Brand storytelling has a significant role to play in the customer experience. Before and during interactions with your company, audiences want to know who you are, what your principles look like and what value you have to offer.
For this reason, brands must continue to invest in fresh, distinctive marketing opportunities — and outdoor advertising represents a momentous chance to engage with customers in the real world.
Here’s how outdoor ads tell your brand’s stories.
Out-of-home (OOH) marketing opportunities begin the moment a member of your target audience steps out their front door. No matter where they’re headed or what type of transit they’ll use along the way, consumers will come into contact with the billboards, signs, street furniture, digital ads or other media types that tell your brand’s story.
Although outdoor ads may use certain familiar marketing techniques, they represent a chance to share messages in very unique ways. Here are a few examples:
Outdoor advertising allows you to take advantage of elements that other marketing techniques, like radio advertising or TV commercials, may neglect. It also creates an expansive canvas upon which to share your message — one that uses different types of outdoor ads to emphasize different parts of your brand.
Let’s explore which ads are best at this immersive marketing technique.
Unlike other types of advertising, outdoor ads immerse your target audience in your brand story. When a consumer is constantly surrounded by different elements of your message and presented with innovative opportunities to interact depending on their location and activity, that consumer can engage on their own terms.
This immersion is particularly noteworthy for travelers, who come into contact with a wide variety of OOH media types on their journeys. Although not all members of your target audience are likely to be traveling constantly, this example nonetheless represents how different outdoor advertising media types can surround a consumer:
Rather than paying to park at an airport, this example consumer may choose to use public transport. This gives you a chance to catch their attention at the very beginning of their journey, when they might be excited, energetic and looking for new products or services to try along the way. If they hire a taxi, they’ll see the first part of your brand’s story on taxi top ads; if they’re catching a bus, train or subway, they’ll see this messaging while they wait.
Once the traveler reaches the airport, they’ll be in a new stage of their journey. They’ll likely have more time to search for a meal or wait for their flight, so your advertising campaign can be a bit more complex with longer messaging or interactive digital displays. When their plane lands, your brand will be ready to greet them, offering recommendations or ideas for how to spend time and money in what may be an unfamiliar city.
Whether they rent a vehicle or use public transit, the traveler is now busy exploring their destination. This means they’ll likely be paying attention to roads and scenery — which, in turn, gives you a chance to get their attention through a well-placed billboard ad. Depending on the type of advertisement and the sign structure, you may be able to choose between dynamic and static billboards for your messaging.
Once settled, this potential customer might spend some time shopping, whether for essentials or souvenirs. Take advantage of their excitement with POS displays that share your messaging in places where the consumer could potentially take that next step — for example, a poster on a window storefront.
These outdoor ads represent just a few of the many ways you can engage with consumers in fresh, exciting ways. Before building brand awareness or getting that well-deserved attention, however, you need to know where to begin.
Before designing an OOH marketing campaign, there are a few important things to consider, including:
By reviewing these elements, you can make more informed decisions on the types and locations of your outdoor ads, as well as the length of your OOH campaign.
It’s clear that, to get the most out of outdoor advertising, you need to have more detailed insight into all these variables and more. For this reason, it’s often best to begin your journey with help from an outdoor advertising partner.
At Billups, our relationships with vendors across the globe give us access to a rich, varied OOH landscape. Because you won’t have to make these connections or manage these relationships on your own, this “one-stop” process saves time and simplifies the marketing process. We’re also available to manage your campaign from planning to posting, including all necessary production phases.
The result is an outdoor advertising campaign that can be tailored to fit your needs, allowing you to achieve your goal: telling your brand’s story in the real world.
Billups helps brands like yours achieve their outdoor advertising goals. Our OOH marketing expertise and dedication to storytelling help you tell customers about your company, values, products and services. This is all made possible by utilizing various formats, sizes and environments that increase brand awareness and catch consumer attention in exciting ways. To start telling bigger, better brand stories, get in touch with us today!
