If you’ve decided to sink advertising dollars into banner ads, but you’re not sure where to start, you may want to do a little research. The following guidelines will help you figure out a banner ad strategy that brings in business while cutting advertising costs: Before paying for any banner ads, you’ll need to figure out who your target audience is. Build a buyer profile using demographic information so you’ll know who you are marketing to. You can hire a marketing specialist to help you figure out who is most likely to purchase your goods and services, make use of sales analytics software, or you can keep your own figures. Once you know your target demographic, you’ll be able to wisely choose sites for your banner ads. For example, if you’re selling sexy boots, you’ll want to target young women. If you’re selling modest leather pumps, you’ll want to target mature businesswomen.
You might also want to consider remarketing (also called retargeting). Retargeting is a great way to focus your marketing efforts on guests who have already checked out your site. A retargeting service will track the guests who visit your site and then post your banner ads on pages (off your site) that your guest visits. Your banner ads will be presented to people who visited your site, meaning you may either entice a customer to become a repeat customer, or you may get a customer whose time on your site was somehow interrupted to return and make a purchase. Instead of paying a slew of sites to place your banner ads on their pages, you’ll pay the retargeting service to follow visitors who already proved interest in your wares by choosing to visit your site that first time. You can also get inexpensive marketing through affiliate marketing partnerships. You can build a network of affiliate partners who will all build websites, post your banner ads, and point traffic to your sites. A simple way to do this is to offer monetary bonuses to partners who send traffic to your site, as measured by click-throughs, sales, or delivery of contact information. You only have to pay when your affiliate partner’s work has actually produced results. While there is a lot more to say about banner ads, this should get you started.