Better get checked … for banner blindness?

What would you say if I told you that 86% of the people reading this today suffer from “banner blindness?” Wait! Before you run to the phone to text your doctor (that’s a thing now), or go to WebMD, understand that this is actually good for you! It’s your body’s natural defense against a torrential hurricane of annoying online advertising that’s become so loud that almost nobody is listening anymore.

Banner blindness is when people can’t recall the last advertisement they saw. Research by Adotas confirmed that just about everybody exhibits it, and that it’s linked to the fact that there are too many bad ads out there. Shysters shilling weight loss supplements and adult dating sites have inadvertently trained us as a society to completely ignore them.

This is especially bad news for those well-intentioned advertisers out there because now nobody is being heard. And yet, paradoxically, the industry keeps growing. Why? Because advertisers themselves aren’t paying enough attention! The whole industry is practically driving blind. Despite study after study confirming that online advertising is among the lowest performing ways to garner new customer eyeballs, the industry is slated to grow by 15.4% this year.

So before you go doubling down on your online advertising, consider these alarming statistics:

• 56% of all of the digital ads out there are never seen by a human! Source: AdAge
• Standard banner ads are only clicked on by 1.2 people out of every 1000. Source: eMarketer

That’s all pretty bleak, and when you consider that only 1-2% of people who actually click on that banner actually end up making a purchase, making sales this way is like getting only 5 customers out of an entire football stadium of prospects.

If not digital ads, what then?

At ProspectsPLUS, we say fall back on what you know, and trust a mixture of your instincts and data. There are thousands of tech companies prowling out there promising magic bullets while looking for creative ways to cut into SMB profits and at the end of the day, that’s not how businesses grow. Banner and digital ads do have their place but only as a supplement to doing business as you always have: meeting and greeting strangers, spreading the word, and leaning on the single most reliably effective target marketing channel: direct mail.

Direct mail is like that first car of yours…the one you were so proud to own but which you left behind when you moved away. And now, years later, when you come back and whip the dustcover off of it and the engine roars to life, you’re enthralled with the sleek design and the unparalleled quality. You realize that nowadays, they just don’t make them like they used to.

And we mean that. Postcard Marketing isn’t some plastic-lined import. It’s a 1969 Mustang for your marketing.

Postcard marketing delivers these results:

• 7% response rate from households, 30x higher than banner ads! Source: DMA Response
• 15-17% ROI on average. Source: DMA Response

So now you have to ask yourself, what’s it going to be: Direct responses or fighting against banner blindness?

ProspectsPLUS! has been in the business for over 20 years, and we aren’t going anywhere. Pick up the phone today and call us at 1-877-222-6010 or try our print-to-web guided process to get your next truly genuine postcard marketing campaign going!

And if you need those campaigns but want an expert to set them up, Opportunity Knocks can get it all done for you in flash! They’re a sister company to PropsectsPLUS! who specialize in white-glove direct mail marketing.