What Killed the Banner Ad?

What Killed the Banner Ad?

Dina Nahwiyatun

06.30

0 Comments

If you ask the Internet marketers of today, many if not most of them will tell you that banner advertising is dead. They say that it’s expensive, the click-through rates are low and that unless you know exactly what you’re doing, it is likely that you’ll end up spending more money than you’ll make.

Surprisingly, just a few years ago the same people were rushing to invest their money in banner advertising campaigns. In those happy days, the click-through rates were at least ten times as high as they are now. What has happened? Has the audience become more resistant to Internet advertising in general? Or perhaps the whole concept of banner advertising has become obsolete and we’ll need to think of new ways of reaching people?

Perhaps, perhaps. There is certainly at least some truth to these claims, but they are hardly the only reasons behind the current crisis. Personally, I think that those responsible for planning the banner advertising campaigns are largely to blame for what has happened. The difference between the successful banner advertising of yesterday and the pathetic banner advertising of today is vanity.

Vanity? Sounds odd, but you’ll only need to look at the banners displayed on a few popular sites to see what I mean. They have a nice-looking background, a beautiful picture or two, a professionally-designed logo, smooth animation and bright, pleasant colors. In a nutshell, those banners are works of art and that is exactly why they perform so badly.

More marketing, less graphics
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Unless you are trying to brand your business, your main focus should not be on what your banners look like. Pay attention to how many sales you make and how high your ROI is, forget the aesthetics.

Some readers may be worried that such an approach might damage their reputation in the eyes of the consumers. Unless the ads look good, they might affect the company’s brand negatively. Large, well-known businesses definitely should worry about that, but if you’re a small business, you shouldn’t over-emphasise the importance of branding. You’ve probably seen hundreds or thousands banners in the past weeks, but can you remember what even twenty of them looked like and what company or product they were advertising?

Without any further ado, here are some tips on how to make your banners look worse but perform better:

Don’t camouflage your banners
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Many banners co-exist in harmony with the design of the site they are displayed on. While this makes the site look better, it also prevents anyone from noticing what the poor advertiser is trying to say. Instead of allowing your banners to fade into the background, do everything possible so that they will stand out. Make it clear that your banner is something that should be
clicked, not merely stared at.

In practice, this goal can be achieved by utilizing Windows-style navigational elements, notes instructing users to “click here” and colors that contrast with those used on the site. The result
won’t look like something you’d want to frame and hang on your wall, but it will be effective.

Easy with the graphics
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Pictures of attractive persons or tropical islands may be nice to look at, but they also increase the time it takes for your banner to load. If your banner is placed near the top of the page and doesn’t appear instantly, the audience will scroll down the page and never see it. Images also take up quite a bit of space and may force you to limit the amount or the size of the text used in
the banner.

A good rule of thumb is that unless the picture is somehow essential in convincing the user to click, drop it. When advertising a sweepstakes, adding a picture of a pile of cash can feel like a good idea. However, in many cases a text screaming “WIN $10.000″ would be just as effective and would load up much, much faster.

Cut to the chase
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Banners are not TV commercials. You’ll have to continuously fight to get the attention of your audience and you’ll also need to fight to retain it. Long-winded advertisements that take ten seconds before even mentioning what is being advertised may work on TV, but not on the Internet.

Following these instructions, which essentially tell you to create banners that look simple and perhaps even a bit unprofessional might seem foolish. But simple, straight-forward banners that stand out get clicked on.

Banner advertising is not a beauty contest. It’s a selling contest. At the end of the day, what matters is whether your banners helped you make a profit, not how cool they looked.

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Lauri Harpf runs the A Promotion Guide website, where he offers free tips on how you can use banners, search engines and other methods to promote your site. His site can be found at http://www.apromotionguide.com/
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Building an E-mail Address Database

Building an E-mail Address Database

Dina Nahwiyatun

06.28

0 Comments

E-mail marketing works, there’s no denying it. Its key advantage over other Internet marketing methods is that it enables you to contact the customer instead of forcing the customer to contact
you. This ability is especially useful when something that your customers need to know as soon as possible has happened. Whether you’ve just released a new product or decided to cut your prices by 10%, the fastest way to spread the word is via E-mail.

However, unless you want to give your company a bad name, you can’t simply start sending E-mails to people that haven’t agreed to receive them. The only ethical and reasonable way to advertise via E-mail is to first obtain a permission, or an opt-in request, from the receiver. The trouble is that this can’t be done via E-mail, as it would be similar to asking someone whether you can ask them a question. What’s the point in doing that, when you’ve already done what you wanted them to allow you to do?

Getting people to opt-in
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Due to the above reasons, creating your own opt-in E-mail database is not an easy task. In addition, because of privacy concerns and the fear of spam, many people are reluctant to give out their E-mail address without a good reason to do so. These fears can be soothed by creating a strict privacy policy and sticking to it, but it’s harder to convince your visitors that it would be in their best interest to reveal their E-mail address to you. Fortunately, there are some time-tested solutions available for that problem as well:

1. Arrange a sweepstakes with an attractive grand prize, for example one of the more expensive products sold on your site. Require everyone who wants to enter the drawing to give out his E-mail address and agree to receive occasional E-mails from you.

To get the best possible results, it is advisable to declare that the winner will be contacted via E-mail and needs to claim the prize within 7 days in order to receive it. By doing so, you’ll eliminate the problem of people giving out bogus E-mail addresses in order to avoid receiving advertisements.

2. Open a discussion forum on your site. By only allowing registered users to post, you can collect E-mail addresses and deter pranksters from writing abusive messages at the same time. However, if you decide to use this method to build your list, be very careful. Sending advertisements too frequently to the regulars of your forum may cause them to move elsewhere and thus reduce the traffic to your site.

3. Start publishing a newsletter. Although it requires quite a bit of work, an interesting newsletter quickly gathers subscribers and increases the size of your E-mail database. An additional advantage of having a newsletter versus a simple E-mail announcement service is that you’ll be able to submit to the multiple newsletter directories on the Internet.

4. Continue to allow everyone to access most of the content on your site, but also add a “Members only” area that contains articles or other information that is valuable to your visitors.
Give out free memberships, but require members to register, reveal their E-mail addresses and allow you to send them an E-mail advertisement every now and then.

This idea is especially suitable if you’re eventually planning to charge for some of the content you provide. The step from requiring your visitors to register to requiring them to pay is smaller than moving from giving everything for free to fee-based access.

5. Whenever you ask your visitors to give out their E-mail address, remember to offer them the possibility to join your opt-in mailing list at the same time. Do you have a form on your site that allows the visitors to contact the webmaster or the sales department? Perhaps you have a Tell-A-Friend script that asks for the sender’s E-mail address and name? Both are excellent opportunities to suggest subscribing to your E-mail announcement list or newsletter to your visitors.

If you want to gather a sizeable list of E-mail addresses from your visitors, you shouldn’t be afraid of trying hard to get them. Just keep in mind that there is a fine line between being persuasive and being annoying. Don’t cross it.

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Lauri Harpf runs the A Promotion Guide website, where he offers free tips on how you can use E-mail, search engines and other methods to promote your site. His site can be found at http://www.apromotionguide.com/
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Keeping Your Pop-Ups - and Your Audience

Keeping Your Pop-Ups - and Your Audience

Dina Nahwiyatun

05.51

0 Comments

In “Why Pop-Ups are Pop-Bad”, we looked at the pitfalls of pop-up advertising, the most significant of them being the way Internet surfers feel about pop-ups. As I mentioned in that
previous article, when you use pop-ups, you take the risk of your visitor count suffering and the reputation of your site being damaged. Despite that, many use pop-ups on their sites for a variety of reasons and are reluctant to cease using an advertising method they feel to be effective.

So, what is there to do? Is the only possibility to either make your visitors feel frustrated or drop your pop-ups? While your users would probably want to see the pop-ups disappear completely, that is not always possible. However, by making some slight changes to the way you use pop-ups, you can often achieve a result that satisfies both you and your visitors.

Maximum benefit, minimum trouble
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There are multiple ways to make your pop-ups more user friendly, here are some of my favorites. Try them out and see which ones work for you.

1. Imagine this. You arrive at a site and a pop-up ad appears. Being a veteran web-user, you close it quickly and continue investigating what the site has to offer. When you open the next page, the same pop-up comes up. Again, one click from your mouse and it is gone. On to the next page and the darn thing pops up yet again! Now you’re getting annoyed and start
looking for the exit.

OK, you probably didn’t have to imagine that. If you’ve been on the web for a while, you’re likely to have experienced it. Having the pop-up appear once didn’t feel as bad, but when you had already looked at it and decided that you weren’t interested in what it advertised, having it come up again and again made the site seem very unfriendly.

The moral of the story? Use cookies to identify your visitors and limit the amount of times the same pop-up is shown to the same user. Although it is claimed that on average, a person has to see the same ad several times before he’ll react to it, enough is enough.

2. Do not use more than one pop-up on a single page. Using multiple pop-ups is unlikely to greatly increase the response rate to your advertising, but it will ensure that the patience of your visitors wears thin a lot faster. A horde of pop-ups appearing at the same time may crash some browsers and slow older computers down to a crawl.

3. Consider launching your pop-ups at the moment users exit your site rather than when they arrive to it. This is likely to make your advertisements seem less distracting, because at that point your visitors have already finished using your site and found the information they were looking for.

If you choose to use exit pop-ups, remember that they offer an excellent opportunity to retain contact with a visitor that may otherwise be lost in cyberspace. A pop-up to bookmark your site or subscribe to your newsletter is likely to work better at this stage, as the user has already seen
that you run a high-quality site.

4. Just like all other forms of advertising you use, your pop-ups should offer content that is relevant to the topic of your site. For example, it’s a much better idea to have a pop-up that sells subscriptions to Sports Illustrated on your Boston Bruins fan site than a pop-up for an Internet casino. Not only does it get a better response rate, but it also makes your site to look more professional.

5. Every time you add pop-up advertisements or adjust existing ones, keep a close eye on how your audience reacts to the changes. Your visitor count, the time an average visitor spends on your site and the number of page views per visitor are all important meters that will promptly notify you of any possible problems.

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Lauri Harpf runs the A Promotion Guide website, where he offers free information about search engines, directories and other promotion methods. His site can be found at http://www.apromotionguide.com/

HOBI YANG MENGHASILKAN UANG

HOBI YANG MENGHASILKAN UANG

Dina Nahwiyatun

22.04

0 Comments

Sudah bukan jamannya menggantungkan diri gaji dan perusahaan tempat bekerja, sebab masih tingginya risiko PHK yang menyebabkan Anda kehilangan pekerjaan. Jika Anda mempunyai hobi yang digilai, mengapa tidak mencoba mendapatkan penghasilan tambahan dari hobi tersebut. Daripada terus menerus dituding sebagai salah satu biang pemborosan, marilah kita mengusahakan hobi kita agar menjadi mesin uang.
Kegilaan orang akan hobi yang ditekuninya, dapat dengan mudah kita jumpai dalam kehidupan sehari-hari. Misalnya seseorang yang hobi berburu barang-barang antik bisa menghabiskan banyak waktu, tenaga dan bahkan uang sampai ratusan juta rupiah yang bagi orang lain seperti sia-sia. Bandingkan dengan tingkah orang yang yang hobi dengan burung perkutut atau ikan Louhan ?
Mungkin terasa tidak masuk akal bagi orang lain. Hobi boleh dibilang sebagai sebuah pemenuhan kebutuhan batiniah untuk melepaskan diri dari kejenuhan dan kelelahan karena rutinitas harian dalam mencari nafkah. Karena sifatnya itulah, yang berlaku dalam soal hobi adalah kesenangan yang tak terhingga. Ketika hobi diboyong ke dalam wilayah bisnis, meski perhitungan laba-rugi, kelayakan usaha, peluang dan lain sebagainya juga dijadikan pertimbangan tapi instinglah yang lebih dominan. Ungkapan yang sering terdengar, nggak masalah untung atau buntung yang penting hobi !
Bekerja Dengan Senang HatiTapi itulah sebabnya mengapa kegiatan usaha yang berawal dari hobi seringkali berhasil dengan baik. Dimana salah satu kunci untuk memulai usaha yang sukses adalah bekerja dengan senang hati, seolah kita sedang mengerjakan hobi sampai-sampai lupa waktu dan tidak kenal lelah. Yang pasti ada kesungguhan baik dalam memulai usaha hingga mengembangkannya dan melakukan sesuatu dengan landasan cinta, bukan keterpaksaan agar kita bekerja untuk hasil yang terbaik dan penuh keikhlasan
Tidak heran jika banyak orang memulai suatu bisnis adalah karena kegemaran atau hobi. Bayangan mendapatkan penghasilan besar dengan melakukan pekerjaan yang disukai memang menjadi keinginan banyak orang. Sebab biasanya orang memang melakukan hal yang terbaik untuk kegiatan yang disukainya, sehingga tidak heran jika hasilnya juga maksimal. Hobi yang dilakukan dengan tujuan awal melepaskan stress, kemudian malah menghasilkan uang tentunya menjadi bonus yang sangat menyenangkan.
Langkah Awal Mengubah Hobi Menjadi BisnisSatu hal yang berat dalam melakukan usaha ialah melakukan langkah pertama. Meski demikian, langkah pertama tetap saja melakukannya. Bukankah hal-hal besar itu berawal dari yang kecil, dan langkah seribu, tidak mungkin terjadi tanpa langkah pertama. Apa saja yang harus dilakukan agar hobi kita bisa menghasilkan uang, berikut ini adalah caranya :
Luangkan waktu lebih banyak untuk menekuni hobi Anda, dan hasilkan hasil karya dengan kualitas yang lebih baik dan kuantitas yang lebih banyak. “ Practise makes perfect “ dengan terus berlatih maka kita akan menghasilkan karya yang semakin baik. Hasil karya yang berkualitas tentunya meningkatkan nilai jualnya, apalagi jika banyak orang yang menekuni hobi yang sama, tentunya produk Anda harus mempunyai nilai lebih dibandingkan produk sejenis. Paling tidak hasil karya Anda mampu bersaing di pasaran. Masalahnya ketika hobi yang biasanya dilakukan diwaktu luang jika akhirnya menjadi rutinitas, maka si pehobi cenderung menjadi malas melakukannya.Hal ini secara alamiah memang terjadi, namun itulah konsekuensi dari perubahan hobi menjadi bisnis. Supaya Anda tidak tersiksa dalam proses perubahan ini, maka lakukanlah secara perlahan atau bertahap, jangan memaksakan diri untuk meluangkan waktu jauh lebih banyak, tetapi sedikit lebih banyak saja dari waktu ke waktu. Misalnya jika bisanya Anda membuat hasil karya sebulan sekali, maka jangan memaksa diri untuk membuat hasil karya seminggu sekali. Tingkatkan produktifitas menjadi sebulan dua kali, kemudian jika sudah merasa nyaman dengan ritme kerja yang baru, jangan ragu-ragu untuk meningkatkan produktifitas setingkat lebih tinggi lagi.
Tambah terus pengetahuan Anda, bisa melalui kursus-kursus, seminar, atau pelatihan yang berhubungan dengan hobi Anda. Biasanya dalam kursus Anda akan mendapatkan semacam sertifikat yang nantinya bisa menaikkan prestise dan kepercayaan pelanggan, sehinggga meningkat daya jual hasil karya Anda.. Selain melalui kursus ada banyak cara yang lebih murah untuk menambah pengetahuan anda, dengan melalui buku, majalah, internet dan berbagai media informasi lainnya.
Belajar langsung dari orang–orang yang sudah ahli atau sudah sukses menjalankan hobi tersebut. Mendapatkan mentor atau bergaul dengan orang yang mempunyai hobi sama juga bisa menjadi cara yang terbaik bagaimana menghasilkan karya yang terbaik dan kompetitif dari segi kulitas juga harga. Sebab yang terpenting dari sebuah hobi yang jadi bisnis adalah apakah orang mau membeli hasil karya yang Anda hasilkan, dan berapa orang mau membayar untuk itu. Nah, dari mereka yang sudah berhasil di hobi yang jadi bisnis yang Anda minatilah Anda bisa mendapatkan informasi mengenai cara menjalankan bisnis tersebut dengan sukses. Lagipula dengan bergaul dengan mereka, hasil karya dan keterampilan anda selalu diukur kemajuanya oleh orang yang kompeten dibidangnya.Selain itu berada dalam lingkungan yang memiliki minat yang sama juga akan meningkatkan motivasi Anda dalam berbisnis. Jika ada perkumpulan dalam hobi Anda, usahakan untuk bergabung dan aktif. Beberapa hobi mempunyai perkumpulan untuk mewadahi orang-orang yang menggemari hobi yang sama. Ada banyak manfaat yang bisa Anda dapat dengan mengikuti perkumpulan, antara lain : mendapatkan perkembangan terbaru serta informasi-informasi mengenai hobi Anda yang mungkin bisa dimanfaatkan dalam mencari peluang, meningkatkan peluang mendapatkan calon pelanggan, memperoleh promosi gratis untuk usaha Anda, memperluas network.
Tawarkan hasil karya Anda dari satu toko ke toko lain, dari satu orang ke orang lain. Tentu saja, anda diharapkan tak mudah patah semangat jika produk yang anda tawarkan di tolak. dan juga, jangan malu. Dari pengalaman diketahui, orang-orang terdekat bisa menjadi konsumen awal. Cara ini, juga bisa membantu mengatasi kesulitan modal keuangan, karena mereka bisa diminta membayar dimuka, sebelum barang dibuat atau diantarkanPada akhirnya semua kembali kepada pilihan kita masing-masing, sebab tidak semua orang beruntung memiliki hobi, atau memiliki hobi yang berpotensi menghasilkan uang. Banyak orang yang tertunda membuka usaha sebab masih bingung menentukan bidang usaha yang diminati. Tetapi bukan berarti jika tidak mempunyai hobi, kemudian tertutup kemungkinan membuka usaha, sebab banyak sumber ide bisnis lainnya yang bisa Anda lakukan.
Kuncinya adalah apapun yang Anda pilih, cintailah ! Dengan melakukan pekerjaan yang dicintai, Anda seperti mempunyai layaknya hobi. Sebaliknya banyak juga orang yang sudah memiliki hobi, namun belum berminat mengubahnya menjadi bisnis yang menghasilkan uang. Mudah-mudah tulisan kali ini menambah wawasan Anda terhadap peluang dan potensi bisnis dari hobi.

Dikutip dari: http://orangmedan.com/2007/04/05/hobi-yang-menghasilkan-uang/