I recently got a banner order that made me jump for joy. Really. I jumped.
I’ve never done that before because of an order. It was pretty fun.
It was these words that got me going:
“Don’t put a call to action (click here) on it. I don’t care too much if people click it. I just want people to SEE it!”
Could it be? Someone was thinking about BRANDING? Actually understood it. Was she aware enough of modern web marketing realities to actually enter in to that world ruled by international corporations and try to get people to remember her company?
She more than understood all this. She also understood that she was hell bent on turning her small business INTO one of those international corporations.
I love it.
Close your eyes and think of a company.
There is a good chance that whatever picture comes to mind is the result of branding. That you even thought of that company in the first place indicates they are on the right track in terms of advertising, but what you see comes from branding.
Those colors, logos, products or whatever you see are there (more often than not) due to somebody, somewhere thinking about branding. Of course, other things come into play with those mental snapshots - but even if all you see is a massive credit card bill, that bill might have also been the result of branding. Branding that worked.
The point here is that people are more open to your advertising efforts if they know who you are or at least can make some sort of mental association. If your banner is effective and leaves a good first impression, even if they only glanced at it for less than a second, people are likely to be more receptive the next time they come across one of your ads. They have seen you before and up comes the mental snapshot saying “I know these guys.” Even if they just see your company name in print or a text ad or a link -they are still likely to associate your logo, colors and other parts of your branding with it.
So don’t lock yourself into the click-through-rate = effectiveness box. There is other work your banner can do for you besides directly generating sales. It can help make that association with your market that can lead to future sales and lay the groundwork for more effective ad campaigns of all kinds.
Bi-polar opinions on banners. Everybody has an opinion. That’s dandy. Now that we have that out of the way, let’s just agree that banners are often a fact of life for online businesses. Maybe you have one banner or maybe you have a thousand banners. How many you have does not really matter. What matters is using what you’ve got in the most effective way possible. You want people to see your banner, click on your banner, and then be taken to your clean, usable, attractive, informative (it better be) website and purchase your product or service.