Tell Your Visitors Why They Should Respond

Source: Twitter

Your visitor doesn’t know you, so there is no way he is going to listen to you when your call to action just says “Buy now”. Why should he? What does the deal have in it for him? Answer the question when you are making the call to action. In the above example, the ad explains what Twitter is about, and then calls the visitor to be apart of the social conversation before telling him to get started on the site. It is a clear enough explanation of what the visitor can expect on the site when he signs up. A similar explanation to your visitor about the benefits and services he can derive from performing the call to action makes the chances of his responding increase. So add that extra line or two before call to action.

Sweeten the Deal

Besides the obvious benefit the visitor gets from responding to your call to action, you can sugar coat your offer by offering a little extra. That way, the visitor thinks he gets more out of the deal than he gives, and this makes the conversion even easier. In the above example, you get a t-shirt free when you sign up on the site, but you also get another t-shirt if you re post and like the page. A little freebie, but a lot of people would click on it for that extra t-shirt. Use something like that, a free trial, or a free e-book as a special giveaway to those who respond to your call to action, and see the conversions rise.

Skip an Obvious Sales Pitch

We all like discounts and freebies. Sometimes it is a good idea to play to that essential nature of your visitors rather than make an obvious call to action. In the above example, the visitor is interested in clicking when he sees how much he can save and what he is being offered. This works way better than writing “Save with every yummy meal you have at Burger King” because the visual impact of the coupons is far superior to what you can tell them in words. So if it suits your product, skip the obvious call to action and let your images do the work for you.

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If your campaign has been underway for some time and you know how much each conversion costs, it might be advisable to increase your bid and get a higher position for your ad in order to raise the number of clicks through your site and get more sales.  However, keep in mind that target profitability must remain constant. Calculate the extra sales to check the extra cost and adjust the bid accordingly to maintain the profitability constant.

Prevent Monotony in Ad Sizes

The same ad appearing over and over again can cause viewers to ignore it beyond a while. In the world of advertising, packaging is very important, and how you display your ad affects how many people will look at it. Experiment with ad sizes and placement and reinvent your ads. A viewer who knows your ad appears as a vertical banner on the right side of the page will very likely not look at it on the third visit to the site. Change the size and make it appear as a skyscraper and the next time the visitor goes to the site, he will look at it. Aside from the familiarity, size and placement also make a difference to the total viewership and clicks on your ads. Watch the patterns and know which size of ad placed where works most for you. Continue with it for a while and then repackage it and put it elsewhere on the page.

The whole purpose of ad campaigns is to market your product to a larger target audience. Making small changes in your budget to tweak your ad settings is perhaps the best way to increase the number of clicks on your ads. Sure, changing the ad campaign would be a great option too, but whether you do it yourself or outsource it, the expenditure you incur in doing it will always be more than making such small changes in your existing ad campaign. But most importantly, give these new changes some time to catch on.

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Squeeze More Efficiency Out of Your Campaign

As a campaigner, you may have got to a point where your ads are doing really well, you are managing your bids well, and your match type strategy is solid. Your keywords research is thorough and you’re constantly mining search queries and optimizing ad texts and landing pages. But now it is time for the next step. Now you need to drive more leads by expanding to new keywords and campaigns. Change your campaign settings – change the monthly budget, keywords, ad delivery, frequency, targeting options and conversion tracking tools to find what suits you best. Also work around day parting and geo targeting settings to achieve optimal efficiency from your ad campaign.

Look Beyond Third-Party Hosting

Advertising is the key to continuing operations on the web. But often the technical and business development infrastructure of a site is not enough to recruit their own advertiser accounts and serve their own ads. If your site is one of these then you’ve probably had to depend on third-party advertisement serving companies. You have probably found the server space, campaign delivery and reporting facilities that you needed for your ads. However even if this is a cost-effective solution, this also means that your ads will only appear on the sites that are also using the third party. Once your advertising campaign is more stable, it may be advisable to look beyond the third-party to networks that will make your ads visible on other sites too. In addition by connecting publishers to advertisers, these networks can provide targeting capabilities. You may also consider ad exchanges as they eventually lead to better pricing for their advertisers. Tweak your budget, consider the opportunities and then pick the one that you think is the most logical step up from your third-party affiliations.

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Static Banners – Not a Static Existence

Static banners have always been the fall-back couch of internet marketers and over time, have been the foundations of other interactive campaigns. Banners have been used to generate clicks, let consumers enter into contests, promote products from particular brands, and give leads. With multiple ups and downs over their course of journey, and with the superior performance and increased usability given by rich media ads, banner ads still remain a strong format in the world of online marketing. What lends credibility to this fact is that according to the Ponemon Institute’s 2004 Survey on Internet Ads , 66 percent of respondents said they would find relevant banner ads less annoying, and 52 percent would be more likely to respond to a relevant banner.

Banner ads are cost-effective, and easy to create. This means that a simple online tutorial can make anyone create a banner ad in a few hours. The ease implies that banner ads are budget-friendly and you can therefore use them as many times as you want on different websites to generate leads. What makes banner ads such a great way to advertise is how well they fit placement opportunities. On sites that are content-rich anyway, having a discreet banner ad can be most effective because, unlike rich media, they do not scream for attention, but can entice the viewer with subtle information. Also, banner ads do not detract the viewer from the site’s original content, and that explains the Ponemon survey’s result.

Text Links – When Subtlety is the Word

Text links are the cheapest form of web marketing, and in spite of criticisms, they continue being the fundamental fiber of digital advertising. These are simply click-able texts in a website that link to other websites and when used wisely, they can work well within the boundaries set by search engines to increase your website’s page rank, search engine rankings and therefore, traffic.  Optimization of your website is facilitated by the ability to view the common words in anchor texts linking to your site, and with multiple back links to your website, it is easy to see why traffic will multiply.

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In order to decide if you can benefit by reaching out into the archives of the world of advertising, it is important to understand what these formats are and how they work. In this session we will do exactly that, enlighten you about the heroes of yore.

Microsites – the greatest hero of the days gone by

A fantastic way to provide in-depth information about a particular topic is to have a dedicated microsite. A microsite is therefore, a discreet entity within another site used to add specialized information that

can be editorial or commercial. However, with the advent of new formats for advertising, microsites were relegated to the backseat, and security expert Rich Baldry commented:

When special-purpose domains for campaign microsites appear, it becomes [...] confusing. At best, people might ignore the microsite domain, keeping themselves safe but making the marketing dollars a waste. At worst, the protection and reputation offered by use of known domains is lost and people end up infected the next time they follow an unknown domain.(1)

While the main criticism against microsites comes from those used for “white hat” purposes, it cannot be denied that microsites are still around, and their versatility can do wonders for your business by:

1. Being cost-effective simple solutions for promotional purposes
2. Being a starter site before your full-service site is ready
3. Showcasing seasonal promos and offers
4. Being the landing page for your main site
5. To test offers
6. Creating multiple/sticky brand associations
7. Broaden your scope for link building.

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But it is not just images that do the trick in online advertising. It has to be supported, more often than not, by text. An online ad-maker’s job is to make sure that the story is synchronized with the image used in the ad. In other words, wholly discordant images and texts will not work. Adman Rosser Reves once famously said, “If all I want is to catch the audience’s attention, all I have to do is to show a Gorilla swinging on a trapeze.” Your story is what helps you retain that viewer attention long enough for your campaign to be successful. When you display an image, viewers interpret that to make a story, and your purpose, as the maker of the ad is to ensure that the back-story matches with the intention with which you created the ad and therefore, the image. Also, your ad can have a story only when there are people in it, or more specifically, characters.
In the following example, an almost sepia-toned photograph shows a little boy in London, and the supporting copy asks viewers how long it has been since their last visit to London. It is a simple story, but an effective story nonetheless because it urges viewers to consider London as their next holiday destination:

The importance of the supporting story for an image is immortalized in the famous Ogilvy quote: “The kind of photographs which work hardest are those which arouse the reader’s curiosity.  He glances at the photograph and says to himself, ‘What goes on here?’  Then he reads your copy to find out.  Harold Rudolph called this magic element ‘Story Appeal,’ and demonstrated that the more of it you inject into your photographs, the more people look at your advertisements.”(2) The curiosity to know more about your character makes visitors click through the image to know the back story, and compelling your visitors to do this is the job of visual scandal used in your ad.
Digital advertising has evolved, and how! From being simple banner ads to today’s smart campaigns that capture a visitor’s attention even on a content-rich website, online ads have pushed the boundaries of creativity to create truly compelling marketing strategies. Yet, the golden mantra still remains testing. You might find your ad campaign intelligent and seemingly effective, but unless you have tested it first, it still remains prone to viewer blindness. Test, and evolve your ads to make full use of these latest breakthroughs in advertising and see your web page traffic soar.

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According to Krug, visitors spend about 7 seconds sizing up a website, the approximate time required for a driver to glance up at a billboard before getting back to the driving. This is disheartening for digital marketers looking to advertise their products on a website that is content-rich, but the truth is, there is a way to make visitors stay longer on the webpage and engage themselves using what is called in ad lingo “visual scandal”.
In simple terms, “visual scandal” is a creative advertisement that uses images to hold the attention of the visitor through positive reaction (intrigue, admiration, humour, etc). In the following example, Santa Claus, the iconic giver of happiness and gifts, is seen handing out a pack of Camel cigarettes. The visual scandal is perfect in this one, because it uses humour to place two outrageously different images together. On the one hand the Santa of your childhood punishes you for being bad, and on the other, he is handing you a good smoke. Sometimes, a little naughtiness goes a long way in making an ad feel more right, or even get more press:

Visual scandal is taken to another level when advertisers begin to think outside the box and use the periphery of the ad space to integrate the idea into the page where it is to appear. In the following example you see an illustration of this. Google uses its own platform Google+ to advertise for its browser Google Chrome by using the Chrome logo as special items in a game. The logo blends with the page but still works as an advertisement.

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Two rules of thumb when creating copy for a banner ad: keep it interesting and keep it short. There is a landing page where you can be more verbose, but for the banner you need to keep your content precise and brief, as a little addition to the punch line and containing strong text like “Free”. The copy needs to give out relevant information in a concise manner so the user wants to know more and responds to the call to action.

Make a Relevant Copy

The image in your banner and the text that follows has to be relevant to your business and landing page. Having the image of a hot woman in the shower might attract attention of some users but when they get to your landing page and find that you duped them into getting to a site that sells pest repellent services, they are going to leave as fast as they arrived. The end-intention of the campaign, ie, the sale, will remain unclosed.

Use Calls to Action Wisely

Users are nobody’s fools. They do not want to “Buy Now” or “Order Now” as soon as they happen to glance on your banner. No matter how visible or popular a brand, every user will want to know more details before they actually buy something from the brand. Realize this and edge out the competition by using more non-aggressive calls to action like “Click to Know More” or “Visit Us”, and even statistically the most effective call to action “Click Here”.

Animated and Flash Banners

Static ads generate 30% less clicks than animated and flash banners. But static ads load faster, which means that animated or interactive banners slow down the user’s computer, and can therefore, be annoying and ineffective. Be judicious in the use of animation and avoid an overkill of those in a banner. Too many things moving around in a banner will distract the user to another ad that is easier to navigate.

In addition to these, fake elements work by making users think they are navigating to another page on the same site when they are actually clicking on the banner. Also a smaller file size means faster loading time so the user gets to see the banner before the page loads completely. Banner ads can work effectively when you combine all these elements in making them. Till the next trends in banner design are predicted, these are your best bets for making banners that work for you.

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Heatmaps from eyetracking studies: The areas where users looked the most are colored red; the yellow areas indicate fewer views, followed by the least-viewed blue areas. Gray areas didn’t attract any fixations. Green boxes were drawn on top of the images after the study to highlight the advertisements.

Such banner blindness means that users want to find what they are looking for quickly, and get away from the webpage to more important things, or they want to read content in depth without letting ads distract them. If the situation is this, how do banner ads work then? They work because every so often a banner is interesting enough for the user to give it some time, and if the banner does not have what it takes to be a great banner, the user will go away just as soon. Multiple elements go into making a banner eye-catching and attention-grabbing, and these elements work together to make your banner campaign a success.

An Appealing Punch Line

No banner is complete without a catchy punch line that can attract users to click on the banner. The punch line needs to be intelligent, relevant and no more than a few words, displayed in the right colour and font in order to really grab the user’s attention

Include Your Logo and Web URL

Ad campaigns are also brand-building exercises and that is why it is important to include both the logo and the web URL of your business on the banner. However, remember that the user wants to know what you can offer and not how well-crafted your logo is, so try to keep a corner on the right or left side of the banner for the logo and the url and keep the rest of the banner for images and copy.

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The landing page is where your visitor will hopefully become a customer by making a transaction. One of the most important things that will help the conversion is the security on the page. Transactions made on your landing page must be secure with HTTPS. Regular web pages use HTTP (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol) while pages that require secure transactions use HTTPS where S stands for Security. It is also a good idea to add a secure code like 3-D Secure to provide security for online credit and debit transactions.

4. Are You Transparent Enough?

Make sure that your customer knows what to expect. List down your product cost and other affiliated charges, and give a full total at the time of billing. Provide a secure shopping cart and send out an auto-email after the transaction informing the customer of the purchase and how long it will take to ship the product. Inform him about returns and refunds, and all clauses associated with them. Make sure there are no hidden costs or clauses that the customer thinks you duped him about.

5. Have a Privacy Policy

A privacy policy largely goes unnoticed on most web pages, but having one still ensures that the customer knows that his information will not be resold by you. While a short policy document is fine, it is advisable to have a legal document outlining exactly what information is protected and how, and what the customer should do to make this possible. This takes care of the loopholes in legality that are possible in a short policy document.

6. Show Off Your Testimonials

We humans largely go by word of mouth and reading about the satisfaction of another customer from your services will go a long way in convincing your potential customer that you are indeed what you promise to be. Include as many testimonials as you can on the landing page so your visitor knows that he can trust you to be honest.

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