Mobile advertising, particularly mobile banner advertising is often seen as a direct-response medium. However, experience and research demonstrate that the right approaches can help advertisers build their brands with mobile banner advertising.
By the same token, the wrong practices can hurt one’s brand. In order to foster consumer attitudes toward your own brand, follow these guidelines:
It’s All About You
It sounds simple, but many fail to do this: Make your logo central to your advertisement. And make sure it’s your own logo: Don’t use that limited space to feature a competitor’s brand. Doing so doesn’t only eat up your real estate — it also reinforces your competitor’s identity with your potential consumers. For the same reason, it’s wise to avoid co-branding, because that, too, is difficult to do well in mobile media. The general lack of space and attention spans are powerful forces working against this particular campaign method. Finally, do yourself a favor and make sure your logo isn’t too small. Having a small, hard-to-find or hard-to-see logo makes your ad forgettable and does nothing to build your brand.
Keep it Short
With pocket-sized technology comes pocket-sized real estate and similarly small attention spans. Be concise to make the most of your ad space and your viewers’ hectic lifestyles. You have about half a second to work with, so leave your viewers with the clearest message possible. A wordy or cluttered banner ad is a banner ad ignored.
Keep It Simple
Being concise can mean considering storyboarding through ad sequencing. With so little time and space at your disposal, make the most of your ad impressions by spreading multiple features across multiple ads. Ad sequencing will also add some much-needed variety without losing consistency. By giving your message from multiple angles over a longer period of time, you’re more likely to leave a solid impression than if you tried to cram all of your messages into one space at once. And of course, make sure that your sequences are appropriate for your brand or audience.
Check Your Message
Ensure that your message is appropriate for your target audience. When targeting an experienced and discerning class of shoppers, it’s probably best to emphasize the criteria that qualitatively set your product apart from others. With such customers, investing in the latest memes may not be appreciated. On the other hand, if you want to highlight your product’s trendiness to a younger crowd, then by all means include a trendy eye catcher. By tailoring your ads to each consumer segment, you’ll make the most of your resources.
That said, an inappropriate message can make you wish your banner had only been ignored. Poorly constructed advertisements can leave a negative impression with your audience, causing them to be less likely to buy your products or services than those who never saw the ad.
Quality Over Quantity
Finally, maintain high frequency. Changing attitudes is hard work. It requires judicious reinforcement. Make sure you’re reaching the members of your target audience deliberately and repeatedly. And keep your approach flexible. If possible, don’t limit yourself to a single mobile platform. By maximizing your accuracy and efficiency, you’ll get a much better result.
And for a free download of the white paper that lays out some of the research that led to these conclusions, click here: http://www.qriously.com/brand-mobile.