The Art of Event Advertising with Display & Banner Ads

Event advertising with display/banner ads and 3 important stages while strategizing and creating display ad campaigns for your brand.

According to Techwyse, Display advertisements are effective for three main purposes, that is building the brand, maintaining the brand and spreading brand awareness.

Online event advertising is not too different from traditional event advertising. Banner ads are very similar to the newspaper ads and video ads featured before a youtube video are similar to the TV advertisements, except for the fact that they are present online and you have more clarity about how your target audience reacts to the ads because of the tracking options and data that various programmatic ad serving platforms like Google Ads, Taboola, Criteo, Adroll, and Inmobi give us.

But again not to forget, to convert your marketing expenses into profitable sales, you need to have an outstanding game plan. So, every penny you spend on marketing must bring back the profit you desire.

Based on the experience of advertising experts, we have got you three important stages while strategizing and creating display ad campaigns for your brand. There’s a lot of ground to cover, so let’s get started.

• First Stage: Focus on the right
• Second Stage: Structure/Template
• Third Stage: Optimization

FOCUS ON THE RIGHT

Unless you know your audience, how will you target the keywords to attract and target the desired audiences for your event?

You may target your audiences in many ways, to identify anonymous users differently, online advertisers use cookies, which are like identifiers of particular computers, to understand which ad to serve to which consumer.

But as far as the event industry is considered we suggest, you focus on these 4 ways of targeting audiences mentioned below.

• Targeting by demographics
• Targeting by SQA
• Location targeting better known as Geo-targeting
• Target Websites

Everyone is not a Demographic

If you sell your event to everybody, then how do you think you will define your target market? Though both are closely related they’re not the same. Demographics are the subspace of the target market. As far as your event business is considered, build a demographic profile in order to serve your ads to them.

Target audiences with an affinity

Before jumping into how let’s first understand what does affinity audience mean? You may think of them as TV audiences, as in generalized types of people, who watch or show interest in your business(in our case it’s the people who show interest in events)

Google forms a tailored group of people with similar interests based upon their last 7 days of search history. Using the right keywords, you will reach a broad group of audience who are interested in the services that you or your event offer.

Geo-targeting

Geo-targeting is to customize your advertisements to a specific market, based upon the location of your potential buyers. It helps you to pick and choose where to display your ads. Targeting the right audiences at the right time and in the right place.

For example, if you’re planning to organize an event in a particular city, then you would direct your online advertising towards the traffic from or around that particular city.

Target Websites

This way of targeting works well when you know the websites your audiences visit. This way you may show your display ads on those specific websites. This requires proper research through a survey. If you haven’t got your list ready then buckle up and start your survey now!

Re-targeting

Re-targeting AKA remarketing is a form of online advertisement that helps you to appear in front of the bounced traffic after they leave your website. It has been observed that only 2% of the website traffic convert into customers on their first visit.

Thus, this tool is to help the advertisers convert 98% of the traffic right away.

According to the 20/80 rule, targeting 20% of the right audience will get you 80% of your revenue.

Cost of acquiring a new customer = 5 times the cost of retaining a customer

STRUCTURE TO FLATTER: Templatizing your event advertising

Structure sets a foundation for a good display ad. You know what are the things you need to consider before taking your display ad live. Now is the time to know what should go as your ad and how should your display ad look like. So here are a few things to keep in mind while crafting your content.

Size does matter

Google Adwords display network. This is one of the best and most popular display advertising platforms. It has up to 15 ads templates. It offers various ad sizes from the leader board to large mobile banners to half-pages. You may select one that suits well for your type of Ad.

The Interactive advertising bureau says, while mapping out your display ad, it is crucial to keep in mind that your ad should be flexible as it will be viewed on different screen sizes.

If you’re new to display ads, then it is suggested that you use image advertisements as it is economical compared to other types of complex display ads.

It’s all about visuals

Going by the reports, with 11% of the internet users blocking display ads and many others just brushing them away, it is very important that you make extra efforts for your ads to get clicks when the users see them. For that, you definitely need to step up your design game.

You will do all the research, find the right website for your display/banner ads, but what will get you the maximum clicks is your design!

Never underestimate the power of design. Around 50% of advertisers believe that design plays a massive role in achieving success. Make your design catchy and attention-grabbing. When you want eyeballs always rely on moving graphics. Mention all the details that are important. Use catchy images and fonts, that would grab visitors’ attention instantly. The images should be contextually relevant. A call to action is very crucial, as many advertisers feel that adding a CTA leads to a whopping increase in the conversions (in your case, ticket sales). It may be anything for example, “Buy Now” button.

Attract them with your message.

The content which you display to your audiences must tempt them to take a call to action straight away. Create urgency through your tactics for them to click your CTA button, the second they view your ad online and grow your conversions.

For example, you may use messages like only a few seats left, 20 more viewing this ad right now.

Differentiation Is Essential

Websites are loaded with display advertisements, to make sure your ad is not brushed aside by the website users, you need to go the extra mile. Your Ad must have a differentiator, that will be marked as your USP. What is that one factor which will attract the website users towards your display ad?

This part of your display ad makes all the difference. You must write your ad copy in such a way that it doesn’t look cluttered, it delivers the message crisp and clear. You should utilize this to showcase your USP and factors that make your event stand different and unique.

OPTIMIZING

Once you’ve implemented different strategies and executed your display ad campaign, now is the time to track the performance of your display ads online which will be used for evaluating and analyzing the results of your online advertisement. Setup conversion tracking (click here, to learn more about setting up conversion tracking) in google ads, that will let you identify how well is your ad campaign performing and how well it is generating leads and sales. There are precisely three metrics to evaluate the success of your online advertisements.

Impressions, clicks, and conversions

There are analytical tools to measure these. These tools can breakdown the metrics for different websites your ad was displayed on and not only that, but it can also differentiate between the websites where your ads performed well, which version of your ad performed well. Also, these tools can differentiate between the keywords that are performing well or the demographics that are the best.

With this data, you may filter out those websites on which your ads are performing well and plan your next ad campaign better. Your ultimate aim should be to reach maximum people and improve your visibility as much as possible as this will determine the success of your event.

Measure the intended ROI. After you’ve analyzed the performance of your online display advertisements, now is the time to optimize your strategies for better results. Make sure you bring your cost down, while not losing on your attendees. Segment them wisely. Identify the best segment and leverage it.

IN CONCLUSION

In this blog, we have covered all the aspects you must know to start an online event advertising campaign (display and banner ads). Make use of all the details and start an online ad campaign for your event now.

Originally published at blog.townscript.com on September 4, 2019.