The summer months are a prime time to invest in outdoor advertising. People spend more time outside than at any other point of the year, and there’s an increase in tourism and leisure activities, so your ads will get lots of attention.

Follow the steps in this guide to make the most of your outdoor advertising this summer.

Pick a goal

With any outdoor ad campaign you need to think about what you want to achieve in order to get the best results.

• Do you want to draw attention to a new store opening in a new location?
• Are you looking to boost sales during the peak summer season?
• Do you want more traffic for your website, or more downloads for your app?

Perhaps you aim for some combination of the above, but whatever your goals, make them as specific as possible.

Know how to measure your goals

Making the most out of your outdoor ad campaign means not only knowing what you want to achieve but also knowing how you will recognise if it’s been a success.

• Will sales improve by 10%?
• Will your campaign’s hashtag go viral?
• Will you double the amount of customers in your store during the campaign?

Bear in mind these goals are rough indicators, as long as your results are moving in the right direction you can count your ad campaign as a success. You’ll also be better able to improve your marketing strategy in the future and gain a better understanding of what makes a good ad campaign tick.

Develop a solid strategy

The kind of strategy you use to run your outdoor campaigns will decide whether you succeed or fail. This is because outdoor advertising is not just about posting a billboard here or running a bus stop ad there. It’s about understanding how the different aspects of your campaign fit together and feed into each other.

But the question remains, what kind of strategy will be the most effective for my brand?

Well, the way to develop an effective strategy is to start with the goals you want to achieve and then work backwards from that, at each stage asking, “how should I best achieve my goals?”

Target a specific audience

With advertising it’s tempting to cast your net as wide as possible. That might be ok if you have an unlimited budget, but the reality is, unless you’re Coca Cola, your audience is going to be a relatively small section of the general public. The trick is to target your ads to these people as specifically as possible. This will make your outdoor campaigns extremely efficient, and more effective.

Let’s say your goal is to get more customers through the doors of your DIY store. A good idea might be to only advertise in a 3-mile radius of your store. This would mean you’d only be targeting those most likely to make the trip to your outlet, rather than going to their nearest B&Q. Similarly, your audience are probably going to be in the 30-50 age range, so your campaign should be focussed on targeting these people.

Similarly, let’s say you have a product that is aimed at weekend revelers. It might be a waste of ad budget to advertise 24/7, 7 days a week. A much better idea would be to take out digital ads that only display on evenings during the weekend.

Pick your ad format wisely

To make the most of your outdoor adverts you should choose formats that are the best fit for your strategy and that best suit your goals.

If you’re targeting commuters on a budget, you may want to choose bus stop ads.

Image: www.pmaoutdoor.co.uk

If you want to get your brand in the minds of drivers, roadside billboards or petrol station ads may be the way to go.

Perhaps you want to target older people with lots of disposable income. Think about buying ads in golf clubs!

The point is that there are lots of different types of outdoor ads. Each ad format has a different effect and situations where they are most effective. You should know why you’ve chosen the format you have, it shouldn’t be an arbitrary choice. Check out our blog or get in touch to find out which ad format best suit your needs.

Get creative

None of the above tips are going to be of much use if you don’t have a well designed, carefully constructed and creatively executed ad concept.

To make the most out of your summer campaigns, your ad design should do the following:

• Clearly convey your unique selling point or USP
• Resonate with your audience and “speak their language”
• Create an emotional response in your audience
• Be uncluttered, clear, and show people what your brand can do for them

Optimise your outdoor campaigns

So you have a strategy for achieving your marketing goals, you’ve chosen a specific audience to target, you know what outdoor ad format works best for your needs, and you have a killer ad design. It’s now time to ad extra touches that will amplify the impact of your outdoor campaign.

This might include:

• Linking your ad to social media by using a hashtag
• Using QR codes or other “Near Field Communication” technology to quickly link audiences to your website or additional content
• Run a social media campaign in conjunction with your outdoor campaign to reinforce your message to a targeted audience

Buy low cost outdoor ads online

We hope these tips have shown you how you can make the best out of outdoor advertising this summer. Now that you are suitably informed and, we hope, inspired, you can easily start searching for outdoor ads on our interactive map (no signup required). We offer the best deals for small and medium sized businesses and can even design your ad for you. Now, schools out for the summer.