Outdoor media is a crucial component of a comprehensive marketing strategy, providing broad reach and high visibility.
To maximise the impact of your campaign, it’s essential to develop a well-planned outdoor media strategy that aligns with your overall marketing objectives.
This guide outlines the key steps to create an effective outdoor media campaign that captures attention and drives results.
Understanding Your Objectives
Start by clearly defining your campaign objectives.
Whether your goal is to build brand awareness, generate leads, or drive direct sales, your objectives will shape your campaign’s direction.
Ensure these objectives align with your overall marketing strategy to maintain consistency in your messaging and brand positioning.
Identifying Your Target Audience
Knowing your target audience is critical to the success of your outdoor media strategy.
The process of customer and market research should include reviewing the techniques and strategies used by your competitors.
Define your audience based on demographic and psychographic factors, and consider where they spend their time.
This will help you choose the best locations and formats for your ads, ensuring that your message reaches the right people at the right time and successfully converts.
Choosing the Right Media Formats
Outdoor media offers a variety of formats, including billboards, transit ads, street furniture, and digital displays.
Select the format that best suits your objectives, budget, and audience behaviour.
For example, billboards are ideal for high-visibility campaigns, while digital displays provide flexibility for real-time updates and multiple messages.
Picking the Right Location
Location is everything in outdoor advertising.
The effectiveness of your campaign in terms of impressions and audience reached, heavily depends on where your ads are placed.
Choose high-traffic and high-footfall areas that align with your target audience’s daily routines.
Consider the visibility of the location—will your ad be easily seen from the road, or is it in a spot with a lot of pedestrian traffic?
Also, think about the surrounding environment and the context it sits within; ads near competitors or complementary businesses can maximise relevance and impact.
Conducting a site analysis can help ensure that you’re selecting locations that offer the best exposure and return on investment.
Developing Compelling Creatives
Your ad’s creative content is what captures attention.
Focus on simplicity and impact—use bold visuals, concise messaging, and high-contrast colours to ensure readability from a distance.
Tailor your content to different formats and sizes, maintaining consistency across all platforms.
For product-oriented brands, it’s fair to surmise that emotional ad content performs better than a rational alternative.
Producing creative with an emotional pull appears to be more effective when looking to drive sales conversions.
DOOH campaigns using contextually relevant messaging—such as adjusting content based on time, location, or weather—significantly boost consumer engagement.
The study found that such campaigns led to an 18% increase in brain response and a 17% improvement in spontaneous ad recall. This approach also resulted in a 16% uplift in sales compared to traditional DOOH ads.
Other factors to consider:
- Consider The Layout: The layout and structure of your ad is crucial, especially when dealing with small billboards or posters. Applying the so-called “rule of thirds” can help here, as this requires you to divide your canvas into three equally sized vertical and horizontal sections. This creates a grid and a clear roadmap for your headline, messaging and visuals, including branding and any relevant imagery.
- Be Concise with Your Messaging: Whether you’re aiming to attract passing footfall or road traffic, the average viewable bulletin is estimated to be around seven seconds in length. This means that every design element counts, so it’s recommended that you’re concise with your messaging and restrict your headline size to three words or fewer.
- Pay Attention to Font Size: Factor in one inch of letter or character height for every 10 feet of viewing distance. Similarly, opt for sans serif fonts like Arial, Calibri and Verdana when selecting your font, as these examples are easily intelligible, modern and simple.
Planning and Budgeting
Allocate your budget wisely across different media formats and locations.
Timing and duration are also key—ads should run long enough to achieve multiple impressions with your target audience and should coincide with relevant events or seasons to enhance relevance.
Implementation and Execution
Coordinate with vendors, media owners, and installers to ensure smooth execution of your campaign.
For digital formats, leverage real-time monitoring to make adjustments as needed, optimising performance throughout the campaign.
Measuring Success
Evaluate your campaign’s success by tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) such as impressions, engagement rates, and return on investment (ROI).
Use tools like foot traffic analysis, surveys, and sales data to measure impact and inform future campaigns.
You can ask customers where they first heard about you or your product/service to identify if OOH was a factor.
Integrating Outdoor Media with Digital Channels
Outdoor media works best when integrated with digital channels like social media, mobile ads, and online campaigns.
Cross-channel integration creates a seamless brand experience and enhances the overall effectiveness of your marketing efforts.
Use data from digital channels to refine targeting and messaging in your outdoor campaign.
Future Trends in Outdoor Media
Stay ahead of the curve by keeping an eye on emerging trends in outdoor media.
Programmatic buying, augmented reality, and sustainability are shaping the future of outdoor advertising.
Embrace these trends to make your campaigns more engaging, personalised, and eco-friendly.
Conclusion
Creating an effective outdoor media strategy requires careful planning, creative execution, and a thorough understanding of your audience and available media formats.
By following these steps, you can develop a campaign that not only captures attention but also drives meaningful results.
As the outdoor advertising landscape continues to evolve, staying ahead of trends and integrating your efforts with digital channels will be key to long-term success.
