Great question!   "Banner Ads", (those long, thin graphic advertisements typically seen at the top of many commercial Web sites), have yet to be widely adopted by many individual real estate sales associates.  However, if implemented appropriately their use could lead to, well... a banner year in online sales!

There are three very important steps to creating an effective banner ad campaign:

1.   Craft Your Message

This is perhaps the most important yet least considered part of developing an effective banner ad.  The message needs to be aimed at a well defined niche target market (i.e. relocation, first time buyers, aging baby-boomers, people looking for exclusive buyer's agents, etc.) for your particular geographical location.   Also, in conjunction with the graphical "look and feel" of the ad, there needs to be a compelling "call to action".  That is, your message needs to impart a strong desire to click the ad which will drive visitors to your site.

Keep in mind, banner ads don't give you much room to say a whole lot --so your message needs to be highly succinct.  Enlisting the aid of a professional copywriter for this first step is probably a wise investment.

2.   Create The Ad's Look & Feel

Banner ads can come in many shapes and sizes.  However, if there is a "standard" it is probably one where the ad has a height and width of 60 x 468 pixels respectively (where a "pixel" is the smallest dot that can be viewed on your computer monitor). 

The make up of a banner ad can range from a very simple static image (typically a .GIF file) to very complex, multimedia / interactive online commercials.   Here are a couple of examples of what banner ads look like:

Example 1: static .GIF image (6454 bytes)



Example 2: animated .GIF image (11727 bytes)

The second one consists of an "animated .GIF" which is just a series of .GIF images played in sequence that gives the appearance of animation --much like the "flip-book" cartoons of the early 1900's.  As you can see, the animated .GIF banner ad does a much better job of capturing the attention and providing a more compelling message than a simple static graphic.  However, they can be considerably more difficult (and expensive) to create.

There are great tools available if you want to try creating your own static or animated banner ads.  One in particular, ULead GIF Animator 3.0 is excellent at helping with the process of creating dynamic banner ads that have a very small file size (i.e. download quickly).  However, unless you are a talented graphic designer, it is best to leave this part of the process to the pro's.

HOT TIP!

If you become a member of LinkExchange (which will be covered in detail below), you can have access to graphic designers who may be willing to design one static banner ad for you at no charge!  CLICK HERE to learn more about this incredible resource...

However you create the look and feel of your ad, it is important that it complements or augments the message you are trying to convey, rather than distract from or even confuse it.  Also, keep file sizes below 15K bytes if possible, otherwise you risk too long a download time.

3.    Place Your Ad

Ok, now that you have your "killer" ad, what do you do with it?  Well, you can contact the advertising departments of large "Portal" sites that have lots of visitors like Yahoo! and request banner ad space and/or go through an agency that specializes in the placement of banner ads.  While there are several models of pricing the placement of banner ads, the most common is referred to as "CPM" or Cost Per Thousand Impressions.  An "impression" occurs every time an ad is "served up" to someone browsing a site that hosts the ad.

Current CPM costs can range from $6 - $60 (that's $6 - $60 for every 1,000 impressions), depending upon which site hosts the ad and how the ad was "targeted".  The more finely targeted an ad, the more likely the CPM will be greater.  Yahoo! charges some of the highest CPM rates because they are the undisputed champ in terms of daily visitors of all Web sites on the Net.  While even $60 / 1000 impressions may not seem like a lot of money, it can add up in a hurry if you are not careful --see cautionary note below.

CAUTION

Placing banner ads on a highly active site like Yahoo! where impressions are triggered by certain keywords can cause you to have an enormous banner ad bill without much to show for it.  If 10,000 people a day see your ad because you didn't restrict your key word sufficiently, will cause you to spend $500 - $600 / day and the lack of targeting would mean it is not likely many of those people would convert to a closed sale.  Always insist on a automatic upper limit or cap of spending when placing your banner ads.

There are several online companies that specialize in placement of banner ads for small business.  LinkExchange mentioned above has an innovative approach to placing banner ads.  As the name suggests, when you allow others to put their banner on your site, you earn credits to put your banner on other sites (which you can target and choose to a point), which could reduce your CPM to $0.  However, I don't recommend sales associates allowing banner ads on their site.  It could give visitors the impression that you are not totally focused on real estate.  If you like, LinkExchange will also allow you to purchase banner space in the more typical fashion as well.

Another service, Flycast, offers some interesting features to help you maximize your banner ad dollar returns.  They allow targeting down to the zip code level (i.e. ads are only shown to visitors from a particular zip code), which is important when you consider real estate marketing is geographically oriented.  Also, they have a real-time optimization capability that will automatically shift your ad to those sites that are creating the highest "click-thru ratio" (i.e. the percentage of impressions that visitors actually click on).

Know Your Costs

Regardless of the method of ad placement, it is important to have some idea how many ad placement dollars will be required before generating enough visits to your site that there eventually a closed transaction will result.  In order to calculate your "Cost of Unit Sale" (CUS) (i.e. ad dollars to generate one closed transaction) you need to know your CMP Cost per Thousand Impressions (CPM), Click-Thru Rate (CTR - percentage of impressions that actually get clicked on), and Conversion Rate (CR - percentage of click-thru's that result in a closed transaction).

To help you to calculate your potential banner ad placement costs (required to create one closed a transaction), I created a banner ad cost calculator that will allow you to play "what-if" with the assumptions to quickly determine a potential range for your particular CUS.  To try it out just CLICK HERE!

The proper use if banner ads is a very broad and rapidly changing subject.  However, the basics we covered here will be more than enough to get you started.  Remember, your banner ad campaign is only as effective as your Web site.   A great banner ad that channels new visitors to an effective Web site is a winning combination bound to boost your online business.