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Home::Online Promotion
Valuable Success Tips for Displaying Affiliate Marketing Banners
Author : Elizabeth McGee
Banner links can be a powerful promotion tool for advertising
your affiliate products. Almost all affiliate programs offer
them and smart affiliates take advantage of their advertising
power by using them on their affiliate sites.
Using banner advertising is a valuable resource but how you use
them is key. The success of a banner's click through rate is
often determined by where a banner is placed on your site, how
it is worded, its eye-catching ability, colors, etc.
So what makes a banner achieve a high C.T.R.?
There are several things ...let's take a look.
Keep Your Banners Focused. Don't use your home page for banners.
Keep your banners focused on the page designed for that
particular product. For example, a gardening site should display
a fertilizer banner on the fertilizer page. Keep your banners,
and text links for that matter, on relevant content pages.
Size of Banners. Size does matter. Research has found that
banners, normally those around 468 x 60 (pixels) are more
catchy, gaining more clicks than the smaller pixel banners.
Banner Animation. There have been studies that suggested
animation can increase response rates by up to twenty five
percent. It is important to note however, that flashing,
obnoxious banners can have quite the opposite effect, especially
if it remains in a position that is annoying to someone trying
to read text.
Using animation banners would be better placed out of the range
of text where a viewer can become distracted by it.
Banner Phrases and Wording. A banner's choice of words is
critical to its success. A good banner will demand a click by
using attention grabbing words and phrases. Words such as 'Click
here now', 'Buy Now', 'money back guarantee' all create a call
to action . Words such as 'Last chance', 'only 24 hours left',
or 'limited time offer' create a sense of urgency.
Asking questions that generate emotions such as 'Want to save
money?', How would you like to be 10 pounds thinner?', 'Wouldn't
you like to be debt free?' all are successful in promoting
clicks. Be careful of using the word 'FREE'. While 'free' might
generate a high C.T.R., the click to sales, however, is not as
high.
Banners that ask questions instructing visitors to interact with
the banner such as flashing an icon where the visitor can point
and click has also shown to increase click through rates by as
much as 18%.
Website Positioning of Banners. Banners at the bottom of a page
have almost three times the C.T.R. than at the top of the page.
This is primarily because most viewers to a site are looking for
information. Once they read the information they are more
receptive to clicking on the banner after the information.
It's also been noted that banners placed on the lower right hand
side next to the scroll bar had over a 200% increase in C.T.R.
Banner Loading Time. Use fast loading banners. C.T.R. increases
to nearly three percent when using banners that are about 3,000
bytes vs. banners over 10,000 bytes. You will miss out on clicks
if it takes too long for a banner to load.
Refresh Your Banners. Refresh your banners on a regular basis.
I've learned that banners tend to lose their giddy-up after
prolonged use. Even Yahoo! has mentioned that banners 'burn out'
after about two weeks of use. Allow your site to change its look
occasionally when promoting a particular product.
In conclusion, it's all about testing. No one can say for sure
what works best. Tests are conducted all the time and theories
are published, however only you can determine what really works
best for you by testing it.
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