For as long as most of us have been driving, we’ve seen billboards on major roads and highways used to convey a wide range of messages. When done correctly, billboard advertising is an effective way to reach a diverse audience with a targeted message. But, does this medium make sense for your business?
Billboard advertising may make sense for your business if . . .
You want to reach a large and broad audience
One of the many benefits of outdoor advertising is the great opportunity for reach. Whether you have a big announcement to make or simply want to increase your company’s brand awareness, billboards placed strategically will surely get in front of a wide audience.
Your business benefits from customer’s impulse decisions
We’ve all made impulse decisions on the way home from work – heading to a local bar to meet friends, swinging by the pharmacy to pick up a prescription, or stopping at the grocery store to pick up a couple things for dinner. Billboards serve as fantastic reminders and can persuade consumers into making impulse decisions. For example, you may remember on your way home that you need lunch meat or candy for your child’s Halloween party. A drug store could benefit from the use of a billboard reminding potential customers that there is a store just off the nearest exit.
You want to reinforce other marketing tactics
It’s no secret that for a marketing message to be effective, it must be repeated. And repeated. And repeated. Instead of overwhelming consumers on one platform, such as airing a radio spot over and over throughout the day, it’s more effective to reach them with different mediums. Billboards can and should be creatively designed to reinforce and align with other marketing tactics being executed at the same time.
Your product or service has conditional content
An attractive benefit of billboards is that with newer digital options, the creative can be changed or rotated with minimal costs to the advertiser. Now, messages can be changed based on a conditional factor such as heavy traffic, a home team win, or the weather. For example, if there is a business that is influenced by the chance of rain, such as a weatherproofing company, at least two different ads could be loaded into their rotation. The “generic ad” would air until there was a chance of rain. If there was a chance of rain, the “rain ad” would appear, reminding customers that the company is there if they experience disaster due to the predicted weather.
You want your creative to stand out
Some of the best creative campaigns are displayed on billboards. Because the design must be concise and clear to get someone’s attention as they drive by, the creative used for billboards can be very memorable if done well.