Advertising: It’s Not You, It’s Me
I just had a thought and it turned into this post. Let’s say you have a shop selling products and you place an ad on a fairly popular blog. Let’s say you’re tracking the clicks, and after 1 month you notice you’ve only gotten 15-20 clicks. That’s not a lot…so immediately you think, “Oh 15-20 clicks isn’t any good, so I should try advertising somewhere else!” and you pull the ad.
Bad idea.
Why? Here are two huge reasons why:
1) Maybe it’s your ad. Well, let’s be real here: you’re not in advertising. There are huge companies dedicated to the art of advertising. Unless you hired an ad firm to develop your ad, or messaging and such, then maybe you should take a look at your ad to see what it might be missing.
Ad design tip: Avoid placing a static jpeg ad of just your logo on a site as a “banner”. That says absolutely nothing to anyone. Try an animated gif or a static ad showing products that you sell. I’ve noticed that product-based ads do at least 25%-50% better on my site.
2) Give it time. I bet that you don’t realize that there are hundreds of new visitors coming to that very blog every single day. That is hundreds of new potential customers. Wait at least 3 months to assess performance before pulling an ad. At that time, you can get a better idea of whether your sales have increased or you’ve gotten more exposure. Clicks aren’t everything. For more info read this post or this one.
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really? My eye and taste tend to go running from anything that flashes. I really don’t like animated ads. Just my 2 cents, and yup, I’m not in advertising. he he
This is SO great and so true! I’ll be linking to this.
While I agree with your overall point that a well-designed ad is critically important (and that leaving an ad in place over a longer period of time will be more effective), it often seems like the majority of flash ads are not well-designed and actually drive customers away. I’ve heard from an enormous number of readers that they don’t like flash ads and are less likely to visit a blog or site that incorporates flash ads, which is the main reason I don’t allow flash ads on my blog.
Photos can definitely work in a larger size ad, but in small ads they can really overwhelm the viewer and actually detract from the ad’s potential brand appeal. What I usually recommend to the people advertising on my blog is that they include a tagline that lets people know what the brand is all about. Besides, if you can’t describe your brand in a few short words, you probably don’t have a clear business plan and might need to re-think the way that you’re marketing yourself to customers.
Just my two cents…