Is your business struggling to reach a mass audience with your current marketing campaign efforts? Is TV and other traditional avenues eating too much of your budget? Outdoor advertising might be the solution.
Outdoor advertising demands attention but can be very cost-effective. It has a high reach with a broad audience. Here is an overview if you are looking to add outdoor to your media mix.
What billboard type fits your needs?
Let’s start with the basics. You can opt for either a vinyl billboard or a digital billboard if they are available in your area. Vinyl billboards can only use one creative concept and are up for the length of the billboard rental, which is usually a four-week window or longer. Digital billboards are computer-controlled displays, and your ad rotates like a slideshow switching advertisers every eight seconds or so.
Go digital and gain message flexibility
Digital billboards offer some added benefits over their traditional vinyl counterparts. You can swap out your billboard messaging as often as you would like during your four-week flight, without the production cost of vinyl. For example, this is a great option for banks, which often need the flexibility to change out featured loan percentage rates within a campaign window that likely does not match the timeframe of a traditional billboard schedule.
Another unique capability with digital is the ability to stream live content from your website or social channels in real-time. Let’s expand on that, and say you’re hosting a daylong event. You can work with your billboard company to stream images from the event where attendees are using the hashtag you created. Your creative team can help with the layout and post images from Instagram or Facebook with the hashtag. These have been very successful at concerts and sporting events, helping connect the fans with the larger stadium audience. Once the event is over, you can switch back to your previously used billboard creative.
The right location will magnify your messaging
Everyone knows what’s valuable here so let’s just say it: location, location, location. If you know your region has a high volume highway that the majority of the locals use, then you want your messaging and branding in front of the people you are trying to target.
To really make your brand memorable you can own a billboard (one-year lease) and then swap the creative out monthly or quarterly. By doing this, you’re making your brand top of mind and placing a stake in the ground. The billboard will become a landmark, which is a fantastic way to use traditional advertising in today’s digital world. You will own that location, so be sure to capitalize on it with catchy artwork or messaging and drives users to your other marketing efforts.
Other successful outdoor advertising options
Traditional advertising still reaches mass audiences, and Out-Of-Home (OOH) options other than billboards still connect with your audience. Bus shelters, newsstands, kiosks and transit advertising (wraps on taxis, buses, subways and trains), to name a few are all great avenues to promote your brand.
We worked directly with St. Luke’s, a major health network in Pennsylvania, to promote a Comprehensive Spine Campaign and supplemented this multi-channel marketing plan with billboards and bus wraps. These bus wraps helped to blanket their audience with this campaign throughout the region.
Layering in outdoor advertising along with your social, digital and traditional efforts will make for a successful campaign by reaching a mass audience without blowing up your marketing budget. This is just a snippet of information on how outdoor media can be added to your overall media mix or ad campaign.
We can tailor campaigns to any size business and will put together a custom media solution that’s perfect for you. Contact SWBR to discuss your upcoming campaigns and how we can help promote your business.
