Outdoor Advertising for SMEs

Are you a small to medium-sized enterprise (SME)? If so what’s your approach to advertising?

You’re always up against it as a smaller firm without a big marketing budget. You need advertising that delivers a healthy return on your investment.

Outdoor advertising for SMEs is one effective answer. It’s not just for the corporate giants. There are huge benefits for SMEs targeting a local market.

What is an SME?

There are 5.4 million SMEs in the UK – 99.3% of all UK firms, in fact.

The standard definition of an SME is a company with fewer than 250 employees, a turnover of below £43 million, and a balance sheet of £37 million.

The smallest form of SME is the microbusiness, with fewer than 10 staff and a turnover of £1.72 million. 95% of all UK SMEs are microbusinesses.

The Advertising Challenge for SMEs

As an SME your target market is much more local than for a nationwide corporation. But many SMEs feel hamstrung by their budget and avoid ambitious advertising campaigns. Of all the money spent on advertising in the UK only 18% comes from SMEs.

Few can afford to use advertising agencies. Instead SMEs often handle their own marketing and rely on company websites, direct mail and email promotions.

All are useful methods but they’re limited too. Your website is just one amongst so many competitors, and with direct mail and emails, you’re limited to a subscriber list or customer database.

Outdoor Advertising – the Affordable Way to Boost Your Brand

This is where outdoor advertising comes in so handy for SMEs. It’s the simple way to reach a huge audience. It’s as old as any advertising method and it’s still used because it works.

Outdoor advertising targets consumers on the move in public places. You simply rent spaces like billboards, bus shelters, phone boxes, digital displays, and the sides of taxis and buses in which to place your ad.

It’s an affordable approach. A quarter page ad in a monthly trade journal costs upwards of £2,000. Compare that to the starter price of £160 we offer at Bubble for two weeks of outdoor advertising.

The Benefits

There’s a misconception that outdoor advertising is just for the big corporations. People link outdoor ads to the big firms. And that works in your favour as an SME. Using outdoor advertising is a sign for many consumers of your prestige and importance.

That makes it ideal for boosting your profile. Outdoor advertising locations ensure you’re exposed to lots of potential consumers. They’re deliberately chosen for the amount of footfall and passing traffic so your outdoor ad can’t be ignored as direct mail or an email can.

You can target key locations too with location based advertising. If you’re a boutique store in a shopping mall you can place ads at the entrance to the mall or in the mall car park where you know there’ll be potential customers.

Outdoor ads can also boost the performance of your other marketing. When consumers see your name on a billboard or poster they’re more likely to respond positively to a direct mail offer and to click onto your website from a page of Google results.

They’re really effective too for promotional campaigns. You can buy the outdoor advertising space for a certain timespan – the same as your promo campaign – and use the ad to tell consumers about 10% off all deals in the next fortnight, say.

You can even stick a discount or QR code on the advert for consumers to use in-store so you know exactly how effective the poster or billboard has been.