Marketing brands can be a very expensive exercise and often, in traditional media, very difficult to track and value.
Marketing brands online through banner advertising, although much easier to track, has in the past been very difficult to target to specific prospective consumers in ‘buying mode’.
However, marketing brands through banner advertising in 2011, has become more much more effective and delivers more value for money. The new ways of banner advertising use advanced targeting and optimization techniques that target your brand message to potential customers where they are at their most receptive and hence more likely to take action.
A certain level of artificial intelligence now, powers some banner advertising systems. As consumers search online, these systems will display ads to them relevant only to their search terms. There are actually more than 300,0000 monetised websites in Australia alone (that’s websites that accept banner advertising), so with these clever systems, your ads can appear on any of those websites as many times as your daily budget allows, to people actually searching for your type of product or service.
Ever been on Facebook after visiting your favourite online shopping site, then seen an ad in Facebook for the very product you either just purchased or researched for purchasing. Feels bit big brother-ish doesn’t it, but it works!
Computer driven campaign management systems can also learn over time which keywords and which websites drive the best performance for a campaign. Then, automatically shift more of your ad dollars to the most effective sites. This is conversion-based optimization.
As users interact with your campaign’s display ads, the sites that result in higher conversion rates receive the highest frequency of your banner ads. The technology allocates budget by steering ad dollars towards the sites that are most cost-effective in bringing people to the brand’s website or landing page. Marketing brands in this way ensures the highest frequency of brand messages get to the highest number of targeted consumers.
Banner ad remarketing is another clever tool used in these new systems. This works by showing the display ad to potential consumers who have previously visited your site through any of the campaign ads. After the first visit a remarketing cookie is placed on their computer that tells the campaign manager (this is a computer not a person) to remarket to this user. By targeting users who have already expressed interest by visiting your site, remarketing reinforces your brand wherever they are online. Remarketing can bring potential customers back to your site, which enhances your search engine marketing investment and moves the consumer closer to a sale over time. Marketing brands become more effective, more targeted and more accountable.
While not all targeted consumers in your online banner campaign will need your product or service today, display advertising now builds top-of-mind awareness consistently, so your brand will be the one they remember when they are ready to buy. Marketing brands with this kind of online system gets your brand in front of more potential consumers. The key then to more conversion, is to develop creative banner ads that drive users to take action. If you would like to learn more about branding your business, why not sign up for our Brand Workshop today?
Author: Lou Browne
Lou Browne has a long career history in multi-platform marketing B2C and B2B product and brand development having worked in industries as varied as wine and spirits, beauty and scuba diving. As well as a passion for social media, website design, events, marketing planning and strategy, she prides herself on her skills in relationship building.
