Compared to TV or print ads, online ads are still relatively low-cost for companies who are looking to reach their desired market.

Additionally, online advertising tools give you the ability to lower your budget or even stop your campaign within a few seconds. Print or TV operates on contract basis, and when you are in a contract, things are not always as flexible.

Because you are spending less with online ads and have the flexibility to reduce costs or spend more instantly, advertising online gives you a loads of options for your marketing campaign.

With the added flexibility that online ads provide, the amount of options you suddenly have are a huge advantage. The ability to publish a number of ads at once, or change the ad as often as you want is a huge advantage. This flexibility is all part of the package and therefore the costs don’t rise. If you advertise on a billboard or in print, you can’t adapt your message instantly and you certainly can’t change the message as you go along.

According to this article on whether online advertising is expensive, which I have to say does go off some generalisations and is US centric they sum up their article with the following statement:- “Offline, traditional marketing costs an average of $22.00 per impression as opposed to $3.45 per impression with online marketing.”

Online advertising reflects modern society in being instant, flexible and results driven! If you are looking for value in your marketing, you have to be looking online.

Insight: - "The capacity to gain an accurate and deep understanding of someone or something."

Welcome to part 2 of our series on online advertising. In this second blog, we look at insight and what an important element of advertising it is. Insight in advertising is seen as a huge advantage of modern day advertising.

We all strive for more insight in our lives, working out why things have gone a certain way, a certain decision has been made and looking to understand things fully. This is also true in relation of social media and advertising. The modern world strives for insight and analysis into everything we do and think.

Online advertising provides you with endless insight allowing you to become a more effective marketer. Marketers went from having no data 20 years to more data than we know what to do with. Online advertising has helped solve this problem because of the visibility and access to data and of course reminds us of the famous line from John Wanamaker:

Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.

With online advertising you begin to get an idea of where your traffic is coming from and who is clicking on the banners or social media posts. This is the first major advantage of online advertising, it provides us with incredible insight and a stronger knowledge base than ever before.

Therefore, this makes online advertising unique. Running a campaign online provides us with the chance to show activity throughout the entire online consumer journey. Common activities include sales, newsletter sign-ups, the number of times an advert is displayed (ad impressions), the number of times people click on an advert to visit a microsite or landing page (click through), the number of times people have interacted with an advert, sign-ups and how much they have interacted on social media.

Although having more knowledge is not always beneficial, when we are looking to market our brand or product we want as much knowledge as possible. So therefore having access to a range of data and information about our campaigns is a fantastic improvement on marketing in the past and gives online advertising a huge advantage.

Thanks for reading.

Part 1 Here.
Part 3. Targeting.

Trade media has been slow to embrace digital but below you will find 8 compelling reasons why now is the time to embrace digital media. The way we all use and share content has totally changed, with the large majority of people under 40, using only digital mediums when looking for news, information or opinion. Dental publishing is no different.

This change is now picking up speed, with the number of dentists reading and joining GDPUK growing all the time. The start of 2016 saw the site go over 20,000 threads created on the forum, which has produced an impressive library of content and knowledge. As dentists spend the majority of their time online, the companies looking to reach dentists will also do so.

Below are our 8 reasons that you should start embracing digital media.

1. Lead generation / Data

For years advertising in magazines has been based on brand recognition but now with digital you can gather data from who visits your site, or who is interested in your product. The opportunities are endless. We are currently helping with a product trial in conjunction with a leading dental manufacturer who are offering products to our users on a trial basis, in return for feedback on the product. 10 dental practices were successful with their application and have now received the product. By encouraging engagement with our community, the manufacturer is also gathering data and generating potential leads as well as increasing brand awareness.

2. Back Catalogue

Online publishers are constantly publishing content, whether it's blogs, daily news or the 20,000 + threads created by our community. A monthly or weekly magazine, are very rarely stored by anyone for more than a few months and it’s not straightforward to search for a particular article or opinion piece. All our content can be found online.

3. Gain extra exposure

With over 4000 visitors a day to the site, we have a large number of eyeballs looking at our content. Online publishers receive a large number of readers on a daily basis, some of our news articles will receive thousands of views in a week. Instead of a banner being seen once, your ad will get seen numerous times in a month by one user!

4. Visit an exhibition every day of the week!

In the dental industry there are a number of events cropping up on a weekly basis which unfortunately crowd the market for the established shows. Sites like our own often have thousands of visitors a day which is like an exhibition every day of the week, so the value of advertising when compared to exhibiting is exceptional because you are getting thousands of eyeballs on your product or service a day.

5. Measure what works

The ability to be able to measure how many impressions your ad has received or which content is engaging users is an incredible advantage. Digital methods provide real-time results.

6. Experiment with content - Flexibility

Another amazing advantage of digital is the ability to experiment with your ad or content. With our software you can even run more than one ad at a time and advertise two products or services at once. Ads can be tweaked or amended at any time giving tremendous flexibility. Make changes quickly based on real-time metrics and performance. There is no need to wait 12 months to identify what is and what is not working.

7. Community

With a digital community content can be shared instantly. Obviously not everything is going to go viral but when your marketing efforts get shared, it is a great way of increasing engagement and exposure.

8. Control your Sales Funnel

With a well functioning landing page you have extra control in your customer's journey. When an ad appears in a magazine you hope they remember the brand or remember to call you, but with a well designed landing page, you can capture information in a much quicker and less random manner. I have written previously on the importance of a good landing page, read more here.

Thanks for reading, get in This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. for further information about GDPUK.com.

In my role as Sales Manager at GDPUK, I often get asked what kind of campaign works well on the website and I am always happy to give a few suggestions which I hope helps the client and gives them a few ideas to take away and ponder.

Below are a few bullet points of the suggestions that have come to mind in recent times. Please feel free to add to the suggestions.

The idea behind the list below is that it hopefully gets the client creating an interesting campaign that then gets them a return on their investment and builds a long-term business relationship with our publication.

Our users do notice the adverts but it is upto the advertiser to catch their attention enough that they become fully engaged with the message. The fact that a banner gets shown thousands of times in a month is an obvious advantage of advertising online, your brand has an extra chance of getting noticed on a popular blog or forum thread.

So what are some simple, straightforward methods of getting noticed? A few brief ideas below.

• A good, simple, well designed landing page, that matches the campaign / campaigns. I have blogged about the importance of landing pages before. Read more on this link.

• Experiment with different designs / styles for the banner ads, see what is successful and look to implement banners in different colours and fonts.

• A competition or prize draw to get data for your business, as well as create some buzz around a new product or service.

• Supplement all advertising campaigns with PR that matches the advertising and is shared on social media. Run the same advertising / PR on your social media pages, so it increases brand awareness.

• A successful campaign has been with a company who have used client testimonials "I love using this xxx dental software because...." So showing that fellow dentists use the product and it works for them, creates a positive message.

• A social media campaign that includes advertising on dental websites but run in tandem with social media. For example an equipment manufacturer could collate photos of dentists using the handpieces in their surgeries etc. Create a pinterest style collage.

If you would like to discuss any of the brief suggestions above, we will be attending the BDIA Showcase at the NEC in Birmingham. We can be found on stand F215. All my contact details are below.

Our new media pack for 2016 is also now available for download. It is available here and if you click the image below.

Thanks for reading and hopefully see you in a few days. Cheers.

GDPUK remains free to join and to post on the forum. We have close to 9000 members and they love using the resource to keep upto date with all things dental and keep engaged with the dental community. Revenue for the site is generated from banner advertising. Our clients who advertise are predominantly from the dental trade.

Clients of GDPUK often ask us about designing banner ads for the site, so we thought we would put together this simple guide and let you know our thoughts on what makes up an effective banner ad. Obviously when creating a web banner ad, it is important to always look at it from the perspective of the viewers (or your potential customers).

1. Make sure it is correct size. If you are given details of a certain specification or size needed, you should follow the requirements, otherwise the banner ad won’t work.

2. Keep the file sizes to a minimum. Smaller files load faster and it increases the chance of being seen by visitors.

3. Good copy (like all advertising) is very important. Use of graphical elements is good, however, it's the copy that triggers people to find out more about your product. Banners that are effective are kept short and simple. Further info below

4. You want your potential customers to look at your ad, get interested, and click on it, then find out more info about your product on your website (preferably on a relevant landing page on your site). Don’t try to fit all the benefits of your product into that small space, it never looks rights and is ineffective. Simple and clear is the best method.

5. Over the years, the banners that have been the most effective, use an eye-catching hook. Headlines are what trigger people to read the story. Emphasising the benefits of your products more than the features of your products is the way to go.

6. By using a call to action graphic or text you make it very clear to the visitor what you want them to do. For example: For More Information; Download Info Now; Click Here to Purchase. This works with the earlier advice of being simple, clear and direct.

7. Animated GIFs work brilliantly on GDPUK but graphic designers always tell us that you need to avoid using photos and photo-like images on animated GIFs. Because of how GIFs work, the photos won’t look as nice and it will just make the file size huge. It is most likely you will be limited to having just one or two frames for the banner given the file size limits, plus as mentioned before, banners are more effective as a smaller file.

8. If you want to use photos in your ad (for websites only; not on our daily digest emails), consider creating it in Flash or HTML5. It will give you better return in terms of quality and file size.

9. Effective landing pages. We have mentioned this a number of times over the years! When people click on the banner, they should be presented with the relevant campaign or information immediately. They do not want to go to your homepage and be forced to hunt for the information that may exist on another page of your site. An effective landing page produces a great experience for your customer but also better results from your advertising campaigns.

Thanks for reading this guide to creating effective banner ads. We hope you find it useful and a simple blueprint to follow when looking to advertise online.

If you need further information or want to ask a question about this blog. Please get in touch.

Thanks

Jonny