Get a leg up on your competition with these tips from Offermatica's president on how to personalize the banner and landing page for your customers.

Online ad campaigns have grown from a tactic looked upon with skepticism to an indispensable piece of a marketer's bag of tricks. Top advertisers have heavily increased their online budgets, with many suggesting that at least 15 percent of advertising budgets should be spent online.

That's happy news for online marketers, and those of us in love with the medium are in heaven. Still, as our budgets begin to catch up with our desire to experiment with new online practices, so have the budgets of our competitors.

That means it is more imperative than ever that we improve the performance of our campaigns.

We can no longer compete successfully simply by throwing more money into the mix. Luckily, finding ways to improve ad campaigns is a challenge many of us enjoy.

I've been clicking on ads like a fiend lately, looking for innovative ideas marketers are implementing. Along the way, I've hit on three tactics that marketers can use to move the needle forward on their campaigns.
 
See what you think:

Smart banner tactic #1: Offering multiple options for users to click on
I've seen a few instances of companies who have created banner ads that have multiple options for users.

Take, for example, this Charles Schwab ad.

The banner is interactive with "thought bubbles" circling slowly around the "Talk to Chuck" element. Before the visitor interacts with the banner, the copy reads "Our clients spoke, We listened."

True to that promise, if you click on any of the complaints, the banner is automatically rewritten to address that particular concern. Click again and you're taken to a copy-heavy landing page that addresses your concern in more detail.

This is a smart tactic for a couple of reasons. First, there are more opportunities for the user to find something of interest, so it's likely that you'll get a better clickthrough rate.

Second, and to me more interesting, is that by offering users the opportunity to click on any one of a number of options, you are in essence asking them to self-segment-- in other words, you're saying, "Tell me what you're interested in, and I'll offer a solution." And when they click through to the landing page, a significant amount of relevant and (hopefully) engaging content is presented.

Most exciting of all is that if you cookie the users, you have the opportunity to target them very specifically if and when they visit your site later on, which I explain below in Tactic #2.

Smart banner tactic #2: Second visit reinforcement
Even the best online marketers sometimes don't realize the capabilities we have at our fingertips when we're dealing with the online medium. Second visit reinforcement, or "re-targeting" is actually a tactic that seems complicated but is quite easy to implement.

Here's what second visit reinforcement looks like: Imagine that, while browsing your favorite news source online, you see an ad for financial planning that captures your attention with its peaceful image of a woman doing yoga on a sun-drenched beach.

The message talks about how, with successful financial planning, you can have the lifestyle you've always dreamed of. It strikes a chord with you, and you click. You're brought to a landing page that reinforces the imagery, with more aspirational messaging. Then the doorbell rings, or you get an urgent email, and you don't complete the transaction by clicking on the button that reads "I'd like to speak to a financial advisor."

The message, however, remains in your mind, and a few days later you go to the company's website by typing their URL directly.

You're jarred when you see dry information about mortgages, small business banking, and home equity loans, rather than more of the aspirational messaging and imagery that moved you to click on the ad in the first place. You browse around, but there is nothing to connect you with the original ad and, perhaps feeling a strong sense of disconnect, you leave the site.

What the financial planning company may not have realized is that it's a simple matter to reinforce content on the site to specific visitors.

Now, imagine that when you clicked the ad the first time, the company cookied you. Then, all the company would have had to do was to reserve some small piece of real estate on the home page to reflect the banner image or message.

When you subsequently visit the home page, you are served a home page that includes that small bit of reinforcement-- maybe the original photo of the woman enjoying her yoga on the beach.

That reinforcement would build upon the feeling of connection that caused you to click on the ad in the first place. The first link in the relationship chain has been forged.

Now, imagine if that financial planning company has several campaigns running in different places. The small bit of real estate on the home page, designated as a "content slot," could rotate content depending upon which ad a visitor has interacted with. Every visitor who has been moved to click on an ad has the opportunity to be further moved on the site itself, strengthening the relationship and bringing them closer to completing the transaction.

Smart banner tactic #3: "Viewthrough" reinforcement
Reinforcement of an ad via viewthroughs would look, in execution, similar to second visit reinforcement, above. However, in the case of a viewthrough, the visitor was served an ad but never actually clicked on it.

For example, imagine you visited an automotive site such as Edmunds.com and saw an ad for a Chevy Silverado.

The ad is smart and compelling, and you like what you see but, for whatever reason, you don't click on it. However, later that day you go to Chevrolet.com. Upon arriving on the page, you see the content of the ad -- all about the Silverado -- reinforced.

By seeing the message about the Silverado repeated, you would be more likely to connect with the content on the Chevrolet homepage, because you were already interested in the ad you saw on Edmunds.com.

Of course, this is a tactic that most advertisers already do to some extent. A company that is running a multi-million dollar launch campaign, like Chevy, is probably already reinforcing that message on their home page.

In fact, Chevrolet's home page currently sports the Silverado-- every visitor sees the Silverado, whether they have been served a Silverado ad or not.

But what about smaller, more peripheral campaigns? What if the ad you saw and connected with was not for the Silverado but was rather for the new Corvette, and you saw it while perusing the pages of a website for sports car aficionados?

In that case, if you later visited the Chevrolet home page with fond feelings for the Corvette, only to be confronted by the gigantic Silverado -- with no trace of your beloved sports car anywhere in sight -- you might be immediately tempted to take a hike. Literally.

If Chevy had cookied you when it served you the Corvette ad on the sports car website, then served you an image of the Corvette rather than the Silverado, the experience would likely be a far more relevant and pleasant one. Ultimately, too, it might prove to be a more lucrative one for Chevy.

I believe these tactics can help us be relevant and personal. Not all of them are being tested by marketers-- and that gives you a leg up. Try them out. With proper testing and execution, I'd be willing to bet my next sports car that you can significantly improve the performance of your ad campaigns.

Jamie Roche is the president of Offermatica Inc. the leading provider of hosted marketing optimization solutions. Read full bio. 

Take a look at Jamie's Blog Thinking Aloud.