So where should you spend your hard earned marketing budget? When you are deciding your online advertising budget, one of the most important questions you need to consider is what type of online advertising to purchase. Banner advertising on other popular websites or being a top hit on search engines when people search for your offerings? Both have their strengths and weaknesses and we’ll explore both.

Banner advertising is in a sense a more traditional way to advertise and traditionally associated with CPM (Cost Per Thousand). You are attempting to promote your product to the general public or your niche target market. You want them to know you exist, and at the same time entice them to be a customer. This in a nutshell is how print and TV advertising works. You are the one actively trying to pursue the customer and make a connection.
PPC (Pay Per Click advertising) / Search Engine Marketing is the total opposite. It is the customer who is actively pursuing information or your offering, and it where advertisers only pay when a user actually clicks on an advertisement to visit the advertisers’ website So it is your job to bid on keyword phrases relevant to your target market to make sure you’re easily found when they make those searches.

It is very important to note the behavioural differences between these two forms of advertising. Banner advertising on other websites can be viewed as evasive to the user, and tend to be ignored. When a user is surfing a site for information, they are focused on that only and are unlikely to pay attention to your banner because of their current state of mind.

In PPC Search Engine Marketing, the same user is actively searching for information on Google for instance. They are much more likely to click on your link because of their current state of mind. Instead of you trying to get their attention while they’re doing something else on another site, you’re being available and accessible when they’re ready. The chances of making a successful sale is much higher on search engine marketing simply because of the behavioural difference. On the down side PPC takes a lot more management and supervision and also some important keyword phrases could be well out of your price range e.g $50+ meaning you could be forced to opt for the more generic and less viewed keywords.

It’s also important determine what your goals are of an advertising campaign and what you are actually marketing. PPC Search Engine Marketing is more effective. The reason is because the traffic is generally very targeted and the users are in a better state of mind to make a purchase. But banner advertising gives you the ability to reach out the masses and make them aware of your offering. You can grab their attention and entice them to make a purchase which is still very important.

For example, if you have a very targeted niche market and there are popular websites out there who’s readers are this exact market, it is very important to reach out to them. It cannot be overlooked how important and effective it is to banner advertise on these sites. It is very likely that you can turn these people into customers and create some strong branding exposure.

Conclusion

In the end there is no true winner or loser here as neither PPC or Banners Ads can guarantee conversions. This will boil down to your web content, web design, products and service you offer.

Try and think about what your end goals are. If you are looking for targeted and instant visitors to your site go for PPC Serach Engine Marketing.

If you are trying to build branding value then go for Banner Advertising.