In 2022, outdoor advertising has never been more important. Consumers can easily add ad blocking features to devices and consumers are choosing streaming services over free to air TV. This limits the opportunities for advertisers to have their campaign seen. Outdoor advertising straight away in itself sets your campaign above the competition. There’s no guesswork with outdoor advertising. It’s a bold and effective advertising strategy. . There are known, replicable strategies to grab customer attention and hook them on your brand. The importance of outdoor advertising and the impact of billboard advertising on consumer buying behaviour is already well-known to any marketing manager worth their salt.
This doesn’t mean that there isn’t any room for innovative outdoor advertising ideas — in fact, it’s quite the opposite. Innovative advertising is critical to maintaining a long-term interest in your brand, driving success and avoiding plateaus. But in some respects, Australian businesses can lag behind their overseas cousins when it comes to innovation in the advertising space. There are a few factors that can play into this:
- Budgetary constraints — Ideas may be free, but executing them to scale isn’t. It can also be difficult to justify the cost of more experimental ideas to whoever’s holding the purse strings.
- Lack of infrastructure or tech — Even if you’re on the bleeding edge of advertising, you’re not really going it alone. You’re standing on the shoulders of past giants, or you’re reliant on supporting tech. So if you don’t have access to these features or opportunities it can limit your vision.
- Not having the right partner — Sometimes, it pays to bring in someone from outside the company to bring a fresh perspective to your concepts. If you’re solely working in-house, preconceived ideas and company culture can constrict the ideas that are being generated.
With these considerations in mind, let’s take a look at some innovative twists on classic advertising methods.
1. Billboards
Billboards are big and bold. Literally “right in your face” type of advertising! Your brand is up there for all to see. Billboards can be and are regularly used in all sorts of creative ways.
If you’re still thinking solely in terms of a static product image or a brand logo, it’s time to mix that up. The way you play with imagery, the location of the billboard itself and even the way you depict your product and brand all have huge potential to be depicted in bold new ways to increase your branding success. Billboards also take advantage of “dwell time” and as mentioned earlier they are an ad-block free zone making them superior to other advertising channels.
2. Civic guides
Civic guides have the dual benefit of providing a community service while also advertising your product. You’re able to combine a useful tool for any passersby — such as a map, a guide to local landmarks or other relevant information — while also ensuring that you’re getting your brand in front of plenty of eyes on a day-to-day basis. Perfectly positioned in the focal point in the active part of the community. Your message always stands out.
One of the critical opportunities for innovation comes via the specific approach you choose to take. The brand imagery you use should always be striking, creative and eye-catching, of course — but what about the guide portion? It’s an opportunity to highlight local landmarks, but it can also be used to point viewers directly to your storefronts or nearby stockists of your product. Civic guides often go overlooked by marketing teams, but they’re lower-cost than a billboard and are also neatly placed at eye level.
3. Digital billboards
The future of advertising is here. Digital billboards arguably have some of the greatest potentials for innovative outdoor advertising. Digital billboards are being used more and more in successful advertising campaigns.
Digital billboards provide you with the possibility to enact in-the-moment and location-specific product offerings and deals. Programmatic advertising takes this concept and refines it even further, with powerful and specific advertising geared at taking advantage of highly-specific demographics or times for display. Although it’s not truly personalised to individual consumers, its digital nature means that you can take advantage of targeting your campaign with powerful triggers such as :
- Mealtime offers for cafes and restaurants
- Targeted advertisements for local businesses
- Direct calls to action that can be taken advantage of immediately
- Seasonally appropriate advertisements
- Targeting demographics local to the area (e.g. white-collar workers in a CBD area) during key commuting hours
These are just a few of the ways that it can be used, of course — we definitely encourage you to experiment and see what sort of results you get for your particular business. Programmatic digital billboards make exciting times for advertisers as they can now take advantage of their infinite potential. They can now tailor and target their campaign precisely to their chosen audience.
Expand your outdoor advertising plan with Civic Outdoor
As longtime experts in billboard advertising and other styles of outdoor advertising, CIvic Outdoor are uniquely equipped to help you develop a campaign that gets results. We’ll work with you to develop the best billboard for your campaign, from concept to creative design to final execution. We’ve also got a great selection of innovative outdoor advertising resources for marketers and advertising professionals alike. So why not get in touch with the Civic Outdoor team today? We’ll be happy to assist you with creating new and innovative ways to approach outdoor advertising in Australia for your brand.
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