Anyone involved in marketing knows very well that the preparation involved at the prelaunch stage of a marketing campaign is ultimately the most important ingredient for success . Simply put, you need to get the prelaunch right. Banner campaigns are certainly not exempt from this maxim.
A lot of businesses do the mistake of overlooking the prelaunch stage of their banner campaigns or simply don’t get all the steps right. This is the reason why serious marketers always follow a check list of items they would need to tick off before a marketing campaign begins. These items are critical and determine whether a campaign will effectively work and bring about the desired outcome. It will certainly determine the degree of success – whether it will be a barely successful banner campaign or one that is highly targeted, bringing tonnes of high quality traffic and conversions.
I will show you a simple but powerful check-list you can use before starting off your banner campaign. The list is ridiculously simple but it will change any lame campaign to a rock-star one that will guarantee your bonus check and a solid ROI to your business.
Here it goes:
1. Ask the obvious question: Is a banner campaign the ideal marketing channel for my product or service? Yeah I know it’s pretty obvious…but is it? You might be surprised how we fail to see the obvious. I am a great advocate of ‘ask the obvious questions first’ because I know that we often get unconsciously ‘locked-in’ certain preconceptions without ever asking the obvious. Biggest failures usely arise from this and the smartest choices are the result of challenging established ideas.
Banner advertisement is not always the ideal marketing channel for a particular business. Many think that banner advertisement always works to some degree. This very much depends on the buying and decision-making pattern of your product’s customer base. If you are selling B2C a fast-moving product then a banner campaign is definitely your thing. If on the other hand you are selling B2B some specialized or high-cost product or service then display advertisement might not be the perfect candidate. There again it depends where you are displaying your banner and what is your expected outcome. It could be you are after leads and you are displaying a free webinar, report or white paper on a highly related site. In that case a banner campaign would suit fine.
2. Set your goals for outcomes before setting the budget: Quite often marketing executives start off by allocating a budget to a particular campaign without fully defining the goals or the expected outcomes. The process should be made in reverse. You first need to define what is expected from the banner campaign. Is it simply more traffic? leads? sales? brand awareness? dowloading a trial version of your software? And what is the context in which these outcomes fit? off-season promotions? product launch? pushing a slow moving inventory?
You get the idea but why is it important? Because knowing the quality and quantity of what you are expecting will allow you to set realistic budgets and realistic budgets are often accompanied by better planned tactics. By having your goals and expected outcomes defined you can clearly filter out the noise and be focused and specific about the right steps to take for your banner campaign – for example which niche or online source to place your ads on or which banner format, design or creative content to use. Unsuccessful banner campaigns are usually the result of unfocused and half thought plans because of poorly defined goals.
3. Check out the media buyer/agency you are using: Before choosing a media buyer or agency to have your banners placed on sites or ad networks, get some background info about it…Google it and see what other people are saying. I find it quite funny how as personal consumers we spend time searching for reviews or feedback before buying something online but as an organization we sometimes spend big budgets without doing so. Not all media agencies offer the same product. Sometimes agencies work with a particular ad network or group of sites and use such sites for all clients irrespective of the product or industry. This can result in having traffic sent to your site which is not targeted to your selling proposition. If you are analyzing your traffic you will immediately notice this from very low conversion rates, high bounce rates and very short average time on page.
4. Talk with the media buyer about the details: In relation to the above point it is very pertinent to discuss before hand with the media buyer/agency about details such as which sites your ad will appear. Ask them to give you a list and check out the sites to get a feel whether it has relevance or relation to your product. Also ask for typical click through rates from clients in your same industry.
5. Url tracking: A very important part of your banner campaign success or any online marketing campaign for that matter is tracking and analyzing its performance and success rate. Using web analytics tools such as Google analytics is a good start. You can track your online campaigns and monitor metrics such as traffic, conversion, ROI, bounce rates and average time on site. However tracking and analyzing banner campaigns comes with some preparation too.
Ideally you would want to tag each of your banner and/or campaign so you can easily identify it and segment it later in your web analytics report. Google has a free tool called url builder. You input the url of the landing page plus other variables you would need later in your report most importantly campaign name (for example UK online campaign), source (Telegraph online) and content (Christmas special offer £29).
Once you have all your campaigns tagged you can then sit back and track them as traffic starts pouring in.
6. Take notes from your past banner campaigns: Online marketing is a constant learning curve and past failures are not just failures but lessons for the present and future. It is always a good investment to look back and see data or feedback you had about your past campaigns. What was their success rate and ROI? What was the typical Conversion rate?
By the way, these golden nuggets of information can also be a valuable input when defining your goals and outcomes.
7. Make sure to optimize your landing page before sending traffic over: This is the last item but it is certainly one of the most important ones if not the most important one.
Before starting off a campaign it is indispensable to check where you are sending traffic to. If your creative was showing a particular special offer, or product be sure that it will be the first thing they will see. Your landing page has to match the expectations of your customers when they clicked on the banner, This is crucial since it will define your conversion rate and ultimately the ROI of your campaigns.
Good luck!
