Banner ads are a familiar sight even today. They are the famous animated little images which, when clicked, lead to the website of whatever they advertise. Various website owners will allow you to display your banner either for a sum of money, in exchange for you displaying their banner on your website, or, in some cases, even for free.

A special possibility is PPC (Pay-Per-Click) services, where the amount of money you pay for the banner being displayed varies according to how many people click on it. Until a few years ago, most ads used the GIF format, which had numerous limitations. Nowadays, most banners use the Flash format. Flash is a technology which allows very rich content to be designed, including interesting image effects, true-color images, sounds and interactivity, while keeping the size of the banner ad small enough.

Another thing that has changed in the use of banner ads is their placement. Initially, banner ads belonged only in the header of the page, or sometimes in the sidebar -if there was any. This is no longer the case. Now let’s learn how to use these banners.

STEP 1: The mandatory planning.

There are a number of decisions you need to take at this step, especially as to how the banner will be displayed, and what will happen when the user clicks it.

1. How will the banner be displayed? Banners placed in the header or the footer of the page have the advantage of being cheap and not very disturbing. They fit nicely into the page almost regard-less of how they look, and there is a good chance that they will be seen by visitors (while the page is loading or immediately after it has loaded).

2. What will happen when the user clicks it? If you are advertising your brand, or a service you provide, it should lead to your homepage. If you are advertising a product, it should lead to that product’s description, especially if you sell a wide range of products.

If you are on a tight budget, you may consider a banner exchange program, like neobanners.com. If you can afford some spending, you may do a bit of research and find high-traffic websites willing to display your banner. Many online magazines, for instance, do so, and in fact so do many popular portals, like Yahoo! They have a number of strict guidelines, though.

If you don’t want to do this research, and want a very reliable banner exchange service, you should consider Google AdWords. However, since Google AdWords is a “border” service, it does require certain special techniques to be used.

Who would want to show your banner for free? That’s pretty much a no-brainer: people who appreciate you, or what you’re doing, or your product or service. These are your fans.

A lot of people have a personal website, a blog, and a signature they use in many forums. If they dig your product enough, they may be willing to show your banner. In this case, the banner need not be complicated. In fact, a button-like image with your logo on it is enough.

If you intend to let people do this, be sure to include these banners on your webpage for them to copy.

STEP 2: Design the banner.

When it comes to ads, this is probably the trickiest step if your creative skills are not very good. Fortunately, there are ways to overcome this lack of inspiration.

One option is to use specialized computer software. Tools like Swish (swishzone.com) allow you to design Flash animations without much knowledge of Flash technology – and also include a fair amount of templates.

You can find even more of these templates on Google, and you only need to change the text and images, something easy to do after ten minutes of reading the help file.

The other possibility is to pay a specialist. Since banner ads are a common requirement, a talented designer will not charge you a fortune. You can find someone to do this for you by randomly searching Google for artists’ portfolios.

Or you can compare quotes and qualifications from numerous professionals all once, at freelancer websites like elance.com, rentacoder.com and guru.com.

These freelance websites usually employ a rating and client review system, allowing you to check out the track record of those who bid on your project, and anyone you wish to invite to bid.

STEP 3: Publish your banner.

This process is usually automatic. Link exchange services usually require you just to upload your banner through an online form and will provide detailed instructions. Large websites which offer advertising opportunities (like Yahoo!) often employ a similar method.

STEP 4: Promote your business.

Gone are the days when you merely had to have some kind of Internet presence to “get the clicks,” and if you were fortunate, a worthwhile number of sales. The emphasis now amongst Internet marketers is very much on proactivity.

One form of advertising supports and promotes another, and it’s essential that you use several ways of drawing attention to your message if you want it heard, and acted on.

Thanks to the magic of rapid and wide communication through the online social network (OSN) sites, blogs, bookmarking, clouds, article sites (outside of the OSNs) and so on, together with the straight business networking sites like Ryze, Ecademy, LinkedIn and so many more, there is no practical limit to the openings available for promoting your business.

I talk to people all the time who tell me about this feature or that feature that they are looking for in a web host. I then ask the important question, as to what about security. That is when I usually get the deer in the headlights look and they act like I speak a foreign language. Security is the one feature that seems to get overlooked all the time. This is not because people may think that security is not important, it is just that it slips peoples minds in the overall big picture.

SFTP

Short for Secure File Transfer Protocol, SFTP is more efficient and secure variation of FTP. In it’s basic form FTP is not secure the reason for this is simply that it allows for someone to intercept the files, tamper with them or eavesdrop while files are being transferred. SFTP adds a layer of security by encrypting the file using the government standard of 128 bit encryption.

SSL

Secure Sockets Layer or SSL, Is vital to any site that plans to sell goods. This is crucial from communications being intercepted and your personal information being stolen. I had a woman come to my office one day crying and just completely upset. After I sat her down and calmed her down she went about telling me how she had been the victim of identity theft. She told me that she had used a site to get her son a birthday present. A few days later she got her credit card statement and noticed the $5000 plasma television that had been purchased a few days after she made her purchase. Come to find out that the site she used did not have SSL on their server.

Data Backups I cannot express to you the importance to having your information saved on the server as well on your personal computer. Imagine that you are working one day, you get up to go grab some Chinese and while you are gone your computer eats your information and your hard drive crashes. No big problem, you just log onto the server and retrieve all your information. Then you discover the price for cutting cost. The server does not back up it’s data. That site that you worked on for a month to get up and running is now gone along with your business as you now have to start from step one. Make sure the server has routine back ups.

Network Security Beyond just making sure your site is secure you need to make sure that the server is secure as well to protect it from being attacked by hackers looking to steal personal information. It more common than not that your information will end up in the wrong persons hands if the server is not secure.

 As you can see from the examples above there are several threats out there to you and you internet security. The best advice that I can offer you is to find a host that offers comprehensive security features this way you know that you are protected on all fronts.

Previously we discussed some of the issues surrounding the protection of your online brand. It is true that there are people out there who intend to misuse and abuse brand associations that others worked hard to create, and there are steps to take to limit them. After all, hard work should be protected, and there’s no reason to let someone trash your brand just because you didn’t consider every single eventuality.

However, there is such a thing as over-zealousness. Planning ahead is good, but the Internet is a dynamic and fluid place that has its own rules. It is in many ways a living entity, growing and evolving as more input is provided and refined by the collective efforts of billions of minds working together, or even at cross-purposes. Attempting to outright control the Web is an exercise in folly, and we provide a clear example of when going too far can go wrong.

Living Language

Language is an odd thing. It requires a certain degree of agreed definition otherwise it’s worthless. So consider the interesting case of Adobe Systems and the trademark usage document they recently published on their site. In short, the document goes into the various approved ways to use the names of their products such as Reader, Acrobat, and Photoshop, as well as ways not to use them.

Adobe’s Photoshop and other Adobe products have been driving forces on the Web, leading toward greater standardization of document and file types. As the popularity of the format grew, the language surrounding them adapted.

Creating an image using Photoshop became ‘Photoshopping,’ and then just, ’shopping.’ These words entered into the popular use of language on the Internet fairly quickly, leading to Adobe’s decision to publish a trademark guideline document. Now, before going further, this is both an example of good and bad efforts to protect a brand.

The Good

The document does clearly state that these are guidelines for official promotional uses of the Adobe trademarks. This is their legal right – having trademarked the term, they can provide information on how they are to be appropriately used. Adobe is clearly making an effort to ensure their brand is presented in the spirit they intended.

The Bad

The document addresses some issues that seem somewhat nitpicky, and outside the realm of official trademark uses. The portion on ‘don’t abbreviate Photoshop to PS’ in particular doesn’t seem like something that would come up in official promotional material, and really comes across as a jab at popular forum culture.

As we’ve discussed before, people on the Internet are not robots, but people with a sense of individuality, their own rights, and quite frequently an ironic sense of humor. Again remember the infamous 4chan protests of Scientology. These were not a protest in the traditional sense – these users got together to do this as a lark. The average Internet user doesn’t respond well to patronizing commentary, and such efforts usually backfire.

Something Old, Something New

The phenomenon we are discussing is not unique to the Internet, either. Before the Internet was created, people were calling every tissue a Kleenex, despite this referring to only one brand out of many (Puffs, Scott, etc). Making a photocopy is still called Xeroxing in many circles, because Xerox made the first major breakthroughs in office photocopying. Both of these occurred before the Internet provided the tools to speed the process along, so consider how much harder it would be to arrest the process now.

Measured Steps

Again, the Adobe document provides both some good and some bad elements. Having information available is never a bad thing, especially where official trademarks are concerned. Letting people know how you want them to use your trademark on official documents is a good step. Instead of requiring time to be wasted contacting people and looking the information up, they can go to your resources page and find what they need without a hitch. You’ve made their lives easier and given your brand a positive image.

On the other hand, there is something to be said for letting pop culture have its way. People might call it Xeroxing, but if they’re buying Canon machines has anything really been lost? Make allowances for the whims of pop culture, and consider contacting your user base. When you’re putting your trademark document together, run it by your audience for consideration. Put up a comment page and ask for feedback, jokes included. Then you may just find you have the most honest evaluation you could have ever asked for, free of charge.

We’ve been in the search marketing business since 1991 and, that entire time, have been expecting an onslaught of competitors to come out of the woodwork. After all, search engine marketing (SEM) is a great business to be in! It is in high demand with low supply and provides effective, affordable and measurable marketing data.

The onslaught of competitors is finally showing up, but they are not agency specialists like we expected. They’re long-established businesses whose core industries are disappearing – so they are moving into our growing market in order to survive.

So far, we are only competing in the PPC (pay-per-click) arena, since paid listings are more similar to the traditional media that these companies are used to. PPC is also a part of the SEM industry that is easy to enter into and scale quickly. Instead of experience, these companies are relying on technology to differentiate themselves. The PPC services that they offer depend heavily on automation.

In the battle between man vs. machine, we offer the following points to consider:

1. Keyword Research – Who conducts keyword research and which determines which terms are targeted? Many automated services have a template list of keywords based on industry and you must use the standardized list.

2. Ad Copy – Who is writing the ad titles and descriptions? Your agency should be looking at competitors’ messaging, tailoring each ad group to the stage in the buying cycle, and constantly test new creative.

3. Budget and Bidding Strategy – Are the strategies articulated and flexible? Budgets should be flexible enough to move between search engines/content networks/campaigns as necessary. Bid strategy for each campaign should be clear – maximum clicks, highest click-through rate, most conversions, highest cost per conversion, highest ROI, etc.

4. Day to Day Management – What measures of performance will trigger day to day changes? Levers such as match types, dayparting, geo-targeting, accelerated delivery and more, should be evaluated on an ongoing basis. Keywords and negative keywords should continuously be added or paused based on their performance.

5. Content Network – Is the content network available and who makes the creative decisions? The copy in content ads should be different – to grab the attention of someone reading an article rather than actively searching for a product.

6. Landing Pages – Will the ads point to landing pages on the main site or custom landing pages? Ideally the landing pages should be targeted to each individual category of keywords and should be designed with usability best practices in mind.

7. Lead Generation – If a company has a lead generation site, how will success be measured? In addition to online lead forms filled out, phone call leads should be tracked, recorded and evaluated for internal training purposes. PPC data should be synced with CRM data to calculate a true ROI.

8. SEO Synergy – Will there be synergy with search engine optimization efforts? Keywords should be strategically targeted between paid and organic so the site dominates search engine results. Web analytics data from organic searches should be constantly reviewed to find keywords to be added to PPC campaigns.

9. Account Structure – What level of service will be offered? Each account should have a dedicated account manager who is accessible and responsible for paid search. In this evolving market, on-going training should be a top priority.

10. Reporting – What reports will be included? Reports should be easy-to-understand and provide actionable data. Many automated services require you to log onto their system and comb through the data yourself instead of highlighting the important results.

Automated pay-per-click services certainly have their place in an expanding SEM market, and they may be the only option for small companies. But we believe that the human touch is crucial to manage PPC properly and maximize results.

If you’re not careful, Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Marketing campaigns can be the undoing of your internet business. There are so many people that launch into an PPC campaign without really knowing what they are doing. The big downside to this is that you end up spending hundreds to thousands of dollars advertising your product or website with very little return.

All of the advertising that you see in relation to MSN, Yahoo and Google advertising is that it’s a simple process and easy to make money. Well, that can be true and if you get the campaign settings, keywords and target market right then PPC campaigns are the quickest way to make money online. But, if you don’t? Spend, spend, spend and a low conversion rate.

You may think that you have an awesome product that will be very easy to sell. The only thing with finding a product that you like is that you may be the only one who likes it. ClickBank is an ideal marketplace to monitor products, their popularity and the number of other affiliate marketers that are also promoting the product. This is called gravity. If there is a large number of affiliates promoting the product then it is more than likely to be profitable.

When you are starting out with a PPC campaign, it’s important to know the size of your intended target market. How many other people are selling the product you like? Is the market saturated? For example, take the “make money” niche. It’s huge. There are literally thousands of internet marketers pumping products that will teach you or help you to make money online.

All you have to do is start researching “make money” in the Google keywords tool to see that there are billions of searches for this keyword monthly. Well, it’s not surprising given that there is a recession – the point is, make sure that you can still find a profitable product in a niche that still gives you room to move with low competition buying keywords. By buying keywords, I mean keywords that will convert into sales.

It doesn’t hurt to spy a little either. Providing you aren’t copying another persons adcopy, it’s good research to pay attention to what others are doing in your niche. Set up a spreadsheet (or any other recording method you prefer) and monitor which ads in your chosen niche are lasting the distance and which ads are up one week and gone the next. If the ad is performing, it will be sustainable and profitable. Try to emulate those successful ads by creating an ad that elicits similar emotion and action from your chosen market.

Before you choose to promote any product, don’t forget to look closely on the return rate. If the product is a high seller but frequently returned, it will be a great limiting factor when it comes to your bottom line. A high return rate does not necessarily mean that the product won’t be profitable but it is certainly an indicator that you should do some further research. Google search is always good to get an idea but there are also survey sites where you can ask members questions about the product which will be more relevant.

Here are some quick tips for when you start your campaign:

•Make sure the keywords you choose are relevant to your target market, adcopy and sales page

•Check the performance of your campaign (daily at least) to see if you need to add or delete non performing keywords

•Target your campaign to your customers wants

•Cap your daily budget

•Run a couple of campaigns at once to benchmark for campaign performance

•Run two-three ads in one adgroup as a benchmark for ad performance

•Don’t be afraid to ask for assistance from support staff if you see something isn’t working

PPC campaigns are profitable and effective if you do your research and keep a close eye on performance data. Be creative and adventurous. Would you click on your ad?