Should I spend money on banner ads?
In this blog I will explore if spending money on internet based banner ads is a good idea or not?
Like most things in life the answer is it depends. I would not want to give advice direct to your company without spending some time understanding your business first.
What we can do though is explore the tactic as a whole and then you can make your own mind up if it suits your business.
First lets take a look at the various different options.
1) Google Adwords
2) Other banner ad networks
3) Direct with website owners
Lets look at the most obvious one to start with and that is Google Adwords, probably the most used banner ad network available to small business owners outside of social media sites like Facebook.
Google Adwords comes in a few flavours but for the purpose of this blog we are going to be looking at the display network platform. This is where you can have banner ad style adverts appear around the internet on 3rd party websites. Those that get success out of using this platform have done with important thing right. They have tested and refined and the tested and refined some more and finally they have tested and tested and then refined even more.
If you are going to get really good results you need to budget for your team, in-house or outsourced to test properly.
Being realistic this is many many hundreds of pounds if not thousands and that's before you really can start thinking about seeing results.
Even after the testing period there will always need to be some portion of the budget used for further refining.
However depending on your industry and what you measure as success there could be some results in using this platform. Re-marketing alone has seen some results but it depends where you sit as to if you think think this is a good thing to be doing.
There are then other networks which offer pretty much the same service like Microsoft's Bing network. Again this would need to be tested and refined. If selling this way shows what you consider a good ROI then having some skilled staff concentrate on this would be a good idea or use a reputable agency you trust.
The other option is to strike up deals with website owners direct. If you know that your target audience uses this website and would feel you banner ad is relevant and likely to click onto then working with website owners direct could be a good idea.
Having the banner ads on your site yourself is a whole different blog. However my quick advice would be to ask yourself how much traffic do you really get and what kind of relationship are you looking to build with your audience?
Is putting adverts on your own site really a good idea? In most cases the answer I provide is no.
The last one mentioned earlier but again I feel is such a different opportunity it needs a blog of its own and that's social media advertising.
So is using banner ads a good idea for your company? If you have then money to test is properly? If you understand your objective, is its sales or awareness? Â Work with an agency or consultant that understands your company and discuss it properly. Many many companies I have seen waste money every month dabbling because they think they should be doing it and really don't not have the skill sets nor the budget to really get it right.
I hope that was useful guys? Let me know if you would like me to cover social media advertising?
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