Out-of-home (OOH) advertising is still a brilliant pillar of brand awareness activity in modern-day marketing. From shopping centre billboards to transit hotspots, out-of-home ads can be central to your overall marketing strategy. The best out-of-home ads are:
- Eye-catching.
- Relevant.
- Genuinely memorable.
Tick these three boxes and you’re well on your way.
With traditional, static spots and the dynamism of digital out-of-home (DOOH), you get the dual benefit of huge reach and tuned targeting based on demographics, consumer needs, and much more.
Out-of-home and digital out-of-home ads aren’t a golden ticket to brand growth or greater engagement. But they are super effective when integrated with a rich, considered mix of other channels — digital and traditional.
When you get this multi-channel approach right, out-of-home becomes part of a considered, cohesive campaign drive; people will engage with your brand at several stages, with each channel complementing the others.
At Alight Media, we’re building positive connections with communities through out-of-home, helping you engage your desired audience and generate interest to nurture with follow-up campaign activity. We’re here to help you make out-of-home a success.
In this blog, we’ll be covering the several benefits of running out-of-home ads, providing advice for creating compelling out-of-home, and discussing other key considerations such as ad locations and multi-channel integration.
Suggested reading: For detailed coverage of how out-of-home can bolster small businesses specifically, check out our eBook here.
The big benefits of OOH ads
Let’s get right into it:
Reach and frequency: Out-of-home ads flourish in places with high footfall and plenty of eyeballs. Nearly 98% of people in the UK encounter at least one out-of-home ad every single week, so whether you opt for a spot on a major commuter route or slap bang in the city centre, a diverse and sizeable audience will see your ad multiple times. That consistent presence does wonders for brand recognition and recall.
Cost-effectiveness: The idea that out-of-home costs a lot and offers little is a common misconception. In fact, out-of-home often offers a lower cost per view than the likes of TV and radio, and a lower cost per thousand impressions (CPM) than several digital channels. With no minimum order value, our well-placed out-of-home ad activity offers excellent exposure and impact without breaking the bank — a standout option for businesses of all sizes.
Receptive audiences: There’s credibility to billboards and posters you just can’t quite match across digital ad spots. In short: people trust out-of-home. It appears in everyday environments, where a pop of colour or a cool message is most welcome. Audiences absorb and trust out-of-home more as it’s an exciting part of the public landscape.
Memorable and relevant: Out-of-home ads are a huge opportunity to shine a light on your brand in a unique way. Be creative and craft eye-catching designs, but always bear in mind what you want people to think and what action you want them to take. If it’s going to stick with them, you want it to be for the right reasons.
Reliable for driving a response: This is highly significant. Out-of-home can and does drive action and generate sales; a study by Marketing Week suggests that consumers who have seen a brand’s out-of-home ad are 17% more likely to engage with that brand further on their phones. Out-of-home generates real-world results.
And that’s not all. A major appeal of out-of-home in modern marketing is the ability to measure it and track its success. We’ll cover that in more detail a little later in this blog.
How to create compelling OOH campaigns
So, you’re developing out-of-home ads. How do you get it right? How do you maximise the chance of people engaging with your brand? Let’s explore the key steps:
1. Understand the audience
A sensible precursor to all advertising activity. Out-of-home is no different. What’s your target demographic? How do they behave? What are their problems and what are they interested in? Only by knowing where they spend their time and how they interact with their environment can you place your ads in the right spots and nail your creative.
2. Craft the message
People are often on the move when they see your out-of-home ads, so keep the message concise and direct. Tell a story in as few words as possible. Bonus points if you can introduce humour or wordplay. And what do you want people to do next? That will inform your call to action. Making your messaging sing is a huge step towards a memorable ad.
3. Nail the visual design
Avoid uninspiring design in your out-of-home ads — use bold colour schemes and big, readable fonts. Imagery will hinge on your brand, product, or service. Be as striking as possible without obscuring your message. Think nifty, attention-capturing design that the eye can easily process.
4. Tell a story
This is something of a culmination. Narrative helps you evoke emotions and create connections with those who see your out-of-home ad. Develop creative that perfectly aligns with your overarching brand strategy; you may opt to tell a story over a series of ads or pack a punch with one big billboard. Either way, you want people to search for your brand after seeing the ad.
Location, location, location
Just as you fine-tune your targeting parameters for a social campaign or test keywords for search activity, choosing the right location(s) is paramount for out-of-home ads. Here are some key things to consider:
Digital vs. traditional billboards: That is the question. And the answer? It depends. On your campaign goals. On your audience. On what you want people to feel. At Alight, you can select formats and locations with your specific audience and overarching out-of-home strategy in mind.
Digital out-of-home media offers dynamic content and flexibility to update creative based on performance. It can also accommodate interactive elements and real-time data to increase impact.
Traditional out-of-home ads offer a continuous presence and credibility through association with a specific spot, but they’re a little more costly to update and offer fewer means of measurement than digital out-of-home.
High-traffic areas: Explore places with a lot of people. The more people, the more eyes on your ad, the more impact your brand can have. Our data shows that footfall in regional towns and suburban high streets has risen considerably in recent years — so now’s the time to gain exposure in high-traffic areas.
Localised targeting: Maybe you want your product or service to reach a specific demographic or take off in a particular geography. Here, localised targeting is an excellent option, helping you deliver hyper-relevant messaging so it resonates more deeply. Alight’s billboard network is number one for total towns covered, so we’re very much in the business of improving localised out-of-home advertising.
Integrating OOH with other marketing channels
How often do you hear the term ‘digital-first’? We get it — digital channels have a huge role to play in advertising nowadays. But out-of-home remains a vital component.
Developing an intelligent multi-channel campaign is a challenge for marketing teams up and down the country. So where does out-of-home fit in? And how do we best capitalise on it?
Use OOH to enhance digital marketing: Out-of-home ads drive brand awareness and engagement early in the sales cycle, which digital channels can then amplify and nurture. People who spend more time out-of-home search 58% more on their smartphones and will search across a broader range of categories. A striking billboard or digital out-of-home spot can spark conversation across social channels, and the use of hashtags or QR codes in out-of-home can then tie into other digital activity.
Bridging the gap between offline and online activity encourages people to engage with your brand at more points in their decision-making process.
Cohesive, multi-channel strategies: Ultimately, out-of-home combines with other digital and traditional channels to create a unified brand message and maximise audience reach. Consistent visuals and messaging across platforms will make your brand more memorable and inspire people to take action.
Measuring performance
We hear it all too often:
“It’s hard to track ROI on out-of-home ads.”
“We can’t measure out-of-home as closely as we can digital activity.”
“How do we know it’s working?”
Thankfully, these myths are falling by the wayside. Here are some of the main ways you can measure the brand impact and overall effectiveness of out-of-home:
Measuring traditional OOH
Footfall is the big one. How many people are active where your ads are? Evaluating those numbers against sales uplift helps you determine how out-of-home is driving revenue.
Brand recall and recognition are other key metrics you can determine through brand surveys and focus groups. Knowing how many people remember seeing the ad and can recall its key message is a great way of determining impact. You can also monitor reactions, commentary, hashtags and discussions on socials that relate to the out-of-home ads.
Measuring DOOH
All of the above plus a bit more. Digital out-of-home offers improved impression count accuracy, with a clear breakdown of the numbers that have passed/stopped at the ad. Compare this against spikes in web traffic from specific mobile locations to indicate increased brand impact.
You may also incorporate a QR code and measure scans. And finally, attribution modelling uses geo-data to indicate how online search activity and brand engagement links to specific digital out-of-home ads.
So yes, you can measure out-of-home performance. And yes, it’s invaluable in a multi-channel marketing drive. And yes, we’d love to help you make out-of-home ads a big hitter in your campaigns.
Positively different OOH from Alight Media
We create big impacts for brands and build positive connections with communities across the UK through out-of-home.
Utilising the latest out-of-home technologies, our influence transcends the biggest cities to engage genuinely receptive audiences in every region. Our extensive portfolio of out-of-home placements makes us the UK’s market leader in digital billboard reach.
Vitally, we work with businesses of all sizes and from a dizzying array of industries. Our versatility and end-to-end out-of-home support pave the way for business growth, reaching young and old, near and far, with consistent aplomb.
Our commitment to sustainability also sets us apart. We use 100% renewable energy across our out-of-home estate and work with environmental specialists to track progress and reduce our emissions.
Maximise your brand impact
With online advertising highly saturated, out-of-home cuts through the noise of the browse to build brand awareness with your desired audience.
Our out-of-home collateral is built for modern movement, reaching and influencing people in their daily lives.
Tried, tested, and consistently trusted, our out-of-home offers outstanding reach for super reasonable prices. With compelling messaging and distinct visuals, the results will come, and you’ll see them first-hand thanks to a host of evolving tracking methods.
Get in touch with us to discover the positive impact out-of-home media can have on your business.