Online advertising can be a daunting task; there’s a lot to take in and there are all sorts of questions that need to be addresses before you start. ‘Where do I need to advertise? What ads will work best for this product? How shall I word my ad?’ – These are just a few examples of questions that need answering as part of your online advertising strategy.

The trick is to find the right outlet. Of course, if your product or your ads are poor then your outlet isn’t going to matter but providing you’ve got those bits right, it’s vital to pick an advertising placement that is both relevant to your product and preferably targeting buyers at their point of purchase.

Banner ads have proven to be an increasingly popular form of online advertising with advertising trade body, PricewaterhouseCoopers, reporting that online advertising on ad networks was up by 13.5% in 2010. This means that sites like online directories are seeing an increasing number of ads, among the most popular of which are banner ads.

Although banner ads can produce some great results, they won’t come out of no-where. Campaigns have to be carefully thought out and there are several steps that you need to make sure you take.

Make sure you… Know your campaign

Firstly you need to decide what your campaign is promoting. Decide which offer you want to run per banner and think hard about what kind of audience you want to target.

Taking an old or vague banner and throwing it onto multiple sites loosely based around your industry isn’t going to help you. You need to be specific in what you’re advertising and who your audience is, then choose an advertising outlet accordingly.

Make sure you… Design your ad well

A well designed ad will attract interest; it’s as simple as that. Use of colour, graphics and animations are important and will grab the attention of potential customers/visitors.

If you have the programs and skilled staff to design dynamic ads then make the most of this. A dynamic banner could allow you to fit more information in (as the image changes), or give you the room to make certain key points physically bigger (one point per image, for example, rather than all in one static banner).

However, remember that banner ads aren’t massive so too much can make your ad look cluttered and dilute your message. Also remember that ads are a representation of your business so a well designed banner will make you look professional and trustworthy.

Make sure you… Write your ad well

Writing your ad is just as important as designing the graphics. A well written ad should be short and memorable with just the right amount of information and an obvious call to action or direction to aid your customers. Again, don’t clutter your banner with text or it can detract from your product and message.

Make sure you… Get your audience right

As mentioned earlier, it doesn’t matter if you want sales or just brand awareness, simply throwing your banner on any site won’t help you. Try and advertise on a site that’s specific to your industry and your product.

For example, if you’re advertising online backup services, you don’t want to appear on a website for garden sheds, no matter how much traffic the site gets. It might cost you slightly more to advertise on websites that cater to your niche but remember that the quality of your traffic will be better.

Make sure you… Link to the right pages

You’re only going to make the most out of your banner ad if you’re honest and accurate in what you’re advertising. Make sure your banners click through to the right pages or specifically designed landing pages.

It’s an unwritten rule that you need to display your offer within 1 or 2 clicks (max) of landing on the page. However, you ideally want a landing page for each offer with the promotion displayed clearly.

You also need to check and double check that the link in your banner works. There’s nothing more annoying than clicking on a great ad that has either a broken link or takes you to the wrong page.

Make sure you… Track your ads

Probably the most important step to banner advertising (or any advertising) is monitoring your stats. Using something like Google Analytics to track your click through rates (CTR’s) can be a good indication of whether or not your banner is working.

If your ad is sales based then definitely invest in software that will be able to track your conversions so you can see exactly how beneficial your banner has been. Tracking your visitors bounce rate and navigation path is also helpful in seeing at which point they leave your site. This can help you to determining the effectiveness of your landing pages.

Most people will put a lot of focus on their homepage to create their identity, promote their brand and welcome their visitors – But it’s important to remember that if you do a lot of online promotion and advertising guests can come to your site from all over the place and want to get straight down to the point. Your homepage won’t always be able to help you, so designing a landing page that accommodates specific visitor needs is just as vital.

If you’ve advertised an offer online, maybe for something at half off for example, you want to make sure that the people who’ve come to look at the offer get to see it straight away.

You might have a great homepage but your homepage isn’t giving your visitors half off, and if they can’t find the page they want in a couple of clicks maximum, they’re going to leave.

There are a lot of things to consider when designing landing pages, so here are 6 steps to take that can help you on your way to effective landing pages that are captivating, relevant and most of all helpful.

1. What’s your message?

Most importantly – What’s the point of your landing page? Why have your visitors landed on this page? Are you providing them with information? If so, where is it? Are you selling them something? If so, how do they buy it?

It’s important to get your message clear and precise and presented as quickly as possible. Your visitors are there for a reason and if they don’t find what they’re looking for (what you’ve enticed them in with) or if they’re bombarded with too much info they’ll lose interest and leave.

2. Make it look good

Don’t be afraid to use colour and formatting to make your landing page look the part. There’s a lot of love for the latest minimalist approach to website design, a lot of people think that too much colour can be a bit overpowering, and while that can be correct, there’s a lot to be said for subtlety.

Pick a focal point in the middle (obviously above the fold) on your landing page and focus on it, too much minimalism can be boring so a small concentration of colour will draw the eye to the point of your page.

3. Be yourself

When designing your landing page it’s also important that visitors know that it’s your page. Landing pages will be, more often than not, completely independent of your actual website, but that doesn’t mean they have to be independent of your brand.

Get your logo on there, stick with your formatting, colours fonts etc. This way, if visitors have come to the page because they know your brand, they’ll feel confident they’re still dealing with you. On the other hand, if visitors don’t know your brand, this is a good opportunity for them to experience it.

4. Clean it up

Remember that your landing page is not your homepage. Keep it simple and relevant to the offer. A landing page isn’t a space for you to maximise on external advertising, to promote other services or to link off to other areas of your site. Your landing page is an individual page of specific information that is there for one purpose, don’t bog down your message with unnecessary gumpf!

5. Make it sound good

The ‘voice’ of your page is just as important as the look. Make sure your audience can relate you and to the product they’re come to you for. For example, if you’re promoting English language classes, you don’t want your landing page to sound like a Tolstoyevsky novel – no-one will understand it.

It’s also handy to use catchy titles that are snappy and to the point, the average human has an attention span of 8 to 10 seconds so if they haven’t found your message by then, they’re probably leaving. (No gumpf remember!)

If your visitors are coming from an ad, make sure your message is consistent with the ad copy. When using AdWords, (it’s thought that) Google is more likely to give you a higher landing page ranking if the same terminology is used in both your ad copy and on the page. (For tips on ad copy see our post: How to Write Ad Copy That Works)

6. Make sure it works!

Test your page! There is nothing worse than clicking on a great looking creative with a great offer and being lead to a broken or even non-existent page. I want to see your offer, not your 404 design! So test test test! Test your links, test your site in different browsers, test your images show and if you’ve got a payment options on your page, test them!