Despite being one of the oldest ways of advertising and marketing, outdoor advertising is still one of the commonly-used techniques for business owners to advertise their products and services. Effective, visually attractive, and appealing outdoor advertising has the ability to impact audiences on a large scale.
On the other hand, if you look around, you will see an overwhelming number of billboards across popular areas of the city. A Global Outdoor Advertising Market report stated that is expected to reach a total market size of $8.26M by the year 2023.
Due to a highly fragmented market, increased competition and the increasing popularity of aerial advertising, it is becoming more challenging to catch the target audience’s attention. Let us see various types of outdoor advertising, and we will also share the top 5 tips with up to automate outdoor advertising.
Types of outdoor advertising
There are many types of outdoor advertising. The primary common difference between all is the size and placement of the advertisement. Let’s understand the various types:
- Billboard advertising: It is one of the oldest and most commonly used ways of advertising.
- Street furniture: It includes advertising placed on telephone booths, kiosks, and bus shelters.
- Mobile billboards: Advertisements done on sides of buses and trucks
- Point of sale displays: This kind of displays are used near checkout or billing counter to attract buyers who take impulse decisions
- Guerilla advertising: It is lower costing unconventional marketing, which is usually done by placing outdoor units. It is a more effective type of advertising if used effectively.
Advantages of outdoor advertising
In March 2018, The Hustle published a report which concluded that billboards have one of the lowest costs of reach per a thousand people. The cost of reaching 1,000 people via billboards is $5.22 on average.
Meanwhile, it costs $11.20 on average to reach 1,000 people via Facebook. In comparison, for more extensive marketing campaigns; billboards will cost even lower than 50% of Facebook’s cost. Besides the lower cost of reaching people, there are multiple other advantages of outdoor advertising such as high impact, ability to reach a massive number of people in popular areas.
Tips on Automating Outdoor Advertising
- Make the best out of outdoor advertising software
Just like there are software products for inventory management, the same way there are useful online platforms for outdoor advertising. There are multiple media management tools which provide automation for out-of-home advertising.
One of the use cases of such software is for you to find new billboards where you can showcase your ads. Apart from billboards, it will also show the nearest grocery stores, gyms, restaurants, and gyms. This will help you identify trends and identify the highly-populated area, which will make your advertisement reach a higher number of people.
- Automate your advertising strategy
Automated software will help you to purchase outdoor assets based on location, display frequency for digital ads, and make necessary adjustments in the ad format. More advanced systems will craft a customized campaign template based on the size of the brand and type of audience. After the advertiser enters necessary details, the system will display useful campaign ideas based on the campaigns run by other brands in the past. It will also take note of the target audience, desired outcomes, and budget.
- Automating ad monitoring
Monitoring the effectiveness of any offline campaign has been a significant challenge to date. It is daunting to track campaign effectiveness and measure ROI. Such kind of control is desirable for businesses so that they can make informed business decisions.
There are specific ways to automate ad monitoring, which may use facial recognition. This way, you can determine how many people have seen the ads and for how many seconds. This type of monitoring systems has enormous potential in the future.
- Implement the best practices of outdoor advertising
Craft a robust and effective outdoor advertising marketing strategy that would leave an impact on your audience so they won’t forget. Your aim and goal for effective outdoor advertising campaign should be strategic and it should also be a shareable content, which may include call-to-action, USP, and RTB (reason to buy). Apart from selecting a suitable location for your campaign, you need to make your message stands out and gets remembered. If you don’t have the skills and knowledge to do this, then you can take the help of an organized creative agency.
- Automate outdoor advertising booking for direct customers
Your outdoor advertising company can easily and quickly automate booking for direct customers using outdoor advertising software. By using the booking automation software and e-commerce functionality, your direct customers can enter preferred pin-code/zip-code, check available spot and finalize the type of advertising and duration.
Once they complete the online payment, they will be able to upload their artwork and other required files for the outdoor campaign with the software. This will highly automate customer requirement gathering process and save the time of both the entities.
Outdoor advertising is an effective way to reach your target audience
Outdoor advertising helps you market your products and services to the target audience. In outdoor advertising, automation has made advertising efficient and more accessible to SMEs. Automation technology is building rapidly as more brands are turning to OOH automation.
However, your marketing strategy has to be competitive and strong. Otherwise, it won’t be an optimal use of your marketing budget. Your marketing team must have a strong sense of what will work in the market and what wouldn’t. When advertising is done correctly, your company will benefit significantly.
Get Perfect Billboards & Other OOH Media In Few Clicks!
Adbuq lets you easily browse hundreds of premium billboard and other OOH media inventory nationally.
Each board’s specs, photo, billboard pricing is listed and insights on the board such as CPM and estimated impressions are all available, allowing you to find digital signage or the perfect billboards for your next advertising campaign.
