Out-of-home (OOH) advertising is everywhere. You can see outdoor ads on the side of the highway, on the walls of your city, and even at bus stops. Advertisers love OOH because it brings them results.

Outdoor advertising has been around for decades because it works. Technological innovations will only make OOH more effective and easier to implement. Here are some important reasons why you should include OOH in your marketing efforts.

Engage Your Audience

You might be surprised to learn that people like outdoor advertisements. They present a welcome interruption from the monotonous highway or a plain building wall. Because people like OOH, they respond to these ads. More than two thirds of people admit OOH is likely to influence a purchase. The same study found that 35% of people who see an OOH ad make a purchase. If you’re looking to engage your audience and drive them toward your brand, OOH is a great addition to your toolbelt.

Invest Less

OOH is perfect for brands who are not looking to spend a lot of money on advertising. Ads are often measured in CPM (cost per thousand impressions), and OOH consistently delivers the same audience at a lower rate—between $3 and $8. Other media like TV and even online advertising can cost more than twice that amount. This frees up some of your marketing budget for you to invest in other media to create a more cohesive campaign.

Find High-Value Audiences

OOH is just as techy as any other media. Thanks to Geopath, our audiences and impressions are measurable and accountable. We can learn exactly who sees an ad, and divide the audiences into demographics based on age, gender, income level, and more. This can let us compare the audiences we are reaching with the audiences from TV, radio, print, and online. By focusing on audiences, we are able to exhibit your ads based on your target demographics and make sure you’re reaching your intended audience.

Extend Your Reach

Outdoor advertising is cost-efficient—you pay less and you get more. However, OOH also improves the reach of your other marketing campaigns. For instance, adding outdoor ads to your media plan can increase the reach of TV ads by 18% and mobile ads by a whopping 316%. OOH is the great equalizer; it has great potential to help on its own, but it also boosts the reach of your other marketing efforts and helps you reach more people in total.

Advertising exists to increase revenue. There’s no point in spending money to advertise if your business is not going to be making money in the long run. 

So, how does OOH ensure you get your return on your investment (ROI)?

High ROI

OOH works because it’s affordable and effective. A recent study reported that for every $1 spent on outdoor advertising, businesses generate $2.80 in revenue. Another study shows OOH has a higher ROI than any other traditional advertising media. 

When you integrate OOH into your overall marketing campaign, it actually strengthens your brand awareness and makes your other ads more effective. One study found that adding OOH into the mix increased the ROI of online advertising by 40%! These are serious numbers to consider.

Drives Online Engagement

Study after study finds that OOH takes people to your online presence. 48% of people are more likely to click on a mobile ad after having seen the same ad in an outdoor ad campaign. Moreover, for every dollar spent, OOH drives more people online to take action.

According to Nielsen, after people saw an OOH ad:

• 46% searched online

• 38% took action on Facebook

• 23% took action on Twitter

• 25% took action on Instagram

It’s a no-brainer. By itself, OOH is incredibly effective, taking your marketing budget and putting it to good use. In an integrated campaign, OOH helps increase the effectiveness of your other advertising efforts. If you’re not advertising with OOH, you are missing out on a proven advertising format and the opportunity to boost your marketing campaign as a whole.

Many businesses may think OOH has rules set in stone. However, OOH is actually a really flexible medium. We can make any changes to your campaign to get the results you want.

Flexible Formats

We have different formats to fit any number of campaign goals. Currently, we use eight different formats to advertise our clients’ brands. These formats range in size from smaller HotSpots to large Billboards or Bus Wraps. Depending on location, we can make the size fit your purpose.

But there are other factors as well. For instance, if you are looking specifically for a billboard next to the highway, you can go with the traditional Billboard, a static creative, or you can implement a Trivision or Digital campaign. While these formats are all similar in size, they have different advantages depending on your goals.

If you’re looking to advertise in a densely populated area like Chicago, we have smaller formats that can fit your strategy. Wild Postings, Wallscapes, and Street Furniture are all excellent and different ways to approach outdoor advertising.

Multiple Options

When you advertise with us, you have the option of trying out any of the formats we offer, but you also get our decades of experience in strategic implementation of outdoor advertising campaigns. 

We can set up OOH campaigns for any goals. Brand awareness, audience engagement, targeting specific demographics--these are all common reasons why companies integrate outdoor ads into their marketing efforts, and we have been achieving these goals since day one.

Looking to reach millions of people? Highway billboards are your friend. Or do you prefer to make repeated impressions on your target audience? Our hyper-local approach is for you. You can use OOH to direct someone to your physical location, to drive them toward your website, to show them a new line of products. The options are endless.

Strategy 1: Make a Big Impact

The idea behind this strategy is to increase your brand awareness in high-quality markets. It’s a popular strategy because it gives your brand the “wow” factor. Think about the shiny billboards that saturate Times Square, or a Bus Wrap traveling in Downtown Chicago. These billboards make a huge impact because they get seen by millions of people even when it’s not a busy day. Big brands love this approach because, while it’s purpose is not to immediately drive a purchase, it tells your customers that you exist and that you are the best at what you do. For brands with a bigger budget, this strategy can be a winning one, and if done right, can help your brand sail over the competition. Your brand will be the only name in your customer’s mind when they need products like yours.

Strategy 2: Find New Customers

Markets are not all the same. Some markets are incredibly underrated and underutilized, and these markets are often lower costs to run advertisements. This presents a perfect opportunity to reach new customers at an affordable rate. This goes against our ingrained desire to have our brands filling the best locations in the most glamorous cities. However, that strategy might not work for your brand. In fact, you might be spending more money and getting less results. In the underutilized market, you can cast a wider net across smaller markets and reach more people, or you can saturate one market and make a deep impression. With our experience, we can help you get in front of the right customers, no matter where you advertise.

Strategy 3: Find YOUR Customers

You might not realize it, but you are probably collecting mountains of data about your customers: where they shop, where they live, their shopping habits, etc. By using this information, you can find, reach, target, and engage your customers through outdoor advertising with an increased precision. For instance, if many of your customers have a specific zip code, you can place an outdoor ad on a busy highway in that zip code and expect to reach the people who are already purchasing your products. While this approach is more driven by data, it’s not about giving you a wide reach. However, you will get your product in front of those that matter: the people who are already buying into your brand. You can motivate them to take action, to follow you online--either way, your messaging is more likely to resonate with this audience. As a matter of policy, you should be arranging your customers’ data to find out more about who is buying your products. We can help you sort through the information and come up with an effective strategy to target your customer base.

Strategy 4: Have Your Customers Take Action

It’s not always an easy task to drive your audience to take action. However, outdoor advertising can help you influence your customers’ journey by driving foot traffic to physical locations. A billboard on the side of I-94 can lead you to a McDonald’s a few exits away. These billboards exist, and big brands use them constantly because they work. This is a very specific type of strategy, and might not have the extended reach or targeted appeal of other strategies. But if you are looking to have someone stop by your physical location, where you may then have other methods of driving customer actions, you could be setting yourself up for success. Because of their specific function, these billboard strategies are often very cost-effective and affordable.

Strategy 5: Fight Your Competition

For some brands, their main goal is to take more control over market share in their industry. If this is the case, then you might have to roll up your sleeves, because one of the best ways to do so is to advertise near your competitor’s location. You could be a new brand trying to make it in an established market, or an established brand trying to wrestle some market share from an old competitor. Either way, by advertising your brand in contrast to another brand, you can set up key points of differentiation that will make customers choose you over them. This can be a provocative strategy, but it can be incredibly effective when it comes to changing your customers’ habits, especially if customers are in full shopping mode. 

Strategy 6: Last Minute Deals

For those who like to take risks, this option might be suited for you. OOH inventory is often bought out weeks or months in advance by brands with tight marketing campaigns. However, there are times when OOH inventory is available, and this inventory will often be sold at a discount. So, if you plan ahead and have ad copy ready to send in an email, you could take advantage of discounts. Of course, you might not find available inventory if you wait this long. The other drawback is that this inventory might not be the best fit for you, so while you won’t have all the choices you would if you plan ahead, you can save some money and still get your branding out there.

Strategy 7: Learn From Your Past Campaigns

Data-driven companies often have the most effective marketing campaigns. When you use the data from past marketing efforts, you are much more likely to make decisions that steer you toward a better initiative or strategy. We have incredible tools at our disposal, like Geopath, that can give us a complete picture of how your outdoor signage is working. For instance, we know how many impressions your ad makes, or how many cars drove by. We know how many people go online after seeing your OOH ad, especially when we include trackers like vanity URLs or QR codes. Some clients with big budgets like to set up billboard campaigns with the express purpose of collecting data about their customers and their habits in order to use this information in further marketing campaigns, even in social media.

There are many more custom strategies we have employed with our clients, but these are great to get you started. If you want any help setting up a billboard campaign or integrating your digital campaign with outdoor signage, reach out to our billboard experts and get your personalized strategy.

Outdoor ads are all about the ad copy, or the images and text used to promote your brand. Because OOH exists in the real world where people walk and drive past, your message needs to come across quickly. An outdoor add full of text will be impossible to read, and an ad full of different images might be difficult to parse. Ideally, you pick one main image and one main message, and you make sure it sticks.

For some brands, OOH is an excellent opportunity to be creative, to showcase their branding in artistic and ingenious ways. Here are some of our favorite examples of outdoor ad copy. With designs like these, you’re likely to catch your audience’s attention.

As a general rule, make sure your design is simple. It doesn’t have to be minimalistic, but it should be easy to understand visually in a matter of seconds. Don’t try to fit three ideas into one billboard—packing your billboards full of information often works to obfuscate the meaning and messaging of your branding. Your audience is either driving or walking by your billboard. Think about a design that can be understood in four to five seconds.

The typeface or font you use is important to relay understanding. Using a special font might seem like it will catch attention, but your priority with typefaces should be to make sure it’s legible from all distances. This often translates to using large fonts without thin strokes or ornate calligraphy. Make sure the spacing between letters (kerning) is appropriate, as well as the spacing between words and lines. Pro tip: avoid using all caps; rather, use words with capital and small case letters because these are easier to read.

When it comes to color, always go for colors that produce a contrast. Low contrast colors are going to look the same from a distance, and they will make the message difficult to interpret. However, contrasting color can be an effective part of an outdoor sign. In fact, high color contrast can improve ad recall by 38%. By using contrasting colors, not only will you ensure your ad pops, but you will make sure the messaging sticks with your customers.

Digital billboards have different design tips due to their more technological format. The same advice applies in terms of legibility and contrast, but you’ll also want to avoid using a solid white background. With LEDs, solid white isn’t as vibrant and can look subdued. However, you have a lot more options with digital billboards. You can set up your billboard to change every day or even every hour, with complementary messages that tell a cohesive story.

Interested in seeing how your ad will look like on a billboard? The Outdoor Advertising Association of America has a mockup generator that helps you see what your ad will look like in a realistic environment. If you’re interested in using the tool, you’ll have to create an account on their site, but it’s worth it to get a sense for OOH design in its natural environment.

When you plan online and offline advertising in conjunction with one another, you are in a better position to help them work together to bring you the results you seek. Integrating your campaign with online efforts can bring you benefits that you might not be aware are possible.

Reach More Audiences

Online ads are often very targeted. The more people you want to reach, the more you have to pay. However, billboards cast a wide net. A billboard on the side of I-90 gets millions of views on a single campaign. Some of these people might be audiences you never thought to reach out to, and you might develop new customers from the effort.

Accurate Measurement

Using tools like Geopath, we can collect all kinds of data from the impressions your ad receives. This information is often more trustworthy than the data received from online platforms because it is audited and passed through a rigorous process of verification. So when you see that you are getting thousands of impressions, rest assured those are real people and not online bots.

Feedback Loop

When you integrate digital campaigns and outdoor signage, you can use the data collected from both to improve each campaign. By learning more about each campaign and your customers through the data you collect, you can make the next integrated campaign you create more effective.

Billboard budgets depend heavily on your business, your marketing budget, and the results you seek.

Goal-Based Implementation

Our end goal is to bring you the results you are looking for. For this reason, our first aim is to get to know your business and what you’d like to get out of outdoor advertising and marketing campaigns in general. Based on your desired results, we can create a personalized campaign, designed to fit your budget and get you the results you need to make marketing worth the effort. 

Campaign Integration

For many larger brands, we handle the outdoor advertising component of their larger media plan. For these clients, our aim is to learn everything we can about the campaign, the brand, and the product, with the final goal of reaching their intended audiences. The pricing of the ads will depend on the value of the audiences and the locations requested. 

Cost Factors

There are many factors that affect billboard advertising costs. Many of them are pretty self-explanatory, such as size and duration of the campaign. However, there are cost factors that many outside the industry are not aware of. We try to be transparent with our process with every client because we aim to make outdoor advertising affordable and intuitive.