NONE: Re: ONLINE-ADS>> Repeat Visits Versus Clicks
Re: ONLINE-ADS>> Repeat Visits Versus Clicks
glenn fleishman (glenn_at_popco.com)
Fri, 22 Aug 1997 20:20:11 -0700
the most noble Cliff Kurtzman <cliff_at_tenagra.com> writes:
>One of my advertisers, a tennis store, has run
>the exact same banner on our home page for two years now, and consistently
>achieved click throughs over 3% (sometimes well over 3 percent). This same
>company also advertises each month in our tennis e-mail newsletter we
>operate in conjunction with the site.
Geez, Cliff, I have to say the obvious despite your being a benefactor and
friend: can you imagine what the clickthrough rate would be with a tiny bit
of creative thrown in? Since they're a store, a small budget of
$2,000.00/year would result in occasional 4-10% clickthrough, especially if
tied to seasonal promotions.
Any ad (conventional or otherwise) that gets consistent response over time
can get better than consistent response through creative and marketing.
(Perhaps that's Fleishman's Axiom #1.)
Axiom #2: You can't rely on the churn. I learned this certainly before
Amazon.com, but you can't rely on the enormous numbers of new users
discovering you every day; you also have serve the enormous numbers of
return customers.
There are four reasons why someone will click on the banner you describe:
1. Never seen it, first-time visitor, interested.
2. Never paid attention to it, return visitor, interested.
3. Clicked and went there before, satisfied customer, uses banner to easily
return (rather than a bookmark); a reminder, in other words
4. Clicked and went there before and wasn't satisfied, is checking to see
if there are better deals.
Those four scenarios describe a reverse-order of who your clickers are.
This is reasoning from first principles, but market research would show you
the same, I'm confident.
Axiom #3: Give return customers a reason to click. Or, as my grandfather
says (who owned massive retail furniture stores his whole life), "Always
have a sale." In the case of the web, you're providing a motivation for
return customers to click: new stock is in, seasonal special, sale,
informing them about areas of their site they've blanked out on, etc.
Cliff, not to make you the whipping boy, but these folks are moving
product. So why not offer them a deal in which you offer to run a four-week
campaign with 6 to 8 rotating banner ads (or even progressive ones) which
take advantage of my ad hoc axioms? Set targets for clickthrough increase
(don't necessarily get paid by clickthrough). If clickthrough exceeds X% on
average over the course of the campaign, they pay full bore. If not, they
pay cost (25% of full bore?). The campaign has to be good, of course, but
if plain banner ads now pull 3%, an actual campaign should be able to pull
4-6%.
This should result in more money in their pocket far outweighing cost of
campaign -- assuming they have reasonable sales now, which a 2-year ad spot
would seem to indicate.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Glenn Fleishman, unsolicited pundit. see my mug at http://www.glenns.org
writer, perl hacker, Adobe Magazine columnist/editor . fax 206.285.0308
currently working on the book "Real World Scanning & Halftones," 2nd ed.
conference chair, Web Advertising '98 http://www.thunderlizard.com/webad
public key at web site 55EC 4F93 6BE8 E94A 72A1 2621 9902 4A76 846B 3C29
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