4 tips to stay ahead with your outdoor advertising campaign

Outdoor advertising is a powerful medium to help unlock the growth potential of your brand. You gain a lot of advantage from the fact that is an underused resource for small and medium sized businesses. But although it has its natural advantages, you can’t afford to be complacent. There are plenty of brands to contend with in the outdoor marketing arena. If you want to keep your advantage, you need to make sure you optimise the impact of your outdoor campaigns. Following these four tips will help you stay ahead with your advertising campaign.

Do your research

It’s a funny thing, but many brands act like they’re the first ones to ever think of outdoor advertising. There are so many pitfalls brands can fall into; errors that have been made in the past and will continue to be made in the future, and all because marketers don’t do their research into what works and what doesn’t. There’s a scene in the cult comedy series Dark Place where a hack author boasts about having written more books than he’s read. Well, the fact is that many advertisers have run more campaigns than they’ve studied.

Blogs like ours are a great way to keep up to date with the latest and greatest in the world of outdoor advertising, and you can even learn what mistakes to avoid.

It will help you not re-invent the wheel when designing and implementing your campaigns and will give you the creative inspiration needed to stay ahead with your outdoor advertising.

Keep refreshing your USP

Your brand’s unique selling point (USP) should set the tone for all your outdoor advertising activities. Each new campaign is an opportunity to present your brand’s unique characteristics to consumers in a new way. Take Kit Kat’s “take a break” slogan. They position their brand as a way to indulge in a tasty snack by taking time out from your daily routine. Their most effective adverts reinforce and refresh this message every time. From the billboard left unfinished because the worker installing the poster has taken a snack break, to their social media campaign encouraging consumers to post photos of #mybreak; each campaign refreshes their USP. Think about how your outdoor campaign can take your brand’s story forwards and reinforce your key message.

Image by: http://www.adweek.com/files/kitkat-unfinished-billboard-ep.jpg

Integrate, integrate, integrate

It’s tempting to see each advert you run as a separate entity with a life of its own, rather than a connected part of a much wider network of effective advertising practices. You want a billboard, so you design artwork and slap it up on a 48-sheet. Job done. What you should actually be doing is thinking about how to connect the billboard to other strands of your marketing mix. For example, how are you going use your outdoor ad to drive mobile engagement? Are you pushing consumers towards your website which is set up to turn leads into customers? Are you encouraging viewers to post content using your hashtag? Think about how you can move audiences from a chance encounter with your ad to a deeper engagement with your brand; and how you can link up the different stands of your campaign.

Think strategically about your outdoor advertising locations

Outdoor advertising gives you an opportunity to reach out to audiences with a highly granular level of detail. Targeting students and those on a budget? Seek out ad sites near universities or in affordable areas of town. Struggling to connect to rural audiences? Post Office advertising gives you access to people who live in villages and rural locations. Just opened a new restaurant or shop? Take out post box or street furniture ads near your store.

The trick is to understand your target audience demographic and then ask yourself, “where are these people to be found?” Are they hanging out in shopping malls? Commuting to work? Relaxing in a trendy bar or restaurant, or filling up at petrol stations? Once you know where your audience are likely to be found, you can then search for ad locations in the relevant area. From bus stop ads to digital forecourt screens, to street advertising, leveraging the geographical aspect of outdoor advertising is a powerful way to stay ahead with your outdoor campaigns.