Internet Marketing Series: ad banner advertising written by Claudie Clot, CEO of advancis.com

The Internet is much more than web sites and email messages; often overlooked is the ability to communicate outside web browsers and email clients to reach target markets and deliver promotional messages. Digital brochures, for instance, take full advantage of the Internet's client / server architecture to open a new direct link between a company and its prospects / customers.

Digital brochures are emerging as a powerful Internet marketing tool because they can be easily integrated into Internet and traditional marketing plans to deliver solid results. In turn, they give marketers a real advantage over their competition by allowing the delivery of messages in a noise-free environment, accelerating the transformation of prospects into customers as well as optimizing the impact of other Internet marketing promotions. Plus, in very specific situations, they can save companies thousands of dollars in marketing costs.

Digital brochures are not designed to replace web sites or printed collateral. They complement your marketing mix to give your company an edge in acquiring new customers and keeping current customers by making it easy for your target market to obtain information about your products, getting the answers they need to make their decisions, viewing demos, and ordering your products. Most web sites have been designed to accomplish that goal; however, intense competition has made it very expensive to attract qualified leads. Invitations to visit web sites, whether presented directly via email or indirectly via ad banners, are no longer enough to drive prospects to your home page. Digital brochures can be used to deliver product information, feature interactive demos, and include ecommerce functionality to take order right from within the document. Central to the brochures effectiveness is that fact that they build on your prospects' online behavior. If they surf the web; download files; read emails; they can use digital brochures.

So, what is a digital brochure? In its simplest form, it can be an Acrobat® (.PDF) document designed to resemble traditional product / service brochures. More complex digital brochures can include multimedia presentations, fully-interactive animations, connection to the Internet (such as the advancis.com Web marketing guide), database interactivity, ecommerce functionality, web site integration and more. As a result, digital brochures can perform all functions necessary to educate your prospects and influence their purchase decisions.