Refresh Your OOH Advertising with These 5 Custom Strategies Recent growth in the out-of-home ad market has been remarkable, and for good reason: It's effective, versatile, cost-effective and even automated.
By Matt O'Connor •
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Out-of-home (OOH) advertising spend in North America hit $8.82 billion in 2021, according to Statista, and is forecasted to reach a whopping $10.4 billion by 2024. One of the drivers of this growth is its versatility: it offers a number of ways to plan, launch, measure and adjust campaigns to achieve maximum value. This year, take a fresh approach to your OOH by leveraging these five strategies.
1. Cast a wider net
Every marketer wants to see their brand creatives looming large over properties like Times Square. However, in spite of the massive amount of foot traffic passing through the area, a hot city center placement like this might not be the best use of your advertising budget. Unless you're confident your audience lives mainly in the top 25 OOH markets (think New York, LA and San Francisco), casting a net that includes multiple smaller markets could open up better possibilities.
This strategy is ideal for niche brands with smaller budgets, because CPMs in underutilized markets are usually considerably lower. This means you can reach new customers more cost-effectively and squeeze more value from every dollar spent. A media planning tool can help ensure you get your message to the right consumers, no matter where they live or work.
2. Go granular
Particularly ideal for brands targeting niche markets, this strategy is actually the opposite of the first, but since OOH is not a one-size-fits-all process, it pays to explore options to find the right one for your brand. These days, marketing personalization is essential to cut through the noise of all the unwanted information flying at consumers, and to do that you might need to go granular to find, reach, target and engage.
Doing so means drilling down using audience data and filters to surface your brand's most audience-relevant ad units — essentially focusing on your consumer with more precision. By taking this performance-driven approach, you won't get as wide a spread, but your marketing message will likely resonate more with the people you reach. You'll also discover hidden potential customers in new markets, put your brand in front of the right ones and motivate them to take action.
Related: 9 Good Reasons to Consider Out-of-Home Advertising
3. Get fiercely competitive
There's nothing wrong with a bit of competition, and if you don't take the lead, someone else will. So, develop a campaign to reach consumers who are ready to buy and then duke it out with your competitors for their attention. With point-of-interest (POI) targeting and place-based strategies, you'll identify ad units near competitor locations, and by promoting your brand in the vicinity of similar brands, you'll make consumers think twice about buying before checking you out. This head-to-head approach is assertive and enables you to promote your unique value proposition in a comparative fashion and so steal market share, and without breaking any advertising rules!
This strategy is notably effective with consumers in a buying mood when they get presented with a choice between what's behind door number one or number two. Keep in mind, though, that some of these POI-based OOH placements might have a broader reach than others, which is a factor that can affect pricing quite a lot. Whatever you spend, it's a great way to get up there with the big brands and capitalize on their marketing activities.
4. Opt for great OOH deals
We've all known somebody who got a great cruise deal by waiting until the final moment, then snapping up the last premium cabin for a song. The same situation applies in OOH: By using historical pricing data to take advantage of short-term price drops, you can grab whatever OOH inventory is available at the last minute.
This tactic will net you mass exposure at the lowest possible cost. However, it requires guts and a cool head, because it usually involves an exceptionally tight turnaround between buying the media and providing the creative. If you can cut it, though, you'll optimize brand exposure across non-premium inventory at really good prices, which is a great way to get a marketing budget to scale quickly.
Related: 4 Tips for Designing Engaging Out-of-Home Advertising in 2022
5. Incorporate DOOH into outdoor advertising campaigns
The world has gone digital following the Covid-19 pandemic, and the OOH realm is no exception. Enter digital out-of-home (DOOH) advertising. With its large inventory and benefits like speed and flexibility, this can be seamlessly weaved into your traditional OOH efforts. Another reason to test the waters with a mixed DOOH/OOH campaign? Diversifying in this way can lead to big wins and quicker turnarounds on your ROI.
For one thing, DOOH ads can be launched and adjusted with a few clicks and be live within a matter of days. Second, they offer interactive opportunities that complement traditional ads, which increases awareness and engagement with a target audience. Third, programmatic advertising automates the whole process, including micro-public segmentations of audiences, simplified workflows and more timely analytics. It's especially easy to buy DOOH ads, too, and if you're using a media buying platform such as AdQuick, effortless to manage. That means you can track your entire campaign's performance down to the minute, and change creative on digital screens almost instantly.
Related: Meet the Company Modernizing Outdoor Advertising
It's time to change your OOH approach
There's no right (or wrong) OOH methodology, and since the landscape is continuously changing, there's plenty of opportunities to try something new. Whatever your budget, target audience and other variables, there's a way to use both it and its DOOH variant to boost success. Finally, don't limit yourself to any one of these strategies: try them all to determine the best combination.
