Chapter 13: Online Advertising - Throwing a Banner into the Works

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As you may have gathered from the title, the focus of this chapter is largely on banner advertising but don't for one minute believe that banners are the be all and end all of online advertising. "Banner advertising" is a bit of a misnomer - modern online creative advertising is about a lot more than just banners.

The Multi-Purpose Nature of Advertising

Advertising, whether online or offline, always has a number of objectives:

Building brand awareness
Creating consumer demand
Informing consumers of your ability to satisfy that demand

But when you really think about it, they can be distilled into just one action: Increasing Sales!

Advertising is based on the simple economics of demand and supply. Advertisers aim to stimulate a consumer need and then satisfy that need. Create the demand. Then satisfy the demand.

Building Brand Awareness

Making people aware of your brand or product is an important long-term goal. Once customers know about you, you've taken that first big step towards gaining their trust... and their patronage. It's a simple fact that the best known brands do more business. And therein lies the rub.

The ultimate goal is to do more business and sell more.

Building brand awareness is perhaps the key strong point of Online Creative Advertising. It's largely visual, making it an ideal channel for promoting brand collateral.

Creating Consumer Demand

Brand and product awareness is also about creating demand. Advertising needs to convince consumers about what they should want and why they should want it. Modern Online Advertising can provide a great way to communicate the USP's of your product, thereby helping stimulate demand.

Aspiration is a function of knowledge. You can't want what you don't know about.

Satisfy Consumer Demand

Once your consumer wants something, they need to know of your ability to satisfy that want. If your brand building has been effective, they know you exist. Now tell them how you can deliver what they need.

Driving Traffic and Sales

If your Online Advertising campaign doesn't drive traffic, then there's really no point in it, is there? All forms of Online Marketing need to drive traffic in the long term. But what about the short and medium term?

That's where the immediacy of Online Advertising comes to the fore. Unlike traditional media advertising, Online Advertising can turn the potential customer into an actual customer right there and then. What's more - you can track exactly how effectively your campaign does this.

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