SOHO Marketing -- A Fresh Perspective on Banner Ad Marketing

A Fresh Perspective on Banner Ad Marketing
By Soo Kim

When you think of Internet marketing, what comes to mind first? Some of your answers may include direct e-mail marketing, link exchanges, and partnerships-- all great ways to promote your business online (and future article topics for this newsletter). However, the most popular and favorite answer is almost certainly… Banner ads.

But we have all read and heard about the demise of banner advertising. Click-through rates have dramatically declined since the Net explosion, and netizens often regard banner ads as annoying, and subconsciously (or consciously) try to ignore them. Often, people just don’t like to be interrupted by clicking on a banner ad that will take them to another website. Plus, we’ve all shared in the frustration when we click on a banner ad, and it takes minutes to open up a new browser window and load the page—thus disrupting our flow of browsing even more.

So, does this mean that banner ads are entirely useless and we should throw them out by the wayside?

There are plenty of other proven ways to do online marketing. However, after much research and experience, I would answer that banner advertisements are still a solid, valuable marketing strategy. However, the key is to revolutionize your entire perception on banner ads. Why create something that can potentially annoy a prospective customer? Instead of creating banner ads that interrupt a potential client’s flow of browsing, why not create an ad that respects your potential customers, and delivers something even more valuable than a click-through and one-time visit to your website?

Seth Godin, former VP of Marketing at Yahoo, touts this as “permission-based email.” The concept is very simple and very smart: Offer the potential customer an opportunity to volunteer their email address to receive marketing from you. Instead of hoping for that one person out of a hundred to click on your banner ad, browse your website, and make a purchase, use the banner ad to build a long term relationship with the potential customer.

The Benefits of Permission Marketing
Armed with their email address, you can market to that person thirty times rather than only once.

Since they opted to receive information from you, they have already indicated an interest in your service or product.
An email response from your company becomes anticipated.
You can engage in email conversations that are personal and relevant, and communicate freely over time.
It has been proven that most prospects must hear your message at least seven times. Since you have their email address, this is a terrific opportunity for targeted, direct, and personalized sales. The sale is virtually yours.

Creating a “database banner-ad”
The question lies next: How can we create a banner ad that can collect the information that the prospective customer volunteers? You could opt for the traditional method, and hire a Web database firm to build the banner ad. However, here’s a simpler method that is rising in popularity:

Log into www.eCriteria.net, a service that enables you to create Web databases very quickly and cost-effectively- without any programming experience.
Click on “Create a new, empty database” to begin the process of building the database that will collect the customer volunteered info (takes 10 minutes).
Click on “Generate HTML for data-entry banner ad” and copy/paste the HTML code to your favorite HTML editor, such as Frontpage (takes 1 minute).
Modify and customize the HTML using your HTML editor to make the banner ad look exactly the way you wish (takes 1 hour to several hours, depending on how much customization you want in the design of your banner).

Here are a few demo banner ads to visualize the concept: http://www.ecriteria.net/eCriteria/banneraddemo.asp

The whole process will not take you more than a few hours at the most, absolutely no programming experience, and costs only $19.95/month. That’s pretty cost-effective, because you don’t need to worry about hiring a Web developer to create the database form for you, and buying Web database storage from a Web host. You can even try it out with a free one-month trial, and see how well permission marketing boosts your bottom line. Click here to sign up!

Soo Kim is the Business Development Manager at AMULET Development Corp., a Los Angeles based developer of database enabled and e-commerce Web sites. At AMULET, Ms. Kim directs general business development for the company and its spin-off venture, eCriteria.net, a Web database publishing service for small businesses and Webmasters. Her email address is: sook@amuletc.com.

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