A magazine that updates scores. Ads showing a car driving down the road and, at a touch, reveals specs and customized pricing. News stories that link to background information. Meet the coming face of interactive magazine publishing . Are your online advertising best practices ready for this new technology?
Check out examples interactive advertising in a magazine being developed now. Look past the corpo-speak and see the future of how your customers will be consuming information in the near future. Near as in when the iPad comes out.
Don’t think this advance is way off or reserved just for the big boys. The ability to create this kind of interactive advertising will come to the local level quickly. How can you prepare? Here are three things you can do now:
Give your banners muscle
Consider how you currently execute banner advertising. If your ad simply transports a reader to your home page, you’re missing out. The shortest path to conversion is relevant results; a click is my question, where you take me is the answer.
Instead of just bringing visitors to your home page, choose specific points of your banner ad to bring visitors relevant points on your site. Click on the product, you’re taken to that specific product’s page. Click on copy in your ad and it brings you to an expanded version with more information. The company logo in an ad on the sports page takes visitors to a landing page written for sports-minded customers.
Whether you’re paying by click or impressions, the more efficiently you resolve each click, the more likely you’ll convert visitors into customers. It starts by answering the questions customers are really asking (not the ones you want them to ask) quickly and efficiently.
Show don’t tell with video
Video brings visitors into your business in a way words alone can’t. It’s a form of interactive advertising that communicates differently than cable or TV video; don’t consider using your TV spot on your site as having video. In fact, TV spots on websites can create a conversational disconnect.
Web video works best when it’s person-to-person conversational. Grab a Flip Video camera and welcome a customer as you would when they come into the store. Interview some of your customers. Don’t worry about making it pretty; the more authentic is looks, the more believable the message.
Engage visitors in conversation
Creating polls or surveys is an easy way to solicit customer input and generate better engagement. Survey Monkey gives you the ability to conduct live polls of your web visitors and display ongoing results live. Your online advertising immediately appears more connected and customers gain a greater sense of involvement.
You may get some poll results you don’t like. If you have a product or service customers aren’t happy with, they’ll tell you. That’s a good thing. If they’re already unhappy, at least now you have a way of addressing it with them and in front of everyone else. You’ll just have to walk your customer service talk.
Advantage goes to the prepared
Not only will making these adjustments enhance the effectiveness of your online advertising now, but when time comes for interactive media in dynamic publications, you’ll already have the necessary best practices in place.
