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I'm not sure if I'm 'da man!.. but I'll
try my best ;-)) You asked a lot of questions and I'm not sure where to begin. The
truth is you can write an entire book or site just about banner advertising. That's
why we devoted an entire step-by-step tutorial in our new Cash
Flow Reporter eBook™. But I'll stick to the basics here so I won't confuse
you with too much information all at once!
[Note:
If you missed our last newsletter on "Information
Overload"... make sure you read it when you have some free time. It really
helped out many people and gave them some direction!]
Okay... let's start from the top:
"Do They
Work?"
Yes, all forms of advertising work. It's
crazy to say that banner advertising is a "waste". Heck, ANY form of advertising
can be a waste if done incorrectly. Banner advertising has its place and I'll
do my best to show you how to save some time and money and not risk much (or anything)
at all when starting your banner campaign.
To answer your question, YES,
banner advertising DOES work. But, there are some simple guidelines to follow:
1. Be Targeted
I hear myself repeating this over and
over again all the time. But most people just don't seem to follow this essential
marketing rule. I don't care whether you are utilizing banner advertising on a search
engine or a competitor's website or even YOUR OWN website...
you have to choose the correct banner/product/service for the correct customer base!
For example, if you are selling an Internet
marketing course, you wouldn't have a banner at the top of your site selling porn
or car parts or flowers. You would sell something an ENTREPRENEUR or a new business
owner would need. Here are a couple examples:
Below are a couple sample banner ads for two different
hosting companies ...
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Top banner is targeting a potential
customer who wants or needs a merchant account or wants to accept
credit cards at his/her site from ECX.
Left banner is targeting a person who wants to join their free
affiliate program which pays you $150 referral fee. |
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As you can see, both sets of banners are
FIRST targeting a potential customer base (which is home based businesses
and entrepreneurs in this case). Secondly, each SPECIFIC banner itself is targeting
a specific group of people. Top banners are going after people who want
and need that service. The left banners are going after people who
simply want to promote and make money,
but don't necessarily need their services at the moment.
Advertising isn't as simple as finding
any old text or banner ad and promoting anyone's affiliate program anywhere you
want to. Most people put no thought into promotions and hence, most people FAIL!
You will need to put some thought into it. Choose
a specific ad for a specific group of people! - Do your research!
2. Start Slow
& Test
As with all types of promotions, start
slowly and test. Test the banner and test the location where you are putting the
banner (whether it's at your site or someone else's).
Sometimes a promotion does well without
much effort or testing. If that has happened to you, then consider yourself LUCKY!
More often then not, you will need to test at least 2-3 times before you start seeing
some really good returns for your efforts.
These things take time and they can't
be rushed. Most beginners want everything TODAY and they are not willing to be patient
and persistent. Guess what, most people also QUIT because of frustration...
because they tried too much too soon. Trust me... I see this every day with all
of the emails and consultations we do.
And you know what?... I
do it MYSELF! It's probably human nature to be impatient. I don't know...
but whatever the reason, you gotta take it one step at a time.
"Where
Should I Advertise?"
There are many places where you can utilize
banner advertising... on your website, on a competitor's website, on search engines,
by joining "banner exchange" programs and so forth. Let's briefly discuss
a few of your options.
At Your Own Site
First, you can put other people's banners
at your site and charge for it. But that's another topic all together, so I'll leave
it for another issue. For now, let's just concentrate on how you can utilize YOUR
banners at YOUR site.
I like to TEST out banners are my site
before I start a banner campaign. For example, let's say I had a new product
and I wanted to start promoting it via banner advertising.
So, I create a few banners... but how
do I know which will work the best? Obviously, there is time and money needed to
be invested and some traditional "trial and error". BUT... why not just
test a banner at your site first, see the response, then pick the best banner and
use that one??!
For example, we put up the below banners
at our own site. They are promoting our own products and services. But I wanted
to see which banner produced the highest response and click-through ratio.
So, I put up each one at a high-traffic
page at my site (mainly the home page).
After a couple weeks of testing (I didn't
put up all three at once... I rotate each one for a weeks worth of time), I noticed
that the middle banner did the best. The 3rd banner did almost as good and the top
banner came in third place. So, I started a promotional campaign utilizing the middle
banner.
Yes, there are many variables as to why
it worked better and if the results could have been different. But this at least
gives you a better idea of what you could "possibly" expect.
[NOTE:
The bottom two banners did better mainly because they don't look like real banners.
These are what I call "fake HTML" banners. I've discussed this in detail
in our reporter ebook and private site and affiliate support center.]
Testing at your own site can save you
lots of time, money and guess work. One thing to keep in mind is you have to
be getting a good amount of traffic to your site to be able to really have a
valid test.
On Other People's Sites
Once you've got an idea of what might
work or which type of banner brings in some good click-throughs (or hits), it's
time to start promoting. You can promote on a competitor's site if you wish. Some
sites have a banner advertising program... some don't. Just ask webmaster or owner
of the company (send them a quick email).
You can promote using search engine services
and portals. Almost all the search engines have banner ad rates. Check them out.
Again, regardless of where you promote, make sure you choose a
TARGETED site or keyword or complementary products or something that's
specific!
But before you start spending some big
money on other people's sites or search engines (they can get costly), try some
banner-exchange programs...
Join A Banner-Exchange
Program
The good thing about a banner exchange
program is that it won't cost you any money. So, you can keep on testing and getting
back some real-life test trials. The problem is that most banner exchange programs
are horrible. They barely bring you any traffic and when they do, it's poorly targeted
customers.
A couple places to check out is Microsoft's
LinkExchange and SmartClicks.
Both of these companies are good and have been around for a while and I've received
positive feedback about them.
There are others... but I'm not sure
how good they are as we've had some negative feedback and we haven't personally
tested all of them out.
Get
A $15 Signing Bonus... AND... It's
FREE To Join!
Recently, I've been testing out one of the fastest
growing banner exchange programs by Banners
Go MLM!
They offer free membership in ways that no other exchanges
do. First, you as a member earn a full ONE to ONE credit. This means each
time you have a visitor to your web site you receive an exposure of your banner
on another member's site. (Some places do a 1:2 where you get half the credit...
and most are even worst, so read all the rules and regulations.)
Plus, you earn a full 10% of all impressions generated
by each and every member of your downline, five levels deep (basically, it's
a very sophisticated 5-tier affiliate program)!
Your downline is automatically created "passively"
for you because anytime someone clicks on your specific affiliate URL and signs
up as a member themselves, they are placed in your first level downline. Anyone
signing up under them is placed in your second level downline, and so on, for five
full levels.
They Never Leave Your Site!
If these two great benefits aren't enough to sway you
into a free membership, consider this: Visitors never even leave your site if they
click on a Banners
Go MLM member banner... When they click on
a banner you host, a new window opens; and when they close it, they are back at
your site! (This is a big bonus because you work so hard to get people to YOUR site,
but with other banner exchange programs, as soon as they get to your site and click
on a banner, they LEAVE! What's the point in that. Banners Go MLM keeps people are
your site which is very important.)
Plus, with Banners Go MLM's multi-page code you can
actually receive multiple full one-to-one credits to have your banner ad shown elsewhere
on the network from a single visitor. Here are a couple other cool features that
I noticed at their site, but not at other banner
exchange programs:
- Option to exclude competitors from advertising on
your site.
- Free targeting (remember, TARGETING your customers
is very important!)
- You can build any banner with their online "banner
wizard". Which is cool since most people don't know how to create effective
banners.
- And here's the best part... you get a whopping $15
Signing Bonus just for joining ... and it's FREE to join!
Hehe... I think most people will really like
that last part - Free to join AND you get $15. And don't forget, they have a 5-tier
affiliate program that pays you RESIDUALLY!
Take a look by clicking
here. Join up, get your $15 and then just play around with their tools ...
create your own banner and see how it goes. It's free, and you make money, so why
not.
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