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Are Banner Exchanges Right for Your
Site?
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Exchanges
by Michael Wong
You can get banner advertising for free, but there is a catch! You
knew it was too good to be true, didn't you? It works like this. You
join a banner exchange service. The service will display your banner/s
on other members' websites. Here's the catch! You have to earn the
impressions first. You must display other members' banners on your
website. Typically, you will receive one impression for every two
that you give, but some new banner exchanges offer better rates.
Most business websites probably wouldn't consider using a banner exchange
program such as those offered by the LinkExchange and SmartClicks.
That's probably true if you are a major company with huge promotional
budgets. As for most of the smaller business websites, generating
publicity and attracting visitors is probably the hardest thing about
running an online business.
Here are some arguments for and against you joining a banner exchange
program, if you run a commercial website:
For:
Free visitors: I have often read about people's disappointments
with banner exchanges. They complain about click-through ratios
of about 2-3%. It may not sound like a lot, but no matter what
kind of promotional campaign you run, be it direct mail, paid-for
banner advertising, or opt-in mailing list advertising, marketing
professionals are quite happy to achieve a 2-3% response rate.
What do these people expect, a 20% response rate? Obviously these
people don't know anything about response advertising.
Standard banner exchange programs offer a ratio of 1 display of
your banner on another site for every 2 that you display. Some
offer better ratios now, going as high as 4 for every 5 you display.
Let's say that every one out of your 100 visitors makes a purchase,
then 99 of them have done nothing for you, except use up your
bandwidth. If you have a banner program on your site, these 100
visitors would give you 50 banner impressions on another website,
a 2 for 1 ratio. So if you get 5000 visitors a month, that works
out at 2,500 banner impressions advertising your site elsewhere.
If we take a conservative click through rate of 2%, then another
50 people would visit your site, who otherwise wouldn't have.
Remembering that we said 1 in 100 visitors make a purchase, then
you're half way to making a sale!
- Free publicity: Not all advertising is about getting
a direct response from the target audience. A lot of it is to
get a brand name or image across. Just look at the amount of advertising
and promotions you see on TV for Nike or Coca Cola. Their name
is plastered everywhere. Most of us have heard of "Amazon"
and we know that they sell books. In fact their brand name "Amazon"
is so successful on the net, that they could probably sell just
about anything with it. You should also try get your brand name
out everywhere on the web and I feel banner exchange advertising
is one of the best ways of achieving this, especially as it's
free!
- Real-time visitor stats report: I use the LinkExchange
banner swap program on my site. And one feature they have on their
site is a real-time display of your visitor stats. I know that
most of you probably use some kind of visitor tracking program,
but I have found that it takes time to download the log files
to build the report page. Especially if you have a lot of visitors.
It shows the total number of visitors that have accessed your
site in the last 24 hours, as well as on a hourly basis. It also
gives you a page breakdown of your visitors. This feature only
works on the pages where the LinkExchange banner is displayed.
This is especially useful if you have a number of entry pages.
- It's FREE!! Need I say more?
Against:
- No real control of banners displayed: You only have a
limited say in the nature of banners displayed on your website.
It could be a banner from a competitor. That wouldn't be too good,
would it?
- Banners can distract your potential customers: These
banners might be a distraction for your visitors. If they saw
an interesting offer, they might click on the banner and leave
your site, thus losing a potential sale.
- Low response rate: The number of click throughs from
other websites is usually low compared to the number of banners
impressions that you have displayed. You should only expect a
return click-through ratio of about 2-3%. And that's only if your
banner is well designed and brings across the right message.
If you can't really afford to advertise your website, then a banner
exchange network is a good method to generate some publicity for your
site.
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