“Trying to do business without advertising is like winking at a pretty girl through a pair of green goggles. You may know what you are doing, but no one else does.” – Cyrus McCormick, American inventor and businessman.

The internet saw its first banner ad in 1994. It generated a 44% click-through-rate (CTR).

Fast-forward 20 years, and the banner ad has devolved into one of the most disdained forms of advertising by consumers, and one of the most ineffective tools in the marketer’s toolkit.

In 2013, Nielsen reported that banner ads were the least trusted form of advertising, trailing even newspaper and magazine ads. More recently, from August 2016 to April 2017, Google cited banner ad CTRs at a meager 0.11% in the U.S.

People’s distrust of display ads has given rise to a phenomenon known as “banner blindness;” a state in which site visitors subconsciously ignore banner-like information. This is also a result of how people have learned to navigate webpages, only looking for info in the most likely places it will be found on a page. This is a psychological principal known as selective attention.

But, what if banner ads do work; we’ve just failed to evolve banner practices as the internet grew and became more sophisticated?

Supporting this notion, consider this: Banner ad spending was predicted to grow 7% in 2017 to over $44 billion. Moreover, display advertising is more popular than ever.

To run any effective ad campaign, you must know some of the best practices. Here are 4 ways to generate banner ads that people actually like.

1. Size Matters

Don’t believe what they say. Size really does matter; at least for banner ads. 

Banner sizes come in an array of different proportions, dependent upon their placement (more on positioning in a moment). Google AdSense ranked the most effective ad sizes and locations. The results concluded:

1. Leaderboard: 728×90
2. Half page: 300×600
3. Large rectangle: 336×280
4. Medium rectangle: 300×250
5. Large mobile banner: 320×100

While there are other options available, these are the ones that prove most beneficial. However, the sizes that produce best for your brand will depend on your goals and advert composition.

When putting together a campaign, keep these sizes in mind to engender the most fruitful outcome you can.

2. Placement is Paramount

Studies from Nielsen have shown that people don’t pay attention to the right side of the screen. If that’s where your ads are hanging out, they’re not getting seen. Changing the placement of your banner can have dramatic impacts on your campaign.

This is supported by experiments conducted by Dr. Flint McGlaughlin on creating better banner ads. One of his key findings was that shifting an ad from the right side of the screen to the left boosted engagement by a stunning 74%.

Infolinks had similar findings from a 2014 survey that – using eye-tracking software – showed ads placed on the left, above the fold achieved 73% visibility; the second best result. Ads near the top were most effective, with 80% visibility. This must be why Google recommends placing ads above the fold.

It is also vital to mention that the ad’s relevance in relation to the content is critical as well; 66% of the Infolinks survey respondents claimed: “. . . that the ad employing real-time intent targeting was helpful in supporting their search efforts.”

3. Faith is Dependent on Fonts

Aesthetics matter. When it comes to fonts, this artistic choice could increase your credibility; or it could tank your trustworthiness.

In 2012, writer and director Errol Morris organized a pseudo-experiment cloaked as a New York Times quiz. The ultimate ambition was to establish if different typography could influence people’s perceptions. 

The answer: It does.

By presenting the “quiz” in six different typefaces, Morris found that out of the 45,000 answers collected, those who were presented with the Baskerville font found most credence in the results, whereas those shown Comic Sans placed little to no authority in the outcome.

Furthermore, Terry Childers and Jeffrey Jass jointly published a study that pointed to the same conclusion, based off two different experiments. As the researchers discovered: “. . . the results of the two experiments provide evidence that typefaces convey meanings that have the potential to significantly influence important marketing constructs. These associations influence how consumers perceive brands, as well as, what they remember about brands.

Considering that banner ads have such limited space, every element must be optimized for maximal effectiveness. A stunning image and great CTA are necessary, but without the proper font, potential prospects might find your ad untrustworthy.

4. Clout in Colors

Color is an incredibly important element in advertising. Not just because correct coloring provides consistency in branding, but because colors are influential; they trigger certain emotions – positive or negative – largely without conscious awareness.

The psychology of color is a well-known concept in the marketing arena. There has been a slew of research into how various pigments impact mental processes. For instance, red communicates a sense of urgency while blue is calming and safe.

The colors you opt to employ need to correlate with your company’s marketing goals. Certain shades are prone to engendering specific feelings and actions.

Dependent on your brand’s image and advertising ambitions, be sure to select colors that align with your mission to attract greater numbers of targeted consumers. 

While these four tips are solid drivers of increased banner ad potency, there is no magic formula to success. To effectively craft a compelling and prosperous campaign, you will need to A/B test your banner ads, make the proper adjustments, and try again.

In time, you will uncover how to fortify your ad’s performance and turn banners into a rediscovered marketing modality that drives real results.

What is your opinion on banner ads? Are you willing to give these adverts another shot after all the flack they have received?

The post A Better Banner Ad: 4 Tactics to Prosper with Display Advertising appeared first on SiteProNews.

While there are many ways to do this, one method takes the lead in providing the most accurate and actionable data: competition analysis. 

With proper competition analysis, you can get insight on the following:

• Differences in the products and services offered
• Newer and more effective lead acquisition strategies 
• Sales techniques for closing leads
• Market structure used to increase reach
• Efficacy of key distribution channels

Even if you have an entire marketing tool set at your disposal, if you don’t have data about your competition, you could end up running in circles. 

For content marketers, getting actionable data is a key step to finding gaps in the strategies of competitors while making sure you don’t have these gaps in your own.

And here’s how you can do that:

1. Audit What Your Competitors Have

One of the best ways to uncover your competitor’s content marketing approach is to find out exactly what they have right now.

This information is crucial so you get an idea of what it is you’re dealing with and what you have to outperform.

Below are examples of questions that can guide you in auditing your competitors:

• What types of content are they publishing?
• What is their publishing frequency?
• Which has the greatest impact?
• How are they promoting them?

With the first question, you’ll need to know how many infographics, case studies, ebooks, or videos they’re producing. Find out which type of content they’re publishing the most of, and make sure to have all of that information organized, i.e. in a spreadsheet.

For the second question, get information on how many times they publish a certain type of content. One effective approach is to measure by weekly publishings: i.e. three times a week.

And for the third question, you’ll need to find out which of their posts are garnering the most attention and social media shares. One great tool that can help you do that is BuzzSumo:

As you can see from the image above, you already have your fourth question answered, as well. This is why BuzzSumo is a hit with businesses that want to know their own content marketing performance and that of their competitors. It shows you a lot.

Come Up With More Questions

Your data needs will vary depending on the unique goals of your marketing campaign. So, come up with as many questions until you feel your competition analysis covers everything you need.

Keep an eye out for possible gaps in their content performance, as well. This can help you get a clearer picture of how your own brand can outshine them. For example, if you find that your website pages load slower than your competitor’s site, you can try a reliable content delivery network to boost your pages’ loading time.

2. Evaluate The Quality of Their Content

This next step involves taking a look at both what’s hot and what’s not. But take note that content evaluation is a subjective process; it isn’t all just black and white.

One good approach is to start with their most popular content, which you should already know if you’ve taken the steps above. Dissect their content and find out what makes them interesting.

Look For The Best and Worst

Always keep in mind that competition analysis is about having an eye for quality and a mind for criticism. Even if you have the best possible content in front of you, you can still find something about it that can be polished if you look hard enough.

After you’re done taking a look at their great content, the next step is to scout for their worst. There’s plenty you can learn from this batch, so make sure to have your spreadsheet ready.

You’ll notice that some of the content may have been well-made, but they didn’t do too good a job marketing it. You don’t want this happening to your own content, so make a note of it.

Above is an example of how you can organize the data from your competitive analysis so far. But don’t feel that you need to stick this format. Play around with it and add more categories as you see fit. In a lot of cases, the more detailed your analysis, the better you can identify key factors to use for creating or adjusting your own content marketing strategy.

3. Micro-Analyze

Now that you know which types of content your competitor produces, it’s time to put them under the lens. Take a couple of sample pieces from each type of content they have. You could choose two blog posts, two PDFs, or two newsletters.

Next, get to know the different parts of the content and analyze how they create or structure them. Oftentimes, companies follow a basic procedure for crafting their blog posts or emails.

The below image is an example of information you can get from analyzing blog posts:

Analysis: Competitor 1 – Blog Posts

• Mostly list-types always exceeding 5 items
• Always contains 3-5 pictures per 1,000 words
• CTA in the first and last paragraph
• Titles always include number(s)
• Personalized featured images containing title of blog post

4. Do a Side-by-Side Comparison

Competitive analysis is all about spotting the strengths, weaknesses, and areas of opportunity for your business in relation to a competing business’ marketing model.

While there are numerous approaches you could take to achieve the above effect, a very straightforward one would be to do a side-by-side comparison, or a comparative analysis.

One tool that does this surprisingly well is CognitiveSEO’s Content Visibility module:

From their platform, you gain tracking capability on the social footprint of different competitors, as well as your own. Whether it’s Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or Google Plus, they do a great job of analyzing what’s happening on the content sharing side. 

This is a step up from just normal competitive analysis, because you’re doing it while placing attention on your own strategies. And it can be a great way to give your business that competitive advantage.

See Every Competition As An Opportunity

We’ve all heard that no one gets better in a vacuum. But you also can’t make significant progress if you don’t know how your business stacks up against the competition.

This is why content marketers must include competitive analysis in their strategy if they’re ever to stand out from the thousands of other run-of-the-mill brands out there. 

With the right tools and information, you can produce marvelous results from your content marketing efforts. Especially after you do find out where you can gain a competitive advantage against other businesses in the same niche.

The post 4 Tried and Tested Strategies to Uncover Your Competitors’ Content Marketing Strategies appeared first on SiteProNews.