3 Quick and Easy Ways to Get More Clicks on Your Banner Ads
The only reason you have banners on your website is because you want people to click on them right! For those that are wondering what a banner ad is, look below for a nice one for Market Samurai.
Whether the banner is to an affiliate product, a partner programme, a site of a friend or someone has paid to have their banner featured on your site, you want those clicks.
The trouble is, you may have banners and they may even link to the best product or website on the planet, but this alone does not guarantee clicks.
No matter what your banners are for, this post will help you to get more clicks, and what’s more, these tips are all quick and easy to implement.
1. Banner Rotation
Banner blindness is where people automatically filter out ‘advertisements’ (your banners) when visiting websites. This is due to being continually exposed to banners over-and-over again.
Just think about your average day surfing the web and how many banner ads you ignore without actually being conscious of making that decision, it just seems to happen!
A quick and easy way to overcome banner blindness is to ‘rotate your banner ads‘.
Rotating your banners can, depending on the script or plugin you use, rotate the location of the banner on your page, rotate the banner positions or rotate through multiple banners. This means that visitors (especially returning visitors) will not be exposed to the same banners on each visit to your blog.
There are free banner rotator plugins out there but the best ones do come with a price tag. Take a look at OIO Publisher for a complete set of advanced banner management features to see exactly what I’m talking about (you won’t get all those features or the support with any of the free plugins out there).
2. Banners That Make Sense
Your banners should match your content or, at the very least, be of a very close fit.
If you have a website all about email marketing tips then it makes sense to have banners for AWeber or GetResponse.
If you have a blog that focuses on productivity then the logical choice would be to display a banner for The Action Machine.
Maybe you have a blog about affiliate marketing so having banners to affiliate networks such as Affiliate Window will be a good fit.
Your banners need to make sense to your visitors and a logical ‘match’ between your site and the site the banner links to is a great way to encourage more clicks. It just makes sense that people visiting your site for particular ‘niche’ information will be interested in related products.
3. Do It Yourself Banners
Creating your own banners can dramatically increase your click-through rates.
Every single time we have designed our own banners for our use or for a client’s site, we have seen a big increase in the clicks our banners get over those that are pre-designed by the affiliate programmes. This could be because our banners are unique and not featured anywhere else across the net.
Just think, if you are a reader of Internet marketing blogs you will start to frequently see AWeber banners. This is because they are an amazing email service provider and they have a very high level of customer satisfaction.
Why not create your very own AWeber banner that is unique to your site. This way you know that people will not have come across the banner before. The AWeber banner we created for one of our sites out-performed the AWeber banner by 4-1 clicks.
Give it a try and see what you think.
Here is an original AWeber banner.
Here is a similar banner to the one we used that generated more clicks.
If you need help creating banners then you should take a look at these simple programmes, Easy Banner Creator (the music may be terrible but the software is good) and Instant Banner Creator (free), they will give you some good designs in no time at all.
If you would like to out-task your banner design then you can use services like Hire My Mom or Project 4 Hire. You’ll be able to get some great designs at very reasonable prices.
If you feel really creative then you can have a go yourself. I created the above banner in Adobe Photoshop but this software can be a bit pricey when you are just starting out. A suitable and free alternative that I recommend is Gimp.
There you have it! 3 quick and easy ways to get more clicks on your banner ads.
To your success,
Karl Foxley
P.s. If you have any tips that you recommend for getting more clicks on those banners then feel free to share them below in the comments section, I look forward to hearing from you!
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Good information. I am always learning by reading everyone else’s comments.
Karl, nice tips. I especially like #3 and I wish I had the skills to pull it off. I’m glad you linked to a free tool so that I can play around with it and see what I can come up with. I’m also wondering how important the placement of the banners are? It might be a good idea to test to see where the banners get the most clicks. Thanks.
Ileane recently posted..Google I/O 2010 For Dummies
Hi Ileane, Banners that are in-line with the content and those that are directly below the content (if the banner matches the theme of the content) usually generate higher clicks than those on the sidebar (in my experience). My favourite mantra has to be TEST, TEST and TEST.
Hi Karl
I’m only just starting out with banner adds so this was a great post to read.
“Do it yourself banners” – great idea, never would have thought of that.
The images for two of the banners I use are not on my site – I have a link to the image.
Presumably if the images were on my site, they would load quicker?
Thanks for some great ideas.
.-= Keith Davis´s amazing last blog ..Laugh and the world… =-.
I definitely agree with making sure that you’re displaying banners on your site that have something to do with your content. There’s no point doing otherwise. I also like the idea of getting creative and making your own banners… Ads style to your site and if it’s related to your content, there’s two real winners in my opinion.
Being creative is always awesome!
.-= Eric´s amazing last blog ..Lets Help Each Other: Monthly Experience (April – May) =-.
Hey thanks Eric. I like the creative side of banner design, you can usually come up with a call to action that a lot of banners lack (if you use text in your banner).
Karl
I have found that ‘do it yourself’ banners that were actually cheesy did work the best. There is no substitution to being homemade. That is even true on the Internet.
The sadness behind “banners that make sense” gives me a chuckle. You really can’t get more common sense then that, and still I find myself on many blogs saying, huh?
I think I may do a compilation post in the future of my favourite mismatches of banner ads and content / website that I regularly come across.
Thanks for the tips. I get more conversion when I place banner ad within the content. Even for the adsense also. I think we do not get much clicks if we put ads on the sidebar.
.-= chandan´s amazing last blog ..29 tips to promote your business website freely =-.
Absolutely Chandan. If you write a post about WordPress Themes, a banner for Elegant Themes (as an example) makes perfect sense for the reader as a way to leave your site and earn you an affiliate commission.
Great tips you have here, from the standard banner rotation, to the ultimate tip in nr3: create them yourself!
.-= Bjorn | iCant Internet´s amazing last blog ..10 Recommended WordPress Affiliate Plugins =-.
Thank you Bjorn, I’m glad you’ve found the tips useful.
I’m the worst designer in the world, even with software, so designing a banner wouldn’t work for me; that’s a shame, but I can live with it. lol
As to your 1st point, if people belong to Commission Junction it also offers the ability to rotate ads, which I use on my blogs.
.-= Mitch´s amazing last blog ..The Business Of Blogging =-.
I love Commission Junction but haven’t spent much time on the site for a while. I need to spend more time over there and see what’s new and what new programs they are offering. Thanks for the reminder Mitch.
What wonderful ideas!
I completely agree with #3 , create it your self, I am actually creating all my own banners because I think I am the only one who can do it in a way that reflects my blog, this also give me the chance to change it or edit if from time to time to create a kind of self rotation for the ads and get more clicks on it!
Thank you for sharing a useful post!
.-= Hesham @ How to Blog´s amazing last blog ..What Top Niche Web Designers Say about Thesis Theme for WordPress =-.
You have some great designs Hesham so they certainly would generate more interest than the banners you see absolutely everywhere.
The biggest mistake I see is webmasters putting banners on their sites that have absolutely nothing to do with their actual content.
.-= Keith´s amazing last blog ..3rd Party Apps Blindsided by Twitter =-.
Absolutely Keith. I have seen this work on only a few occasions but the banner fit the readers rather than the content. Just in case you are wondering, it was banners for a dating site on a tech focused site. The banners for the ‘singles dating’ site out-performed all the tech related banners.
Regard,
Karl
Solid info as usual, Karl. I find banner blindness to be more of an issue with position than design, but I am really good at blocking out ads no matter what. I almost never see anything except in-context text links.
Thanks Alison. I’m pretty good at skipping past ads but I also like to navigate the web in ‘marketer’ mode. When I have that hat on I like to really concentrate on what others are doing, what message they are using, what graphics, button colours etc, they are using to elicit the click. After all, if it is working for them it could also work for one of my future campaigns.
Karl