As more and more software companies make well designed banner ads easily affordable or within the reach of the marketing budgets of many small business owners, it's a good idea to keep these general rules in mind when designing your banner ad in order to gain effective results for your banner ad campaign.
1) Choose colors for your ad that get attention and will contrast to the background color of your website or landing page. Keep the design simple. Try to use relevant pictures associated with your small business. Many small business owners often make the mistake of emphasizing their logo instead of using pictures that immediately associate their banner ad with their business. For example, if you are a coffee shop owner, include a picture of your fantastic coffee drink with your offer. If you are a realtor, include a picture of a house and a small picture of yourself, something that will immediately associate your ad with the type of business you are in. As a general rule, only large well known companies who have spent enormous amounts of money in branding ad campaigns can afford to include solely their logos into their banner ads.
2) Stick to brief, concise content when designing your ads. Think snack sized content and make sure you provide a strong call- to-action. Try to emphasize one benefit and one call-to-action per banner ad. If you include too many call- to-actions then you stand a greater chance of confusing your prospective lead and your click-thru rate will suffer. Remember, the effectiveness of your click-thru rate will rely on the message that you are conveying. Attractive graphic design is secondary to professional copywriting. While the graphic design may attract their attention, it's the strong message that is communicated that will improve your banner ad's effectiveness.
3) Since the area of a banner ad is small make sure that you use legible text. Verdana and Arial are very popular fonts for the web because they are easy to read. Stay away from script fonts unless you are designing a larger banner ad. Keep in mind you want your prospective lead to read your message and ideally act on it. Don't make this process difficult by using hard to read fonts.
4) Provide interactivity to improve customer interaction and click-thru rate. Make sure the content you include asks your prospective lead to fill out a survey, answer a question, or participate in a poll. Studies have shown that some type of interaction in your banner ads will improve click-thru rate. However, keep the interaction relevant to its purpose.
5) Make sure that you do not include animation for animation's sake. The novelty of dancing monkeys, twirling circles, shooting stars, etc. without any tie-in to your ad has disappeared. While they were barely tolerable in the wild, early days of the internet, with so many well designed banner ads on the web competing for an internet user's attention, they are not now. This gratuitous type of design in your banner ad will only diminish its click-thru rate and will ruin the overall appeal or message you are trying to make.
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