Design Banner Ads Right So They Work Right (part I)
March 26, 2012
Banner ads are the fundamental advertising unit on the internet. Even with newer technology, the popularity of banner ads did not wane because they were easy to make and easy to put up. In fact, one of the main reasons why there are so many banner ads out there is that they are very easy to design. Spending a few hours on an online tutorial will teach you how to make a banner ad, even if you know no other technicality. But that ease of access also poses the biggest problem for banner ads. A lot of people are in a hurry to put up banners and do not consider the cardinal mistakes they are making on their banner design. Read below to find out how a mistake can ruin the efficacy and purpose of your banner advertisement campaign.
Your Image Says A Thousand Words
Most banner ads you see will have a face or a person to reinforce the message. This is a very clever way to do it, because at the end of the day, no matter how big our internet footprint is, we still prefer to deal with humans. A human face on a banner serves to give that essentially human quality to a product or a service and instantly raises chances of its being clicked. In that sense, using an image gives your banner a human face. A lot of people ignore this, and use a human face to just fill space on a banner or because it is the done thing to do. Worse, people get it all wrong and use images that have a watermark, are distorted because of arbitrary resizing, pixelated or plain irrelevant and cheap. Would you honestly think that the following banner is going to strike a chord with any of your viewers?
Don’t Push Too Hard
Put yourself in place of an average viewer. You see a banner ad that has at most two lines of copy and then a big call to action that screams “Buy Now”. What would you do? You would ignore it. Anybody would. Understand this, no one wants to buy right now. Viewers want to know about the product or service, and may click on your banner out of curiosity if your copy is good. Whether they are going to convert to a customer depends on how well you present your case on the landing page. Before that, the job of your banner ad is to entice, not sell. So avoid pushing your viewers to do what you would not do. Keep it simpler, say something like “Learn More” or “Subscribe to our newsletter” or even “Request a Free Quote Today” in order to entice, and not sell. If your visitors were that easy to sell to, every average hawker in the streets would a millionaire. They are not, and neither will you be unless you can make a presentable call to action.
To be continued..