Has Your Online Lead System Been Slapped By Google PPC? Banner Advertising May Be Your Answer…

For internet marketers all over that use an online lead system powered by Google Pay Per Click to bring them fresh targeted leads for their business, the last few weeks have been a disaster as over 10,000 accounts have been the victim of the feared Google Slap. Will Banner Advertising make a comeback now that Google has declared war?

Marketers of all kinds from affiliates, to Network Marketers, to Direct Sales reps and anyone with an offer Google doesn’t like have been affected in a big way.

Banner Advertising is a great, fast and easy way to supplement traffic for your online lead system while you rework your PPC strategy.

Banner advertising is a lot easier than PPC but there are still are some important things you need to know before starting. If you follow these simple steps you should be able to bring some life back to your online lead system.

There are two ways that website owners typically will use to charge you for your banner ad, CPM and CPC. CPM is based on the number of impressions (or times it is loaded on the page) your Banner gets and is based on Cost Per Milli. Milli is Latin for a thousand. You are looking for sites that have a CPM of $1 - $4 with a max of $5.

CPC stands for cost per click and most likely unless you deal directly with Google (which if your slapped you won’t be doing right now) you won’t find site owners who are offering CPC. With CPC you can be a little more lenient with some of the tips I will go over below.

First you want to find some websites that rank well in organic search results for keywords that relate to the business you promote with your online lead system. Do not pay attention to the PPC ads when looking for sites to put your banners on.

Next you will need to contact the site owner to get their rate cards. Negotiate; don’t pay the price they first give you on the rate card. If you negotiate well you can get up to 40% off the rate card. Note you will be dealing with site owners for this NOT Google so you have some room to play here, because unlike Google they don’t have more money than some small countries.

Then don’t get tricked by front page or landing page placement for your banner, find the appropriate subpages on the site that are relevant to your keywords, Banner and the offer on the site they will be sent to. This is especially important if you are paying based on CPM (which I will explain in a minute).

Specify the exact page(s) that you want your Banner to be on and be sure to read the page and make sure you like the targeting. If your ad is on a page that is targeting cat food and you are selling dog food this won’t be a very effective campaign.

Also note that pages with a lot of text are not usually the best placement.

When it comes to placement of your Banner on the actual page this is crucial, especially when you are paying by CPM. With CPC this is not as important.

Make sure your banner is above the fold or in other words that is placed on the website so that it is seen regardless of whether or not the user scrolls down the page at all. With CPM this is crucial because if you Banner is below the fold and the page it is on is loaded you are charged for an impression whether or not the user scrolls down past the fold.

If you do this many of your impressions will never be seen.  

Be sure to look at the sites Alexa Rating, how many regions a site covers (the more they cover the more bargaining you should be able to do), format of banners accepted, do they allow text and graphics or only text, and be sure to get your ads in the Hot Zone (the areas of the pages that people look the most).

Lastly track your results by plugging into the feedback loop of your online lead system. You will want to know how many clicks your banner is getting, how many leads you get from those clicks and then how many of those leads actually become a customer or client for you.

If you are getting poor results on a site then you don’t want to keep throwing money their way. Find the sites that are performing well for you and increase your budget there. Also never commit to a long term contract on a site until you have established that it is worth your money. Be very protective of your budget and remember it is the site owner’s job to get the most money out of you he can and it is your job to be a savvy business person and negotiate and protect your budget.