5%, what happened to the rest of your 95-97%?
Display advertising can still grow in Malaysia
There’s another question you should ask yourself: “How do you know if your research company is fairly accurate?”
Factors affecting respondents are enough to turn you off sometimes – Blind scores are often found in surveys. Trust media channels around the Internet often revolve around relationships – And that’s what hikes the price for huge media channels around the world. Let’s take ADMA 2009’s table for example.
ADMA 2009 - Trust in Media Channels for Malaysia, 2009: Data of 2008
You have to agree with me that high profile businesses work this way – Relationships and word of mouth. The way you treat a potential client carries more weight than your initial value. If and unless they are time-constrained or desperate, then they can always move over. This is not a good thing for an SME, because startups often don’t have a lot of support and credibility.
In Malaysia, display advertising is still workable – Our community in general has always been more graphical and text-challenged. You don’t need to reference any expert performing this study. Just look at the people around you and there are your proof.
But how you convey your message is another thing.
Selling your fawesome banner advertisements
For a small companies, you definitely need a lot of reasons to go display advertising. But if you really decide to go that way, here are a few tricks you can use:
- Know your market segment: Different demographics are attracted to ads in different ways. Not all TEXT LIKE THIS attract attention; modern English-speaking working adults prefer simpler, clear and clean designs while trendy, hip and young Chinese-speaking prefer more bombastic concoctions. Plan accordingly.
- Don’t sell the product, sell the punch line: Products are common sellers – They don’t attract attention as much as punch lines. Use understandable, clever metaphors. But again, if you don’t know your market segment, you’ll fail here.
- Adapt to the local market: Adapting to the local market isn’t only using local celebrities, writing in local language or using locally found materials – You need to find out what ticks them off: And that’s how effective having a local eye in your company if you want to move to another country.
- Find your niche: No, not YOUR niche. It’s your display network’s niche. Make sure you’re placing ads on targeted areas (by accidental or attraction), and uses of the website is according to what you sell or need.
- Diverse your actions: Don’t just buy one ad-spot when you decide to go display advertising. Buy a few ad-spots, then send the same message with a different story & approach in it.
- Time your story chronologically (if you don’t have one, make one): Tell your story – Part 1 first, then go for Part 2 and Part 3. Make sure attention is focused on the product you’re selling.
- Sell one product at a time: Common mistake people make – Selling their whole catalogue with one display ad. The conversion-difficulty level is similar to killing 10 birds with 1 stone.
- Do not oversell your product: Ads aren’t the most trustable source – So overselling it could yield higher CTR (clickthrough rates) but lowers conversions (and there goes your database acquisition plans). E.G. “Be 10x bigger with Isteri Puas!”
- Focus on your landing page: Nothing kills consumer attention faster than a barrier in between you and your customer – And that barrier could be landing page design, speed of load, indirect messages, ads on ads display, integrity, copy-style, misspellings, etc.
- Don’t skim on ad-concept, skim on ad-volume: A good ad concept – Considering all angles to a particular market is the way to go. Spend on that rather than spending on blast banner ads all over ad networks around the continent.
No matter how well you do when it comes to banner and display ads, there are still things to do after: Tracking, improving and benefiting. A small company is more like a poor mercenary for hire; more flexible, aggressive and cost effective.
