Let there be light… But Which Company?
If you missed my earlier posts of the series, here they are: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7 and Post 8. And here goes part 9:
In my last post I was discussing about Affiliate marketing and how you can use it for online branding. Today, I will continue on this topic.
In an affiliate marketing campaign, the advertiser (you) normally offers two solutions – image based ads and the text link based ads. A text link based advertisement normally acts just as another link or recommendation from the owner. Some people claim that, these link based advertisements (mainly from within the content) offer them better conversion rate than the image based affiliate advertisements.
But, if you want to take the most out of affiliate marketing program, you should go for image based advertising. One of the biggest advantages of for image based advertisement is that you get a site wide presence and that too in a prominent position (within the main template). And thus you get more exposure to the target market rather than what you would have got in a link based advertisement. I would always recommend you to go for image based advertisements.
At the same time text based links also have some advantages – you get a lot of surrounding content to support the link. However, in an image based advertisement program, you normally have 125 X 125 pixel or 468 X 60 pixel space. Whatever you want to do, you have to do that within that space unless you go for other formats like peel ads. You do not get the support from surrounding texts.
But still, if you want to work on branding, go for image based advertisement. Here are some tips to optimize on branding:
1. Do not forget to use your logo and website color scheme into that advertisement along with the message that you want to convey. Be very short and precise in your message.
2. Leave some breathing space – do not make it just a jungle of blinking gif image.
3. An affiliate ad is normally surrounded by other similar ads and thus your image must be very attractive to hook the reader faster.
4. If possible, create separate ads for each blog. Each blog is different in color scheme, structure and surrounding ads. Thus, for better results, you should ideally offer a customized solution. You do not need to make some major changes in the primary image. If you just change the background color and keep other things same, it should work. Trust me; it won’t take you huge time. And after some days, you will have enough patterns to select the best color scheme for any blog.
Did I miss something?