Daniel Levis’ latest ‘Total Package’ article is titled “Banner Ad Secrets”. [Copywriting Article]


Daniel Levis’ latest ‘Total Package’ article:

Banner Ad Secrets

Dear Web Business-Builder,

Banner ads are one of the most frequently overlooked ways to generate fresh new leads and customers. So many marketers seem obsessed with search triggered ads at the expense of the much larger and sometimes much more profitable world of the banner.

From a copywriting standpoint, there’s a big difference between the two.

When writing search triggered ads, you want to try and mirror the intention of the searcher as closely as possible.

Your ad should stick very tightly to the conversation you’ve anticipated the prospect to be having in his or her mind prior to entering their search.

What does a profitable conversation sound like?

Something like this: I wonder what kind of a deal I can get on a pair of Blublocker sunglasses? And with that thought, the person types: “Blublocker sunglasses best deal” into the search engine.

A less profitable conversation might sound something like this: I wonder what kind of sun glasses best protect my eyes? And the search: “best sun glasses”

In this second example, the person is not as far along in the buying cycle. And they are therefore not nearly as likely to buy. The money keywords are the phrases that signify a person at the end of the investigation. They know what they want and they’re looking for the best place to get it.

And the best ad copy is really just a confirmation of the salient points of the conversation. The person types the term into the search engine and their eye is attracted to the closest match. So you match.

Banner ads are a whole other kettle of fish …

You have to distract people’s attention away from what they’re intentionally interacting with and toward your marketing message. You have to interrupt their train of thought. Perhaps this is why so many marketers prefer search triggered ads. They just seem so much more polite.

The only problem with search triggered ads is that there are a lot of things you can sell that people would never think of looking to buy with the help of a search engine. An illustrative example would be those annoying “make a gazillion dollars with Google Adwords” courses that are sold almost exclusively through email.

With banner ads, the whole idea is to try and put your ad in front of high probability prospects. You have reason to believe they can be interested in your value proposition. But they are not actively searching for what you have. How can you profitably seize their attention?

Obviously, targeting is essential. Banner ads can be targeted by demographics, thus only displaying your ads to people of a certain age, income, geography, and so on.

They can be targeted by interest. Display of your ads can be limited to certain websites or certain web pages. This can be done manually, or it can be automated through contextual targeting, meaning your ads will only show on pages that contain certain pre-selected keywords.

And sometimes you can benefit from both demographic and contextual targeting together ““ even better.

The idea is to screen out as many unqualified prospects as possible. The remainder may make ideal prospects for your product and business. If you can steal those people’s attention, you have a decent shot of engaging them in your sales process.

During a split second glance across the page, billions of your prospect’s neurons are firing away, actively processing the flood of disconnected information typical of sites that accept banner advertising. The conscious mind is unaware of much of this activity, but the subconscious mind is deftly taking it all in, tying it together, and matching it up with previously stored data.

It is part of the human survival program to
constantly scan the environment for anomalies …

This is how we stayed alive as a species in the deadly jungles and on the treacherous plains of the savannah in pre-historic times. Our eyes were sharply attuned to movement.

Our brains are trained to ignore the stationary, and instantly focus our attention on anything that moves. It could be a saber tooth tiger, after all.

Flash banner ads with two or more frames that alternate periodically take advantage of this phenomenon beautifully. They also allow you to effectively double or even triple the number (or size) of words you can use to entice a click.

Actually, it’s not so much movement as it is contrast. If your banner is the only thing that moves on the page, it will get noticed. If your banner is one of many in a sector of the page, all flashing, the non-flash banner is the one that gets noticed.

Or if your banner is oblong, shaped like a stop-sign, tilted to one side, or assumes some other unusual dimension, it will stand out like a sore thumb.

Yes, I know banners ads are sold in squares and rectangles. But what’s stopping you from creating weird alternative shapes surrounded by white space inside those squares and rectangles?

Wherever practical, consider customizing the color, movement, shape, and positioning of your banners to the individual sites on which they appear, in order to maximize contrast.

Alternatively, try blending in, mimicking the look and feel of the site, perhaps even identifying the users of the site in your copy if you can get away with it.

Shocking and unexpected visuals also take
advantage of the human survival program …

Picture a Steinway grand piano falling from the sky, about to crush a Volkswagen Beetle. The copy reads: You Never Know When You’re Going to Need Auto-Body Repair. If nothing else, it steals your attention.

The human form and face are also marvelous attention grabbers, especially attractive forms and faces.

Neuroscientists, using brain scans have actually isolated special neurons that light up in our brains when we perceive another human being.

When the person observed performs a certain action ““ smiling, frowning, sensually swirling their tongue around a mouthful of low fat yogurt, or any one of a million other possibilities ““ the observer automatically simulates that action in his or her own brain.

This is equally true of images that appear in your banner ads, or anywhere else in your marketing.

All of us have mental templates wired into our memories ““ complex instructions that allow us to effortlessly repeat millions of actions we’ve previously mastered.

And these sub-routines can be automatically stimulated with nothing more than the image of another human being engaged in some familiar activity.

When you see an image of someone laughing … or throwing a ball … or covering their head with their hands as if to protect against a falling object … your mirror neurons practically force you to sub-consciously adopt that person’s point of view.

Show people interacting emotionally with your product, enjoying its benefits and implied identifications, and instantly you transfer a sense of ownership of your product to your prospects. Their mirror neurons guarantee it.

Again, this ability to jump into another person’s experience is part of our survival program. It’s automatic and irresistible. We are wired as a species to pay close attention to faces. We subconsciously mirror them to glean meaning. Position a human face to the left of your banner headline, and the human eye will be drawn to your copy like a magnet.

The idea of leveraging these existing neural pathways applies to language as well ““ giving you a powerful tool for compressing maximum meaning into minimum words, fully leveraging the limited space available to you. The key here is to create an unexpected mental visual by combining existing templates that don’t normally go together.

At one point I was selling a product on Google’s search network. My headline was: Recession Proof Home-Biz.

The headline did well. But when I tested this copy in a banner ad, it flopped.

I changed the headline to: Laugh at Money Worries! And immediate my click through rates more than doubled.

If you look carefully at this phrase, Laugh at Money Worries, you’ll see it contains a paradox. On one level, it offers a compelling benefit. On another level, it doesn’t seem to make sense. Who laughs at money worries? And this weird little paradox reaches out and grabs the prospect’s attention.

The mind loves mystery …

Anything that puzzles the intellect demands attention. Again, this natural curiosity is burned into our DNA. We are wired to analyze the new and the unfamiliar, both as potential threat, and also as opportunity to enhance our fitness for survival.

You can leverage complex, condensed stores of meaning and visualization stored away in memory with single words in your banner ad copy. The word “laugh” in the phrase “laugh at money worries” is an excellent example.

It’s a way of saying money worries will never plague you again. They just no longer compute for you. You’ll never take them seriously from this day forward. With one word, all of these ideas are instantly communicated.

Until next time, Good Selling!

Daniel Levis

Editor, The Web Marketing Advisor

THE TOTAL PACKAGE

Daniel Levis is a top marketing consultant & direct response copywriter based in Toronto, Canada and publisher of the world famous copywriting anthology Masters of Copywriting featuring the selling wisdom of 44 of the “Top Money” marketing minds of all time, including Clayton Makepeace, Dan Kennedy, Joe Sugarman, John Carlton, Joe Vitale, Michel Fortin, Richard Armstrong and dozens more! For a FREE excerpt visit http://www.SellingtoHumanNature.com.

He is also one of the leading Web conversion experts operating online today, and originator of the 5R System (TM), a strategic process for engineering enhanced Internet profits. For a free overview of Daniel’s system, click here.

Attribution Statement: This article was first published in The Total Package. To sign-up to receive your own FREE subscription to The Total Package and claim four FREE money making e-books go to www.makepeacetotalpackage.com.

The Total Package

*IMNewsWatch would like to thank Clayton Makepeace for granting permission to reprint this article.

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