How to sell display advertising – Tips for agencies and freelancers

There’s little to no doubt about it – signing on new clients is hard work. You spend a lot of time, money and resources to generate leads and then to close the sale. All this makes selling your clients something that’s not very popular, to begin with, even harder.

Try mentioning banner ads or display advertising to clients or some of your agency colleagues. Very high chances that they won’t be very excited about the idea. It’s not hard to understand why.

Questionable performance, low CTRs, ads that aren’t seen, fraud clicks, banner ad blockers, banner blindness – all these give banner ads and display advertising a bad rep. So sad that people shy away at the bare mention of it. They overlook entirely any possible benefits or sharp points.

So why would you even want to suggest display advertising to your clients?

Why display advertising is a strong channel?

 

1. People spend more time online. Consider smartly placing banner ads on their monitors

Up until a few years ago, people would spend the better part of their time watching TV. Print, TV, and radio were the best ways to reach an audience with your message.

Then social networking and mobile devices took off and everything changed.

Recent numbers show that on average, people spend only 113 minutes in front of the TV and 305 minutes, almost three times more, browsing the internet from laptops and mobile devices(source).  The trend keeps up even in the United States where consumers spend 279 minutes watching TV and 332 minutes (15% more) online. (source)

2. People spend more time browsing websites and on Facebook. Consider leveraging the power of Google Display Advertising

[Tweet “Search reflects a high level of interest from the potential buyer.”] That’s mainly why a lot of advertisers cram in for a spot in search engines, either paid or organic, hoping to get attention in that precious moment.

But here is what everyone overlooks.

Only a small part of the total time people spend online is spent on search engines. Users spend much more time browsing websites they find after performing a search.

And you have the numbers that prove that. People spend only 21% of their time online searching, compared to a combined 55% spent on social networking sites (22%), reading content (20%) or browsing multimedia sites (13%). (source) Other figures show similar findings: (source), users spend on average 1 hour and 57 minutes per month on Google and 7 hours and 45 minutes on Facebook.

3. If you’re online, you’re already wasting money

This is one of the most popular online statistics: only 2% of all online conversions happen on the first visit. Website visitors easily get distracted by photos their friends post on Facebook, Youtube videos they want to replay or other pages they’re browsing.

Whether you’re investing in SEO, search ads or any other form of digital marketing, by default, you have users that might be interested, but leave your site without converting. With retargeting display ads, you can drive back some of the remaining 98% of website visitors.

[Tweet “Retargeting ads are a great opportunity to get a better return on investment”] from the rest of your current marketing efforts, to increase conversions and build brand awareness. Available only with display advertising.

4. Lower costs than TV and outdoor means better ROI

When it comes to advertising, TV and outdoor might be popular, but they cost a lot of money. Production cost for both can run high. For a standard 30 seconds TV spot, the costs can run up to $34,000. And that doesn’t include the money you need to pay to have your ad shown or the rent you need to pay to display your ad on a billboard.

5. Higher control over who sees your ad with demographic targeting

With display advertising, you get increased control over when and to whom your ads are shown. It allows you to define your own audience instead of using the audience a magazine or a publication already has.

You can explicitly mention the location, age, gender and the interests of your target audience. Display advertising also allows you to segment your audience and customize your ads accordingly, something close to impossible with other advertising mediums.

Options such as frequency capping and day parting, available in most platforms allow you to control when and how often someone sees your ad.

6. More ways to communicate your message. Consider using contextual and audience targeting tools

[Tweet “Because they’re visual, display ads are a very powerful way”] to make an impression that lasts. They also provide an excellent opportunity to be more persuasive. You know the saying – an image is worth a thousand words. Research also shows that the human brain processes visual information 60,0000 times faster than text (source). Besides, search text ads allow only so much room for creativity and for branding.

With banner ads and display advertising, you’re no longer constricted to one headline of maximum 25 characters and 2 lines of maximum characters each. You can use images, texts, colors to attract attention, convey your message and convince your target audience to take the next step. Used wisely, animation and interactivity can also give your ads and your message a boost.

7. Drive awareness about your brand and product. Consider using topic targeting

How can users search for your product if they don’t know about it? Display advertising is an excellent way to drive awareness about a product or a service while keeping costs low.

You could have your ad show for keywords that are related to your business, but it’s highly unlikely that you’ll be very successful with those.

Because they’re shown on websites where users are thinking about what to buy, display ads are a great way to get your product or your offer in front of the right audience.

8. Easier, more efficient A/B testing

[Tweet “Advertising is both a science and an art.”] To improve on your results, you need to continually test variables to see how and where you can grow.

With other forms of advertising (print, radio or TV), it’s much more challenging to run A/B tests to improve your advertising spend. Another benefit is that you can easily track how many times your ad was shown and the return on investment you get from your campaigns.

How to sell display advertising to your customers – How to counter two main objections

You probably know this, but we’re going to say it nevertheless. Your clients don’t appreciate display advertising any more than they want search engine text ads or search engine optimization.

Your clients want two things. One – they want to feel that they’re important that they can trust you. Two – they want to see some results.

Whether they want to increase their website traffic, generate more leads or direct purchases or raise brand awareness, all of your clients want something. Find out what your clients want or need regarding results and present display advertising in a way that helps their needs.

You know how it goes – nobody ever buys something straight off. Most certainly, your clients will have doubts.

At this point, you need to uncover the real objections. Is the price that you’ve mentioned really too high or are they just saying no because they don’t trust display ads?

If it’s the second, they’re highly likely to have one of the following objections. (If not both.)

Objection 1: Lack of performance

When assessing performance, a lot of marketers look at shallow metrics such as CTR or CPC. Judging only by an average display CTR of 0.07%, one could say that display advertising doesn’t perform.

However, those metrics are not very relevant. You can have ads that have a high CTR, ads that have a low CPC or ads that have both, but still not see any results.

You need to look beyond CTR and CPC to measure display advertising performance correctly. What you really need to look at is conversions, both view and click through. Those are the important metrics, the ones that actually tell you if your campaign is really performing or if it’s lagging behind.

[Tweet “Display advertising can also lead to an increase in organic search traffic.”] People see your ads, don’t click it right then, but they remember your brand or product and look for it when they need it. The phenomenon is known as search lift from display and should be taken into account when assessing the performance of any display advertising campaign.

There is another vital point to keep track of when you’re discussing display advertising with your clients. Every element in your campaign: the ads, the landing page, the targeting – everything contributes to its performance.

If you don’t pay enough attention to your display ads and to the overall content of your campaign, it’s highly unlikely that you’ll see results.

[Tweet “A good campaign addresses the audience’s needs”], wants and wishes and display advertising is no exception here.

Objection 2: Where will my ads run?

This is probably one of the most common sources of anxiety when it comes to display ads. Remember, your clients want to feel that they’re in control, they want to know where they can see their ads. They need to know that their ads won’t show on low-rated websites and they want to have the certainty that their ads are actually running.

Here’s how you can reassure your customers.

First, you need to explain to your customers that as long as they are getting impressions on their campaign, their ads are running. You should also recommend not following websites around just to make sure that they see their ad.

For one thing, they might not see the ad because they don’t fit the targeted demographic. Also, by trying to see their ads, your clients are wasting their campaign budget. They’re basically paying money so they, and not the intended audience who will actually make a purchase to get a return on investment, will see their ad.

Second, you can avoid bad placements from the start. If you’re using the Google Display Network, simply add Games and other irrelevant categories to Targeting exclusions when you create the campaign.

Also, If you start running display ads for your customers with Bannersnack for agencies, our account managers will do that for you by default. They will continuously monitor and optimize your campaign, avoiding bad and low-performing placements.

What you need to consider before you suggest

Before you mention display advertising to your clients, here are a few aspects you should figure out.

A. How do you want to offer display advertising?

There are many ways to provide banner advertising for your customers. You can offer it as a standalone service or as part of packages.

In the first case, you would offer display advertising services (creating, managing and optimizing display advertising campaigns). In the second case – let’s say that you provide clients service packages such as website design or SEO, for example. You could add display advertising to the packages you currently have.

Also, if you’ve signed on a client for a particular project, search ads optimization or SEO services, you can suggest retargeting or search retargeting campaigns as complimentary.

Additionally, you can test approaches to see when and how your clients respond best. Find the method that works best for you and integrate it with the rest of your services.

B. How do you want to charge for it?

Like with the offer, there’s more than one way to charge for this type of service.

You could charge a flat fee for running and managing the ads ($100 per month), a percentage on top of or according to the actual ad spend (30% of the ad spend up to $900, 20% for ad spend of $1000) or on a project basis ($300 for setup and initial optimization).

The pricing should reflect both the work that you do and the value that you bring for your customers. The secret here is to find a win-win solution, something that works both for you and your clients.

Additionally, you can also create impression packages and present those to your customers. However, since the price per impression might be fluctuating, that wouldn’t be the most desirable option as it would be hard to get a certain number of impressions for a fixed amount.

We’d love to know if the information above helped you. You can email us if you want to tell us how your pitch for display advertising went and if you’re going to share your experience with us so we can improve on this material.