You’re confused, right?
Solo ads vs banner ads: Which traffic source is effective for driving business results?
Should you go for solo ads that help you target a specific audience and generate leads and sales quickly? Or should you use banner ads that increase your brand’s visibility and awareness?
The confusion probably stems from the fact that solo ads are easy to get started with. And you know banners ads attract online consumers because they are visually appealing.
You have come to the right place.
In this guide, I will talk about these two paid traffic sources. I will objectively compare the two to make it easier for you to decide which one to choose.
Let’s get started.
What Are Solo Ads?
Solo ads or solo email ads are a type of advertisement that involves sending promotional emails to an email list provided and controlled by a solo ad seller/vendor.
In other words, solo ads are email traffic obtained from a rented email list.
As you are already aware, email traffic is currently the best-paid traffic source with a huge converting ratio compared to all other traffic sources. Since solo ads are based on email marketing, they are more effective and targeted.
Typically, solo ads are used for promoting make money online, weight loss, self-help, personal development, business opportunities, work from home, cryptocurrency, and other niches.
How Solo Ads Work
How to solo ads work is simple.
First, solo advertising involves three parties: The solo ad seller, the buyer, and the marketplace.
The buyer orders email clicks from a solo ads seller with a niche-based email list that contains fresh subscribers who are ready to buy. The buyer may request the solo ad seller to write an email copy by sending them a link to the offer being promoted.
The solo ad seller or vendor will then send the ad email (that contains a promotional message) with a special offer to their subscribers. The buyer then pays for every unique click that’s delivered to their offer or landing page by the solo ad seller.
The whole process can be done through a solo ads marketplace like Udimi or via the website owned by the solo ads seller/vendor.
The challenging part about solo ads is finding a trusted solo ads seller with a highly responsive email list.
Who Can Use Solo Ads?
Generally, almost every business owner can use solo advertisements to grow their business. However, solo ads are beneficial for:
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Marketers with a tight budget
For marketers with small or medium-sized businesses, it can be challenging to spend a lot of money to promote their products or businesses. Solo ad campaigns can cost a few hundred dollars.
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Marketers targeting overly saturated niches
Some niches like make money online, weight loss, and others are more saturated thus attracting potential customers can be difficult. Solo ads can help you direct targeted traffic to your product or service fast.
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Marketers looking for fast traffic
Even though solo ads aren’t marketing magic, they can help you generate traffic much faster than other forms of advertising.
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Marketers launching startup or product
Solo ads can help you inform your target customers about a new product or start-up you’re about to launch. People are more likely to click the link and check the new product when an offer is included.
Why You Should Use Solo Ads
There are many benefits of using solo ads for your online business aside from cost-effectiveness.
Here are a few reasons why you should invest in solo ads.
Reason 1: Solo ads are fast
Unlike SEO and other digital marketing methods, solo ads can help you attract quick and affordable traffic to your products or services.
Reason 2: Solo ads can help you build a highly responsive email list
The coolest part about solo ads is that aside from lead generation and sales, this method of advertising can help you build your email list fast especially if you include a link with an opt-in form.
Reason 3: Solo ads enable you to reach a huge targeted audience
Solo ads are email clicks or email blasts sent to a huge email list with tons of subscribers who have shown interest in doing business with the email list owner.
This means that you can easily reach tens of thousands of targeted customers with solo advertising.
Reason 4: Traffic guarantee
Most solo ads sellers and agencies guarantee 99.99% traffic. When you order email clicks, your product is sent to a highly responsive email list.
You also get a traffic analysis report so you can see exactly what you’re paying for. Some sellers even over-deliver traffic.
Reason 5: Negotiable payment
Solo ads are probably the only advertisement method that offers flexible pricing options out there. With this advertisement strategy, you can pay based on impressions, sales, clicks, or performance.
Reason 6: Affordability
Apart from flexible pricing options, solo ads are very cost-effective. You launch solo ads campaigns with as little as $0.20 per click or $2 per 1000 impressions.
Reason 7: No need to create your email list
Since solo ads are based on traffic sent from someone else’s email list, you don’t need to go through the hassle of creating your own list.
All you need is to choose a reliable solo ad seller who can supply you with quality traffic to your offers.
Why You Should Avoid Using Solo Ads
Even though solo ads are beneficial, they aren’t without some downsides. Here are a few reasons why you should think twice before investing in this method of advertising:
1. Finding a reliable solo ads seller/vendor isn’t easy
As digital advertising continues to grow faster and become popular, scammers are working tirelessly to use every opportunity to scam unsuspecting online business owners.
Failure to find a reputable solo ads seller that delivers traffic from Tier-1 countries can be a costly mistake.
2. Fewer targeting options
With solo ads, it’s not easy to target your audience based on their interest or age but you can target potential customers based on geographic locations.
3. They aren’t effective in some niches
Even though solo ads are effective, they don’t work well with all niches out there.
How Much Do Solo Ads Cost?
Solo ads are charged per click, per impression, or performance basis. Typically, you can purchase solo ads from as little as $0.30 to $2 per click.
What Are Banner Ads?
Banner ads, also known as image ads or display ads are a form of advertisement displayed on a web page. Since they are advertisements displayed on a website, they target every visitor who comes to the website.
Banners ads are purposely used to promote brand awareness and drive a website to an advertiser’s website.
How Banner Ads Work
Digital banners ads work pretty similarly to the physical banners placed outside either on a highway, on tall buildings, or in other visible areas.
Generally, banner ads are useful for generating website traffic
Why Use Banner Ads
There are multiple reasons to use banner ads. Here are just a few:
Reason 1: They can help increase website traffic
When someone spots an attractive banner when browsing your website, they will want to check out your product, thus they will click on it.
Reason 2: Promote your discount offer
Banners are minimalist and can help you promote your discount offer. Note that with too many people using banner ads out there, you need to use stand-out banners to get high click-through rates and conversions.
You can use banner ads to share testimonials and attract more customers to your product or service pages.
Reason 4: Banner ads can help to sale a product
Banner ads can encourage customers to buy your products, especially when placed in the right place and in the right context.
To make the most out of your banner ads, they must be relevant to your niche and meet the readers’ needs.
Reason 5: Banner ads can help to capture visitors’ attention
With too much noise out there, you want to grab your potential customer’s attention to the most important sections of your website. Having stunning banner ads on your website can help to grab people’s attention.
Reason 6: Audience retargeting
Banner ads can help to retarget website visitors who don’t sign up or try a product or service on their first visit.
When you have attracted visitors to your website using solo ads and they haven’t taken any action, you can retarget them with banner ads.
Why Shouldn’t Use Banner Ads?
Aside from the best things banner ads can offer, there are a couple of reasons why you should ask yourself several questions before you invest in them. Here are just a few of them:
There are instances where you may have a lot of information you want to pass to your website visitors yet at the same time, you don’t want your banner ad to be too huge.
In this case, you may be tempted to squeeze in a lot of information which could make the whole thing hard to read thus affecting your click-through rate.
2. Banner ads have lower click-through rates
Unlike solo ads, banner ads have a lower click-through rate. This means that it’s hard to get people to your offers with banner ads than with solo ads.
3. There are no guaranteed results
Solo ads are targeted thus you rest assured to generate traffic to your offer. On the other hand, banner ads can only guarantee impressions and increased brand awareness.
To increase conversions, clicks, and leads, you need to use banner ads together with other methods of advertising like PPC, etc.
How Much Do Banner Ads Cost?
Unlike solo ads, banner ads are slightly expensive. Typically, the size of the advertisement influences the cost of banner ads.
For instance, you can expect to pay anywhere from $20 CPM to $80 CPM to a professional and experienced company depending on the size of the banner ad.
Final Thoughts
Which is the best traffic source between solo ads vs banner ads?
As you have seen both solo ads and banner ads can send targeted traffic to your website, however, the latter can be used to complement the former.
Besides, when we compare solo ads vs banner ads based on the conversion rate then solo ads win. Solo ads are highly targeted thus you can expect to make more sales with them than banner ads.
Lastly, it all depends on what you intend to achieve with the two advertisement methods.