When you start to talk about marketing your site online, many people think immediately about banner advertising. Banner advertising works well if your goal is to create brand awareness with consumers, and then it works best if you have the budget to purchase several million impressions. Otherwise, there's only about a two percent clickthrough rate on banner advertising, so only a small number of Internet users will actually visit your site as a result of your banner advertising campaign. This is why it's important to realize that banner advertising will not result in large numbers of Internet users flocking to your site.

    Before we move on to discuss how you can compete with your large competitors' big banner advertising budgets, let's first start with some definitions and clarifications.

    An "impression" is defined as the appearance of a banner on a site -- an Internet user is searching for information on floral arranging and at the top (or the bottom) of the search results screen is a banner. This is an impression. The banner has appeared on a site. A "clickthrough" is defined as a visitor that comes to your site as a result of clicking on the banner. Only about two percent of those Internet users that see a banner will click on it and visit your site.

    "Keyword-triggered banner advertising" is defined as banners that appear as a result of specific keywords that are typed in at search engines and searchable  directories. For example, an Internet user searches on "flower shops" and a banner for 1-800-FLOWERS appears at the top (or the bottom) of the search results screen. This means that 1-800-FLOWERS has purchased the ability to have their banner appear when specific keywords are used in a search. Keyword-triggered banner advertising is more expensive than standard banner advertising.

    Remember, with banner advertising you are paying per impression (and if your banner appears at the bottom of a search result screen, but the Internet user doesn't scroll down to actually view the banner, in many instances you still pay for that impression). You may purchase 100,000 impressions, but only 2,000 users may visit your site as a result of that purchase. Also, banner advertising is sold by CPM -- the cost per one thousand impressions. So if the CPM is $35, and you purchase 100,000 impressions, you will spend $3,500 for 2,000 people to visit your site. Or, to calculate it out further, you will spend $1.75 for every visitor.