ING DIRECT's Banner Secrets & Samples: How to Acquire New Customers from Low-cost Banner Ads
ING DIRECT's Banner Secrets & Samples: How to Acquire New Customers from Low-cost Banner Ads : E-consultancy.com
Release Date: 28 July 2003
"Everyone says banners have a pathetically low click-through
rate," says Jurie Pieterse, VP of Web Marketing, ING DIRECT. "But
we've proven that they can be a successful staple of a direct
response campaign."
In fact ING DIRECT's banner campaign for their Orange Savings
Account, got them new customers at a lower CPA than any other
campaign they ran.
Through testing and re-testing (see link to samples of more than
two dozen banner tests below), Pieterse learned what works in six
key areas.
-> #1. Creative Tips : Spend the money to test different ads
"It's difficult to find that balance if you're spending just a
little money online, where the cost of developing creative is a
large part of the budget," Pieterse says. "But as your campaign
grows, spending a little bit on new creative is small if it
increases your click-through rate."
By developing different creative units and testing them, Pieterse
learned to make the best use of color, animation, and text.
For example, he discovered:
- ING DIRECT consistent use of the color orange really works. It
stands out without being flashy or irritating. Changing it would
only lessen consumer recognition.
- Animation works well, but only in moderation. "You want to
attract attention, but don't want to be cheap," Pieterse says. "Try
to keep it simple."
- Though it's tempting to cram every last selling feature into an
ad, people just won't read it. So, text should focus only on one
single key message.
ING focused on what sets the Orange Savings Account apart from
competitors' offers: great rate, no fees, no minimum -- just
enough to get consumers to investigate further.
-> #2. Media selection: Predicting results is impossible.
Analyzing the audience and metrics of each potential site before
advertising doesn't always go far enough.
Pieterse and his team tried it and learned that they're not great
at predicting the performance of an ad on a particular site.
Instead, they learned to look at past performance of ads on the
site similar to the one they were considering. They also looked
at the historical performance of their own ads on other sites
that were of the same unit size being offered on the new site.
Then -- you guessed it -- they tested and tracked, often every
day. "The first two or three weeks with a new publisher or ad,
we track on a daily basis," Pieterse says. "After that, only once
a week."
The first few weeks are enough time for Pieterse to know whether
the ad is working.
If it doesn't meet expectations, he works with the publisher to
explore different placements and creative. Then, only after
working actively with the publisher, will he pull an ad if it
still doesn't live up to expectations.
This is a very different tactic from media buyers who yank ads
only a few hours or days if they don't perform.
-> #3. Results tracking: Look beyond Cost Per Click (CPC).
Beyond cost-per-click and the number of new customers acquired,
Pieterse's team track cost of acquisition, what balance the
customer originally deposited, and how profitable a customer they
became.
He learned that knowing when in a new account's lifetime to track
is critical.
"When people open an Orange account online, they start with a
small balance. They want to test drive it before they deposit
more money to make sure it's for real," he says. "So the initial
perception would be that this isn't working, but if you look at
it 60 days later, that customer is becoming very profitable."
-> #4. Landing pages: Different pages for different consumers.
When Pieterse and his team began out testing different landing
pages, they hoped they would find one champion page that would
out-perform all others.
No such luck.
"It differs from what kind of audience or site the business comes
from," Pieterse says.
For the financially savvy Bloomberg audience, a page comparing
the ING account to other national accounts, with lots of
financial details and graphs, works well.
With a more consumer-focused audience, that didn't fly. A simpler
page, with some of the icons from the TV advertising and without
the graphs, performed better.
-> #5. Completion rate: Boosting completed registrations.
Getting people to fill out registration forms is always a
challenge, and opening a savings account online requires even
more information than most.
Consumers expect that opening a savings account will be a long,
painful process -- and this may actually have worked to ING's
advantage.
So, ING's forms feature reassuring copy that explains to
customers that they can open an account far more quickly than
they think: "Open and fund your Orange Savings Account in less
than five minutes!" It goes on to tell them right up front
exactly what info they'll be asked to divulge.
"Being up front in terms of what they can expect helps us in
terms of completion rates," Pieterse says.
-> #6. Search engine listings: Different text strings can double
performance.
Pieterse found that "We could get double or triple the
performance and it could be the result of changing one or two
words."
But because changes in interest rates or even what competitors
are doing can affect performance, Pieterse and his team go two or
three weeks before they change a text string.
"You need to test long enough to be sure that outside variables
aren't affecting it," he says.
For example, he changed one listing to include the words, "Open
in less than 5 minutes," and it yielded a 23% increase in click-
through rate.
He also learned to monitor search engines frequently for
companies infringing on trademark or using it to mislead
consumers.
That's a result of simple manual labor, he says. "We go into
search engines and type search strings and see if people come up
in paid-for listings where the title text would say ING DIRECT
but it would take you to a competitor Web site."
Finding that, they go straight to the advertiser who's doing it
and explain why it's an infringement. They find that it's more
efficient to approach the advertiser directly than to have, say,
Google do it.
"I don't want to create the impression that it's a Wild West
outlaw area," Pieterse says, "but it's worth checking."
Two useful links related to this interview:
-> ING DIRECT won Best in Show at the 2002 AD:TECH Awards. The
entry forms for the 2003 Awards are now available if you have a
campaign you'd like to submit. Here's a link to more info:
http://www.ad-tech.com/awards/
-> Link to inspirational samples of two-dozen ING Direct banners
- including the awards winners:
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/id/ad.html
November 15, 2005 at 11:34 AM in Online Marketing | Permalink
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