Out-of-Home Ads: Does It Increase Business?
You’re a business owner and you’re looking to grow your business. What advertising method should you use? More importantly what’s going to generate the most results? These are all questions you probably have asked yourself. With only so many marketing dollars to go around, you want to make sure you stretch every dollar. That’s not always as easy as it sounds. You need to weigh the pros and cons of each opportunity and determine which form is best for your business.
photo/Gerd Altmann
You most likely have been presented with some form of out of home advertising (ooh) package or idea while evaluating your options. Like with the other options you most likely are left asking yourself if ooh ads can increase business.
Ooh is designed to reach consumers when they are out of their homes and on the go. People spend the majority of their time outside of their homes. This gives business owners a great opportunity to present effective messaging like bus wraps, sidewalk signs, or even billboards to target these consumers.
Ooh advertising which in many scenarios is referred to as outdoor advertising basically is the process of showcasing marketing materials in outdoor spaces or venues that are frequented by consumers. This is used to promote brands, boost public visibility, and ultimately grow sales.
Advertising with out of home advertising can improve your marketing plan in a number of ways, but how do you actually track the results, and which measuring tools should you use?
“More than ever, brands are seeking analytics to help them understand the value of their marketing investments,” says Stephen Freitas, CMO of Out-Of-Home Advertising Association of America (OAAA).
One of the primary and unique benefits of ooh advertising is the delivery of actual viewed impressions and the ability to reach masses. With outdoor advertising, people don’t have a choice but to see the advertisements and whether they remember it or not from the first time the repeated impressions make a huge difference.
There are several marketing attributes for measuring the effectiveness of ooh ad campaigns. In most cases, it breaks down four ways:
- Store Visits: this is the percentage of consumers that purchase in a physical store setting as a direct result of coming across an ooh advertisement.
- Purchase Consideration: this is the customer evaluation of how the offering meets their need or needs.
- Purchase Intent: this is the actual probability that a consumer will buy a product or service from ooh advertisement.
- Ad Recall: this is the percentage of consumers who recall a specific ooh advertisement or brand that they came across after exposure has ceased
Consider that like with any multi-channel marketing campaign, your going to see several touchpoints along the path to conversion. This is called multi-touch attribution, which basically tracks and assigns fractional credit to these touchpoints along the conversion path.
So how do you track ooh performance? One of the best and most effective ways to track ooh performance is through the process of digital trails. Digital trails can include vanity URLs, microsites, promo codes, and links. This allows marketers the ability to track how often consumers are visiting them based on their advertisement.
Just always remember, it’s important to tackle outdoor advertising strategically and precisely. It’s also crucial to have a full understanding of your targeted audience including their character and how ooh influences them. This includes understanding your marketing strategy inside out, as well as assigning a purpose for every touchpoint.
As you gather more insights and as stronger data is gathered, you can better define the impact of your campaigns and learn what best drives results.
Author: Jacob Maslow
