Graphic banner or Text banner?

That's something you should definitely test...though my hunch is that the before and after will probably win with the right photos.

I agree with Thomas. I'd definitely test but you may be surprised. I think people are more suspicious of photos than they used to be, ever since they realized how much photographs can be manipulated through programs like Adobe's Photoshop.

I concur with Mark - test for sure, but I think audiences' appreciation of before-and-after photos (for any niche) has waned dramatically. Some of the ads I see daily online are outrageous - 'Shopped to the max and clearly not genuine.

Hey Tony,

I have a ton of experience with this and most of it is counter-intuitive.

I ran shawnlebrunfitness.com for almost 10 years and I spent probably a million bucks on advertising during that time.

And quite surprisingly, the text banners and text links outperformed the graphical based banners almost every single time.

One would think that pictures would work better, since weight loss and fitness is very visual.

But when text ads and text links were pulling Click through rates of 1% or so on Google's content network.... graphic based banners were pulling .06, .07, and a fraction of my text link CTR.

And that held true with just about every source of online leads I used.

Again, totally counterintuitive. So that led me to adopt the philosophy of "never guess on anything, test everything"

Because what you might think works, and what I might think works could be completely different than what your market wants.

Another example, I used to think $29 would outsell $39. Wrong, I sold more at the higher price.

I used to think print versions of my programs would sell more. Wrong, the ebook sold 5 times as many copies.

So again, I'd test every single thing you do, and never guess on anything ;-)

Hi Tony,

Start with text.

It's great to go in with assumptions, theories, educated guesses and creativity, it creates lots of options to test, but let your actual testing guide you.

Also from a research perspective, Google the term "banner spy tools". If you're serious, you definitely want to be monitoring the market, the competition and specific websites, looking changes being made and what's sticking.

- Rick Duris