subject: Use Banner Ads to Reach Cooking Enthusiasts at Lutongbahay by:Michelle Dunst [print this page] Google has renewed online excitement over the effectiveness of banner ads in click rate conversion. When Google reintroduced image ads and animated flash ads in Adsense in 2008, advertisers took heed. After all, Google should know what it's doing. So if you happen to be an advertiser, perhaps you should consider the advantages of banner ads, as well. And if your target market is comprised of cooking enthusiasts, Lutongbahay.com is right where your banner ad should be.
Lutongbahay.com is the first and only interactive cooking portal online that features Filipino regional food recipes as well as international dishes. Lutongbahay means homecooking in Filipino. In this site, cooking enthusiasts from the Philippines and around the world gather to read from a huge library of articles on food and cooking, access thousands of recipes and talk about their shared passion in a discussion forum. They can ask experts their cooking questions and request for any recipe not found in the vast collection. They can create their own meal planners and compile their choice of recipes in their own cookbooks, all ready for print out. Members also receive a weekly e-newsletter filled with information and updates.
The drawing power of a cooking community that centers on Filipino food and branches outward is considerable. This can be traced to the fact that there are millions of Filipinos scattered all over the world. All of them miss Filipino homecooking and the company of fellow Filipinos and so they congregate at Lutongbahay.com. On the other hand, Filipinos have always been known to be very friendly and tend to create close ties with people from other nationalities, sharing their culture and, of course, their wonderful food. It is this circle of international friends drawn to the flavors of the Philippines and eager to sample more of it that makes up the second layer of visitors to Lutongbahay.com. Invariably, everyone wants to share something with everyone else, and so the number of international dishes on the site has grown, too.
If your business has anything to do with food, cooking or any of the related interests of cooking enthusiasts, Lutongbahay.com has an eager community just waiting for your offer and your banner ad.
Here are some tips on how to maximize your benefits from your banner ads.
1. Know your competition. Compare the banner ads of your competitors to find what works and what doesn't. You can then use the elements that work and even improve on them while avoiding your other competitors' mistakes.
2. Keep your banner ad short, simple and clear. Use few words in large fonts, with keywords relevant to the site. This gets higher recall and more click conversions. Have a concrete call to action. This works.
3. Have a fast-loading banner ad. Do not make your file size too large or you will miss your audience. They will not wait for your banner to load. Your fancy animation will be useless if your audience leaves before it loads.
4. Customize banner colors to the website. Make sure your colors do not make your banner fade into the background. Also check on the other ads on the same site to ensure that your banner stands out. Make sure, however, that your banner is not an eyesore. It should stand out in a good way.
5. Test your banner ads. Ask your family and friends to honestly critique your banner ads and use their inputs to improve on it before launching. Try to get feedback from the same demographics as your target audience.
6. Have a good landing page. Do not squander click-throughs with a lousy landing page. Make sure that your landing page effectively converts click-throughs into sales.
7. Dislay your banner ads in the right website. Make sure that the website's visitors are your target market.
If you're ready to face this new market of cooking enthusiasts with your ad campaign and banner ads, visit Lutongbahay.com for inquiries.
