What Advertisers Want
By Julie Martin
Advertisers are most interested in a large volume of traffic. But for them to consider you at all, there are four features you must provide on your Web site:
Relevant Content
Advertisers won’t consider your site if it doesn’t feature information important to their viewers. However, this doesn’t mean you should change your site to suit your advertisers. If you create interesting, well-conceived information pertinent to your viewers, your Web site will attract customers and interested advertisers.
Professional Design
Before soliciting advertisers, make sure your site looks its best. Are there frequent typos in your copy? Pay a professional proofreader to clean them up. Is your copywriting clear and professional? If not, pay a writer or an editor to scrub the copy. Do your graphics load too slowly? Then it’s time for some redesign. Are your pages cluttered with overlapping banners? Reallocate advertising space. The point is that advertisers look for sites that take themselves seriously. Web sites that feature poor design will not impress advertisers.
Targeted Demographics
Advertising directed to the wrong demographic groups will prove ineffective and will discourage your advertisers. Give your advertisers as much information about your audience as possible. By providing exact demographics, you can help your advertisers target the best groups for their messages.
Here’s an example for a fictitious site called Puppysupplies.com:
“Puppysupplies.com has viewers who are male and female, ages 20 to 65, with high disposable incomes.”
This describes many people on the Internet. Be specific and nail it down for your advertiser. Notice the improvement in the rewritten example:
“Puppysupplies.com has viewers who are mostly female, with the majority in the age range of 25 to 35. They typically own two dogs. Most of these female viewers are employed, with annual household incomes of at least $40,000.”
High Repeat Traffic
Advertisers’ favorites sites are those with information that is constantly updated; this means that viewers will visit again and again. Repeated traffic means repeated exposure to their advertisements, and frequency of visits increases the probability of their ads being clicked on. Examples of sites with high repeat traffic include search engines, weather sites, e-magazines, and shareware and gaming sites. Give your customers a reason to come back and you and your advertisers will benefit.
If your Web site doesn’t feature content that is changed regularly, consider creating an online newsletter that is distributed monthly, featuring product news with hotlinks back to your site. Or send out an e-mail coupon offering a discount on your product or service to encourage previous customers to come back and visit again. Repeat traffic will boost your numbers and help you develop a loyal clientele to serve you and your advertisers.