When it comes to marketing your business, you’re probably already paying for online ads, social media ads, running an email campaign, and perhaps even advertising in print in magazines and newspapers. While all of these are great ways to spread the word about your business, there is an entirely separate field full of potential customers that you can advertise to, boosting your company’s revenue. That field is called OOH (Out-of-Home) Advertising.
Advertising outdoors is a strategy for marketing businesses that takes advantage of naturally high-traffic areas. Instead of waiting for potential customers to search on Google or pick up a magazine, outdoor advertising brings the ads straight to people. More than that, outdoor advertising can be geared towards certain areas where your target audience lives and works, making reaching those ideal new customers easy.
Out-of-home advertising doesn’t just mean slapping up a poster outside your building. It requires strategy. In this article, we’ll walk you through the art of outdoor advertising, from its opportunities to its benefits, and the techniques you can use to ensure success.
Outdoor Advertising Opportunities
Outdoor, or OOH, advertising is all about advertising to people while they are out of their homes. As you might guess, this means countless outdoor advertising opportunities exist.
In urban areas, when they are out and about, traveling to and from work, vacationing, or shopping, people pass by and spend time around buildings, airports, transit stations, roads and highways, malls, theaters, ballparks, football stadiums, and gas stations. The minute you place an ad in one of these high-traffic places, you instantly get hundreds or even thousands of eyes on your ad every day.
The art of outdoor advertising begins with understanding both the types of advertising you can use and the specific opportunities and places they can be used.
Billboards
One of the most well-known forms of outdoor advertising is the billboard. Billboards have been around for quite some time now, and you might think they aren’t as effective as other, more modern advertising methods, but you would be wrong. It turns out that billboards are consciously looked at by 71% of drivers and around 1 in 3 people who see a digital billboard will go straight to that business’s website, meaning they are highly effective.
For your outdoor billboard advertising, you’ll want to begin by deciding whether you need a traditional billboard or a digital one. From there, you can design the billboard. The best and most effective ones use straightforward messaging, and eye-catching images, are easy to read from a distance, and use limited text that can be quickly read so that people driving at high speeds can still understand it.
Your next step is to choose the right location. Find out who your target audience is, where they are, and on what roads and areas they travel. Place your billboard in a high-traffic location for your specific audience.
Transit Advertising
Another opportunity for outdoor advertising is at transit stations and stops. These are places that people use consistently, whether they are traveling to and from work or are just using them to get somewhere. Buses, trains, ferries, subways, and more are all widely used places that people go to on a daily basis. Advertising in these places is often done in the form of traditional or digital posters, digital billboards, banners on the transportation vehicle itself, and more.
The strategies for success with these advertising locations include, as with billboards, choosing areas where your target audience is likely to be, using interest-grabbing forms like digital, changing signs in waiting areas, and advertising your business at the right time, such as telling people to purchase your refreshing drink product at the market as they arrive at their destination.
Airport Advertising
Like transit advertising, airport advertising is another of those high-traffic, essential opportunities. Airports are places where thousands of people congregate regularly, and all of them spend an average of 1.5 hours in the airport. These eyes and this time are spent doing something, and each moment a person looks around, they will be able to see ads and pull up the business’s website while they wait. It’s a golden advertising opportunity.
The same strategies mentioned above for transit advertising apply to airport advertising. Success with this form of advertising is always dependent on location, target audience, and the style of the ad.
Advertising in High-Traffic Areas
Other outdoor advertising opportunities include placing ads in or outside malls, hotels, theaters, gas stations, ballparks, and football stadiums. Some of these locations would be perfect for some businesses, but not for others. Choosing the right one is part of the strategy of advertising outdoors. Consider where your target audience is most likely to go and aim your advertising there.
Benefits of Advertising Outdoor
Outdoor advertising can be one of the most successful ways to spread the word about your business or product. Because of their out-of-home nature, these ads are more likely to produce actionable results because people are out anyway and can go and purchase your product then and there. Similarly, if your business is not selling products but services, people who are traveling can spend wait times seeing your ad and looking at your website.
On top of this, outdoor advertising reaches people where they are, so they don’t have to take any action to see your ad, unlike online advertising, where they would have to do a specific search or go on a particular website to see your ad. All in all, outdoor advertising has many benefits, and this method can be a sure way to achieve marketing success.
Techniques of Outdoor Advertising
The techniques and strategies you should use for your outdoor advertising campaigns will differ for each business, target audience, and product.
Certain basic rules always apply, though, including carefully evaluating who your target audience is, what they want, what they do, where they work, and where they travel. In addition, you want to use the proper mediums to bring your target audience in and create interest in your business. Lastly, advertise at the right time—if you sell boats, advertise before summer; if you have a mountain resort, advertise before winter.
Pearl Media – The Expert in Out-of-Home Advertising
If you want to initiate an outdoor advertising campaign for your business, get in touch with the expert in Out-of-Home Advertising, Pearl Media. We can help you boost revenue for your business by displaying ads in the ideal locations. Contact us today!
