Every single aspect of your banner campaign will relate back to the goals you set at the beginning. What is the purpose of your campaign? What are you trying to achieve? You must always bear this in mind when you are designing your banner.
Effective taglines
Your tagline should reflect your goal, if you want to use your banner campaign to drive consumers to a special offer you are running you must put that on the banner and be open and honest about it, ‘20% off our Winter collection for all new customers!’
If your goal was to promote a new product then you should put that in your tagline, ‘Shower Karaoke Machines – now in stock’. If you think that will reduce the amount of people who click on your banner, you’re correct, it probably will. Think quality leads, not quantity.
So let’s say your goal is to drive randoms to your site and just generally increase awareness of who you are and what you do. Maybe you don’t need a tagline? Unless you’re already a very well-known brand, I would strongly advise a tagline – just to say who you are and what you do, ‘Specialists in boiler repair, servicing the Thames Valley’.
Call to action
Sounds perfectly simple but you have to tell people what you want them to do. ‘Click Here’, ‘Register Now’, ‘Make a Donation’, ‘Watch the Video’…
Animation and Images
Don’t be fooled into thinking the best way to capture your audience’s attention is with fluorescent, psychedelic colours and fit inducing animation – it may negatively impact your brand.
Your animation should be used to tell your banner’s story and your images should be clear and never cluttered, they should emphasise your brand/product/service. If you’re selling hot holidays the imagery on your banner should make me want to book a holiday; help me visualise relaxing on the beach in the sun without a care in the world. If you’re advertising a private health practice your banner should be professional – a picture of Dr Nick from the Simpsons may be hilarious, but there’s no chance I would trust your company to perform surgery on me.
Quality
Does your company provide quality service? Then your banner should reflect this, it’s really worth getting a professional to build your banners. I’m a marketers nightmare – if your advertising is not good quality, I naturally assume your service isn’t either and subconsciously so do a lot of consumers.
