Dating Banners: How to Make Them Work for You

Working with the dating advertising network like DatingAdNetwork can bring you a lot of targeted dating traffic. Let’s talk about the main type of advertising exchange systems – banners.

First we should define several qualities which are essential to consider when creating banners. The CTR of the banners depends on these characteristics in various ways.

Naturally, we will focus on banners for dating sites.

Banner advertising is a great way to increase your dating traffic. Whether or not you receive targeted traffic depends on a combination of factors:

• The system you use.


• The banners you have.


• The type of dating site you run.

A dating banner should convey emotion. Dating is itself a very emotional process! The more emotion you can express in  your banners, the more effective they will be. You can express emotions with photos or some special text. Emotions make people buy different things in many situations. In dating business it is the single most important factor. Just don’t go too far! The decision of whether or not to include sexually suggestive emotions depends on another issue which we will discuss in a moment.

A banner should sell your product even before visitor clicks on it. This type of inviting banner will bring you the most valuable traffic and conversions. If you run dating website, you should:

• Express emotions to draw in your audience.


• Tell what you offer in an inciting way.


• Offer the most valuable benefit of your services (not feature).


• Combine all these in one place – your banner.

This may seem like a lot of complexity just for a banner, but putting in the effort will make your banners sell your services. If a banner makes people think: “That’s what I am looking for!” – then you have done it correctly, and you will have more targeted traffic than you can even imagine. This brings us to the third factor.

Who is your target? You might think all dating site owners have the same target. This isn’t so! The target depends on the goods/services you sell. If you have a free dating site, what do you sell? Advertising. In this case your audience is quite broad, and targeting is not so much of an issue. Banners for a free dating site can be aggressive and sexual. Anyone might click on these types of banners.

If you have a niche dating site – what you sell? It depends on your target audience. If you are working on a ‘Must Love Dogs’ scenario, you will be selling memberships to dog lovers only. Sexual banners would not be appropriate in this case! It will only bring you a lot of useless click through traffic that will not convert well.

Think about your audience, and create a banner that will attract their interest. In the above example, a graphic of a couple out running on the beach with their dogs or cuddling on a bench at the dog park would be a better choice.

Think about your visitor. You have to offer them an incentive to click on your banner. How does this impact your banner design? In every way! The words or slogans you use on your banners should offer the most valuable benefit of your services (not feature). We mentioned this above, but you might not understand what it means.

Suppose your dating site offers the cheapest monthly payment for your members. Your banner could read: “Cheapest membership ever”.

Nice slogan, but it could be better. A cheap membership is a feature of your dating site. You need to bring home what benefit your visitor will get from this feature, and that is…? Your visitor will save money if they use your services!

Don’t let people jump to wrong decisions (cheap membership means a low quality site). Tell them what their benefit is, and how to get it. “Save your money” is much more direct, and clearly explains what visitors get. Think about what people need, and know how to help them get what they want.

Next we come to the question of your marketing campaign. Many sites appear every day and most disappear just as fast. Getting to know the market before you enter it is more than a great idea. It is essential for successful business, and it is essential for making banners, too!

This brings us to our conclusion. Dating banners should express your site ideas, they should offer benefits for the visitors, they should be emotional and they should sell before visitor clicks on them. Try to keep it a reasonable size, which is 468x60 pixels! Brainstorm, plan and experiment. If you think about what people need, you will know what to offer. If you know what to offer, visitors will come!
Best wishes to your dating business!