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Valuable Success Tips for Displaying Affiliate Marketing Banners
By Elizabeth McGee
Banner links can be a powerful promotion tool for advertising your
affiliate products. Almost all affiliate programs offer them and
smart affiliates take advantage of their advertising power by
using them on their affiliate sites.
Using banner advertising is a valuable resource but how you use
them is key. The success of a banner's click through rate is
often determined by where a banner is placed on your site, how
it is worded, its eye-catching ability, colors, etc.
So what makes a banner achieve a high C.T.R.?
There are several things ...let's take a look.
Keep Your Banners Focused.
Don't use your home page for banners. Keep your banners focused
on the page designed for that particular product. For example,
a gardening site should display a fertilizer banner on the
fertilizer page. Keep your banners, and text links for that
matter, on relevant content pages.
Size of Banners.
Size does matter. Research has found that banners, normally
those around 468 x 60 (pixels) are more catchy, gaining more
clicks than the smaller pixel banners.
Banner Animation.
There have been studies that suggested animation can increase
response rates by up to twenty five percent. It is important
to note however, that flashing, obnoxious banners can have quite
the opposite effect, especially if it remains in a position that
is annoying to someone trying to read text.
Using animation banners would be better placed out of the range
of text where a viewer can become distracted by it.
Banner Phrases and Wording.
A banner's choice of words is critical to its success. A good
banner will demand a click by using attention grabbing words and
phrases. Phrases such as 'Click here now', 'Buy Now', 'money back
guarantee' all create a call to action . Words such as 'Last
chance', 'only 24 hours left', or 'limited time offer' create
a sense of urgency.
Asking questions that generate emotions such as 'Want to save
money?', How would you like to be 10 pounds thinner?',
'Wouldn't you like to be debt free?' all are successful in
promoting clicks. Be careful of using the word 'FREE'.
While 'free' might generate a high C.T.R., the click to sales,
however, is not as high.
Banners that ask questions instructing visitors to interact with
the banner such as flashing an icon where the visitor can point
and click has also shown to increase click through rates by as
much as 18%.
Website Positioning of Banners.
Banners at the bottom of a page have almost three times the C.T.R.
than at the top of the page. This is primarily because most
viewers to a site are looking for information. Once they read the
information they are more receptive to clicking on the banner
after the information.
It's also been noted that banners placed on the lower right hand
side next to the scroll bar had over a 200% increase in C.T.R.
Banner Loading Time.
Use fast loading banners. C.T.R. increases to nearly three percent
when using banners that are about 3,000 bytes vs. banners over
10,000 bytes. You will miss out on clicks if it takes too long
for a banner to load.
Refresh Your Banners.
Refresh your banners on a regular basis. I've learned that
banners tend to lose their giddy-up after prolonged use. Even
Yahoo! has mentioned that banners 'burn out' after about two
weeks of use. Allow your site to change its look occasionally
when promoting a particular product.
In conclusion, it's all about testing. No one can say for sure
what works best. Tests are conducted all the time and theories
are published, however only you can determine what really works
best for you by testing it.
About the Author
Elizabeth is a seasoned internet business owner who promotes
building a home internet business by providing free marketing advice,
marketing product reviews, free courses, motivation and a friend.
Grab Elizabeth's comprehensive newsletter at:
http://www.homenotion.com/newsletter.html
Article Source: http://www.simplysearch4it.com/article/20023.html
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