How To Design an Irresistible Ad Banners For Your Blog Sidebar
Does your sidebar catch people’s attention?
Display advertising was popular in the world of marketing years ago. At the time, a lot of brands couldn’t understand how to get the most out of it.
Many deem the ads untrustworthy, because the ads lacked context and value. According to Think With Google, “The average clickthrough rate of display ads across all formats and placements is 0.06%.”
But we can change all that.
It all begins with knowing what a compelling Ad banner is and how to get it. Placing ads on a website isn’t outdated. Of course, if you don’t know how to go about it, you’ll fail.
In fact, you’re better of not placing any ad banners on your blog sidebar. Recent data shows that, “only 2.8% of participants thought that ads on website were relevant.”
As you can see, banner advertising already has a bad taste in people’s mouth. What’s left now is your ability to get “creative.”
If you’re creative with your ad banners, especially the ones that appear on your blog sidebar, you’ll not only get clicks, but grow your sales. See how attractive these banners look on the Muscle For Live sidebar?
An attractive banner like this would definitely get the clicks.
Or what do you think?
If you’ve specific landing pages, you can design banners, place them on your authority blog sidebar – and funnel that clicks back to your “funnel.”
It doesn’t even have to be your own blog. Just a small cent can buy you a space in an authority site. And having your banner on that site, visitors coming to the authority site will want to learn more about your business.
What is an Ad banner?
An Ad banner is a graphic image designed with the intention of getting people to click and visit another page.
It can have your business name, a form of identity (overall brand), along with a brief description about the product or service.
These ad banner must be relevant to your offers, and appeal to the overall theme of your website. You could use a video or animation in your banner.
You can glean some insights from Michael Hyatt’s blog. See how he uses banners at the sidebar:
Remember that whenever your target audience visits authority sites and consistently sees your banner, they will unconsciously get used to your unique identity.
When that happens, they’ll eventually dare to click on the banner and see what the noise is all about.
If you already have a decent amount of traffic coming to your blog – or you know a relevant blog that that you can connect with, I encourage you to design a great banner, which you can use to generate traffic, targeted clicks, and build your brand.
Funny enough, recent data shows that 50% of clicks on mobile banner ads are accidental – especially if the clicks last less than 2 seconds.
Did you see that?
Accidental clicks can result in a high conversion rate, come on!
Creating awareness is important in marketing. If potential customers don’t know about your product or service, no matter how valuable that product is, you will not sell.
Yes, you’re in a profitable niche and you already have written great content in your blog.
But how many people are aware of these products, content, and services that you offer?
If you truly want to get results from banner advertising, whether it’s on your own blog or elsewhere, Follow these 5-step process:
Step #1: Understand the problem a banner will solve
Knowing the goal or what you intend to achieve with your banner is key. Have you really identified the problems you want to solve? It’s so important.
When a potential customer clicks on your banner, what do you want them to gain?
Data from Rapport Online Inc. confirmed that over time, banner advertising have been proven to be very efficient in respect to ROI. Today, banner advertising is one of the effective marketing tactics.
Having known the efficiency of banner placement, let’s see some of the problems an ad banner can solve:
- Helps you create brand awareness
- Engages your target audience
- Drives clicks and traffic to your landing page
- Increases your product page conversion rate
- Sends referral traffic to your blog
You can achieve all these when you start placing the right ads on blog sidebar.
Step #2: Leverage your brand on the banner
An obvious element of your brand is your logo.
When designing your ad banners, you should use your logo – to create more stickiness.
Your brand is your identity. Use it in your ad banners to build trust with ideal customers.
According to BannerSnack, “54% of users don’t click banner ads because they don’t trust them.” When your ad banners aren’t branded, people will not trust you – because they don’t even know you.
How do you feel when you see a banner with the Facebook logo?
I’m sure you didn’t doubt for a second the authenticity of the banner? The moment you see a popular brand logo, you’re enticed to it.
Enhancing your brand should be at the center of your heart. At the core, business is really all about building brand awareness. No wonder 84% of marketers prioritize it.
Brand recognition is a very important landmark to go for in business. Brand is what makes you unique, different from companies.
Your name, logo, colour, trademark, image, and symbols are things that identifies your brand.
When designing a banner ad, it should be branded. That is, use the same brand elements in your banner.
That way, whenever they see your advert, they will know that it’s for/from your company and not another.
Your banner should carry your logo mixed with your brand colour and symbol.
Imaging coca cola company using green colour instead of red and black colour, which they’re known. They will end up confusing their customers.
This is the logo of facebook. If the company decides to use red and green colour instead of deep blue, are they not confusing their customers? Of course, they are.
Step #3: Make sure the banner links to the ideal page
You see, ad banners is used to attract and divert attentions.
Being able to get people to click your banner and visit your page is a rare skill. You should hone it.
Listen up: the click that’s made to your banner should lead people to a relevant page.
Else, you’ll lose trust with customers or blog readers.
Data from Ion Interactive revealed that 60% of viewers are motivated to go after a product after reading about the product.
You see, the image below indicates strongly that your prospect will lick to know more about you. Imagine what would happen if they land on the wrong page.
When you inspire them through your ad, don’t keep them hanging up there – ensure that your banner redirects to the most useful, engaging and relevant page.
Remember, the visitors didn’t come on purpose to click on your banner ads, rather, they came to get helpful content before your attractive banner drew them in.
Step #4: Design 2 – 3 banners and rotate them weekly
Don’t bore people with the same ad. Dare to rotate it.
According to Intro Marketing, Banner advertising is popular because ads are said to receive 50-100% attention (50% in case of static banners and 100% when the ad is animated)”
Have you noticed that viewers are bored seeing the same blog posts that were published 6 months ago?
In the same vein, having just one ad banner design and placing it on your sidebar isn’t a smart strategy.
You should design 2 – 3 banners and rotate them weekly. That way, your brand and product will receive a fresh life.
By the way, why must you do all these? Because there are competitors out there.
Conclusion
In addition to rotating your banner ads, make sure they’re positioned at vantage points on the sidebar.
Statistics have shown that viewers see and appreciate banners at the topmost, followed by the right, then the left sidebars.
Usually, positioning banners at the bottom of landing page converts very low. That also confirms that banners positioning matters in this.
The image below shows the different positioning of ads. You can see that the closer they’re to the top, they more views (and possibly clicks) they’ll get.
