When thinking about social media versus the effectiveness of traditional media, the topic of banner advertising sort of lingers in the middle.  When vendors provide solution providers with funding to create untargeted, poorly branded, and salesy (yes that's a word) banners that are then thrown on random web pages such as Yahoo! they are completely and totally throwing money out the window.  When vendors provide partners with the guidance to create branded, targeted, banners that are offering something of value (eBook/free assessment) then they are some of the more effective types of lead gen you can do.  The same is true for vendors themselves.  If you're targeting the right audience, on the right platform, with the right message, they are well worth using but again, make sure you're getting the guidance.  So how should you create effective banner strategies?

1.  Target: Know who your customers are and more importantly if you're helping your partners, know their targets.  Are they selling into health care? or Retail?  Make sure the sites you're placing the ads are site that are people read by those targets.  More

2.  Message: Once the target is established you need to make sure the message will actually resonate with the audience.  If you're targeting health care and you're talking about how Cloud will effect financial services people are not going to pay attention.

3.  Creative: As I mentioned in my vendor session, people are bombarded by messaging more than ever.  To cut through the noise you need to carry your message through to the creative elements of the banner.

4.  Alignment: When placing the banner make sure the target is interested in the actual content on the page you are placed on.  If you're promoting your cloud solutions and the page you're on is promoting on-premise storage, your target doesn't care about your banner or if they do, they're not thinking about it right then.

Much like social media, you need to make sure you're in the right place, at the right time, with the right message.  You'd be better served to do several banners on different pages that are very targeted to that page's content (and therefore audience) then to try and do the same banner over and over again.

Would love to hear what banner strategies have worked for vendors and how you are helping your solution providers with effective banner strategies as well.  Solution providers, are you getting the guidance and support you need?