Communications and Media

Digital marketing is one of the most popular methods of marketing campaigns nowadays, it has been considered to be a medium of highly integrated marketing, and is highly inexpensive .One of the primary objectives of the digital marketing campaign includes building brand awareness, increasing website traffic and generating leads and sales.  If the objective of the digital marketing campaign is to increase overall brand recognition or to find and develop new clients and leads than a banner advertisement on a high traffic website frequented by the target segment would be the most effective strategy.

Banner Advertisements
If the objective of the campaign is to generate leads or orders the feeder medium is the strategy of an online campaign, the advantage to a banner ad campaign is that it combines the best attributes of advertising and direct marketing .Banner advertisements have been described as small advertisements that are placed on a website and the objective of a banner advertisement is to generate traffic to the company website.

Banner ads often have to compete for attention from other ads on the same website therefore it becomes imperative that the designing team makes the ads graphically stand out from the other banners ads. Most banner use a variety of colors, sizes  and animated graphics to distinguish themselves.

The Banner advertisement campaign can only be perceived as successful based on the number of click throughs   that it is able to achieve. These click throughs have to ensure a response of some kind from the visitor this can either be achieved through on page response that ensures that the visitor gets an answer to a question, receives a piece of information or actually places an order. It could also lead to a web response form that would continue to entice the customer with the offer and encourage the client to complete the form to qualify for the order or it could also five more information about the product and convince the client to complete the order.

The success of the post click through conversion rate of the banner advertisement is also of importance. Clicking on a banner is not a complete action, the prospect needs to go one step further and fill out the form at the other end to make an enquiry or a purchase, Even if there is a high conversion rate, banner as campaigns with a low click through rate might actually end up being successful. But if the conversion rate is unsuccessfully low even the highest click through rates wont make a difference. 

Therefore Jones (2008 ) has suggested that in order to ensure the success of a banner ad campaign  the traditional rules of advertising and marketing should be applied. Setting advertising goals and measuring objectives, establishing budget parameters ,determining target audience, researching available websites that target that audience, developing a media schedule and creating the banner advertisement, placing the advertisement, measuring the effectiveness, analyzing the results and refining the campaign . 

There are a number of options available in a banner advertisement which includes static ads that remain on a particular page of a website. Animated Banner move between files and rotating websites rotate every time there is a new visitor to the website and are generally used in high traffic websites.The success of the digital marketing campaign is highly dependent on the nature of the target segment involved. Understanding the needs of this target segment, the regions and markets involved and the particular products that are being currently sold to these target markets play a huge role in the success of the digital marketing campaign.

 If the market of the target customers is new, the campaign should be directed towards branding and impressions based advertising. Therefore the company can pay on the basis of the number of times the advertisement is viewed by a potential client as it becomes important to introduce the company to the target segment and they can measure their success based on the number of times the site where they have placed their advertisement is viewed and not on the basis of the number of times the company site is visited or an actual sale is made.

If the market is in its growth stage, the marketing campaign should adopt a strategy that increases cost per click to ensure traffic to the client website in order convert the brand presence of the company to brand exposure, it also helps as they can use the referral for other tie ups. In the maturity stage the customers are aware of the company and its product and merely ensuring traffic is not sufficient, it is important that the marketing campaign actually converts in to a transaction.  The marketing campaign should focus on building relationships with the target segment as the clients are already aware of the company and its products.  The digital marketing campaign that is now created has to ensure that the maximum benefit is generated from the best partners and is placed strategically against their biggest competitors.

The digital marketing life cycle has been described by Botha (2008) as
Attracting visitors through banner advertisements,  by placing strategic banners advertisements, at websites that see a high volume of visitors from the target segment.

Engage the Visitor Once a potential client has clicked on a Banner advertisement it is important to keep the interest of the client by giving them offers that seem attractive or lucrative to the client at that point of time and required carefully crafted web content and positioning the company product in the correct manner. Retain the Visitor Often the first time visit of the client, does not convert into a sale. Therefore it becomes important that the content of the campaign is interesting enough to ensure a repeat visit from the potential client.

Learn from the visitors and customers Ensure that the visitors and customer give a valid feedback on the effectiveness of the digital marketing campaign. Regular feedback from them can ensure that we can find out what the customer thinks, what they perceive and what they require.

Relate to the customer the digital marketing campaign must relate to the customer and must ensure a long term relationship with the client. The purpose of this strategy is to ensure that the client remains loyal to the company by the need satisfaction of the client through the various products offered by the company

The Digital Marketing Campaign Cycle
The digital marketing campaign cycle begins at the stage wherein the banner advertisement is conceptualized. This is done through the process of creating an appropriate advertisement for the product and involves identifying the needs of the client and creating a suitable banner advertisement for the product. The second step involves the placement of the advertisement at suitable websites that see a high number of visitors from the target segment and ensures that potential customer click on the banner advertisement.

Once the customer has clicked on the banner advertisement there is the need of targeting and qualifying visitors which can be done through qualifying surveys that funnels the client according to the specific user interest and thus reduces wasted clicks by excluding disinterested individuals. This refined targeting further improves the efficacy of a digital marketing campaign.One Common problem with many successful digital campaigns they are unable to convert interest into sales. Too many companies craft beautiful traffic generating banner ads but are unable to convert the visitors to their site into actual sales.

This can be achieved taking the customer though various stages in the marketing process and identifying their various needs though links that direct them to price ranges, product ranges and offers that would entice the client to purchase a product. Once the client has decided to place an order, the client should be able to expedite the process by order forms that helps the client fill in the various details required to complete the order placement and also has access to various methods of completing online payment i.e. payment through visa card or access to online accounts like PayPal.
It is important that the client is secure about making payments through the company website by ensuring the client that their details will not be misused by the company to their affiliates. Once the payment has been confirmed, an invoice must be sent the email address of the client, with the order details and confirmation of the time period within which the client will receive the delivery as per company norms. Post Sales Service It is important to ensure that once the sales has been completed, the company is able to ensure loyalty from the customer and repeat sales by giving them good service and making the entire sales process a memorable one for the client. A satisfied client translates into an increased profitability for the company and leads to the success of the digital marketing campaign.

Conclusion
The disadvantage to banner advertisements is that they give a limited amount of information and have very short lifecycles which lasts only a few seconds, making it difficult to trace a previously viewed banner advertisement. Clicking on the Banner advertisement also means that the user has to move away from the page that he was currently browsing which has led to a decrease in the click-through rate of banner advertisements in general. It must also be noted that most advertisers are having problems with the Impression Based Advertising and have to consider a new revenue model in order to improve their Cost per Action Model.