I did an ad review for a client the other day and thought I’d share my insights about how to write great banner/button ads with you.
The best-performing banner and button ads have a few things in common. They:
1. Have lots of white space – They aren’t too cluttered or too wordy. This is because you have about three seconds to capture the visitor’s attention. Remember, your ad is an afterthought. The visitor came to this page for some other reason than to read your ad. Your job is to draw them away from the action they originally intended to take and get them to read your copy (and hopefully click through to your site). In essence, you’re an interruption in their routine.
Keep the copy down to just a few words – between 10 to 20 if possible.
Remember, the job of your ad is not to sell … it’s to make the visitor curious enough to want to click for more information. The landing page’s job is to actually make the sale.
Tip: When writing your URL, capitalize the first letter of each word. It makes it much easier for people to read.
2. Use bold colors – Again, because your ad is an interruption, you’ll want to incorporate bold colors that avert the eye from its intended course. Red is always good, so are medium and bright shades of blue, yellow and/or green. Reserved ads (those with white text on a dark background) capture the eye’s attention, but are hard to read. If you choose a reversed format, limit your text and make it larger.
3. Include images and/or dynamic elements – Images, photos and dynamic ads (those that use animation of some sort) do a good job of gaining attention because they are different. On a page filled with text, these moving and/or visual elements provide a useful distraction.
Tip: Never look at your banner ad all by itself. That’s not its native environment. When you place the ad, it will be surrounded by lots of text and probably many other ads. Fill your screen with sample text and/or other images and place your ad somewhere in the mix. (Or have someone else do this for you.) Then wait a couple of hours and go back to the page you created. Was your eye immediately drawn to your ad when you opened the page? If not… better make some tweaks.
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