His best performing banner, which read in large red type, 'ORGASMIC BANNER DESIGN' got a 16% response rate its first month and continued to pull strong CTRs for more than a year. In order to supplement text ads, Braun also tested a broadcast campaign to YesMail's opt-in lists, search engine optimization, a booth at an Internet World show and banners.īraun's direct response text ads have consistently pulled up to 5% clickthrough rates - about five times the B2B industry average. We're thinking about testing Industry Standard, Business 2.0 and MarketingSherpa where you'll reach people building half million dollar or more sites.' Now we have bigger talent, so we moved the sponsorships to a bigger audience. He says, 'In the beginning we were doing banner ads for a couple of hundred dollars.

As his company grew big enough to handle larger accounts, he changed media buying patterns. Initially Braun bought space in newsletters such as BannerTips and WilsonWeb's Web Marketing Today that smaller clients would see. For example one ad started, 'Your ugly Web site is scaring customers away - get help!' You can't lose them at the third line if you only have six lines! So you have to make that first sentence intriguing enough to read and to go to the second sentence, and so on. You're not just rambling about your services. Then, every single dollar I made, I put back into advertising.'īraun's text ad advice: 'Each sentence is a headline, a direct response headline. Then I tested sponsorships in targeted newsletters that people looking for banner designers read. He says, 'I combined direct response copy with Madison Avenue copy. He says, 'I built it from nothing working on my laptop, an hour and a half each way every day.' As a self-funded start-up, Lounge Lizard needed a highly economic way to get the word out.īraun immediately invested in text ads in email newsletters. Ken Braun literally started his interactive ad agency, Lounge Lizard Worldwide, while commuting back and forth on the Long Island train to his old Creative Director job at iXL.

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