What do you buy Banner or Text or Other

Hey i was wondering what is the most popular method of advertising so i think i will find out now so tell us how you advertise your site or the way you prefer to advertise your site online and offline.

Thanks this will be interesting.

 

I prefer TEXT LINK ADS.
I think I read somewhere they generally get better "click-thru" rates.

I don't advertise "offline" at the moment.

 

I would buy a mix of all methods.
It's always better if you advertise on many channels, so you should probably also choose many different methods.

 

I generally use banner ads and word of mouth, it works very well for me.

 

Yes a mixture of both would be best to deliver the best traffic.

 

I've used newspaper ads to varying degrees. If you can justify the expense, I think its worth it just to have a little visibility. Local papers are cheaper and sometimes offer a decent web link.

One thing that served us greatly was setting up a booth for free at "babies-r-us". Once a month they let vendors come in and set up a table. It's all about having someone who can stay happy all day working the table. Lots of other vendors had people who lost their friendliness within a few hours and it hurt them. They also let you put up flyers/biz cards/brochures in a kiosk they have for small businesses. Babies-R-Us is very target marketed, but there is probably a similar Brick and Mortar superstore in your niche.

I've never tried banner ads, and I've had great success with text ads. I don't personally like banner ads, so I never subjected my customers to them.

 

Thanks this will be interesting.

I'm a great fan of Google Adwords for online and local newspapers + word of mouth for offline marketing.

 

I think that is an excellent point -- offline marketing. So few internet-based companies recognize the importance. I'm curious if anyone else is doing something similar? Local speaking? Conferences? Direct mail? How much is it impacting your online business?

Thanks!
StacyO

 

I have been thinking about different methods of offline advertising that will best suit online businesses. For my home business site the methods have come to local newspaper, mail box flyer drops and communitiy notice boards. I was also thinking of starting a new website and do a little test on offline marketing.

I will only promote the website via offline advertising methods and see how much off a effect it will have on revenue generation, and the hit counts on the website just to see how effective this method actually is.

I will let you guys know if you will like when i start the little test and how effective it is.

 

I've thought about making postcards (or Webcards) and renting a list to do a direct mail to my targeted audience. It isn't too expensive except for the list rental.

My audience isn't especially local, so I thought having a booth at an industry convention might be worthwhile.

I'm sure you have some good ideas...
StacyO

 

Clearly i prefer text links, usually get better conversion rate. Then it help for SEO when you partner with a site and have a static link.
depending on the market banner ads can be useful tho.
So you may want to try both and make your choices depending on your priorities.

 

For offline marketting we tried radio and newspaper without big success. We tried show and events - we are travel agents so we do everything as people are always interested in travel

Our people ask visitors questions about their future needs, we come back with hundreds of requests from which we get good sales.

The best is "get our newsletter and get a chance to win a free weekend in Orlando" (cost $30), number of newsletter members over 300. Cost per new receipient: $0.10 - unbeatable as the ratio of confirmation for the double optin is close to 90% if we send the confirmation the same day. Once we waited 5 days and this rate felt under 30%....

Our newsletter has over 60,000 members and generate 30% of our sales.

 

Offline marketing is a tricky thing. The thing about offline marketing is that it mostly serves as a method of branding. So it is very difficult to measure the impact of an offline ad on your bottom line. It is much easier to measure clicks. I've heard that the average person needs to see a newspaper ad 6 times before they buy. That can get expensive.

That being said, however, if sales can justify the ads then the more the better. In a program like ours (www.DentalPlans.com) where affiliates earn at least $40 per sale, figuring what your return on investment will be is a bit easier.

We actually have what we call our offline print potal. This is a company that we contracted to provide print materials to out affiliates at discounted rates, they customize every piece to each affiliate and can do very small print runs so you don't have to buy 1000 postcards at a time, even hough you can is you want to.

 

Interesting, I always figured text ads served as a PR creating tool rather than an actual "click me now" type of banner.

I also believ while working offline local newspapers are best for advertising purposes.