Billboard Marketing 101

Whether you’re working in anything from Marketing to Graphic Design, you can’t beat the exposure of Billboard Advertising. Thousands of impressions an hour, and consistent brand recognition will only lead to leveling up as a small business and getting more leads for those that listen to this advice. Billboards are an excellent way to get your brand in front of thousands of people per hour. They’re also affordable, costing as little as $250 for a single billboard advertisement with no additional costs or hidden fees. This article will cover everything you need to know about billboard marketing so that you can start generating leads right away!

Why Billboard Marketing?

Billboard Marketing 101Billboard advertising works, that’s why people continue to spend money on it, and it’s a traditional old-school way of advertising that people are still using and a lot of the bigger players in the industry are using. So that’s what I wanted to talk to you guys about today. So today’s article is about billboard advertising. You’re going to learn a lot, so make sure you grab a pen and paper. Take some notes to check out some things; you’re going to want to make sure you write them down.

One of the things to understand before we really jump into the details is that there are two different kinds of billboards. There are print billboards with static (non-moving) advertisements, and there are digital billboards that constantly change about seven to ten seconds with a new ad. The former will stay forever as long as you keep paying, whereas the digital ones will rotate new ads every few minutes or every few seconds. You’ve got to get the right location which we’re going to talk about here in just a bit, but billboard marketing is especially effective for service-based businesses.

Billboard Marketing Statistics

Let’s get into some of these industry stats. Seventy-one percent of people consciously look at billboards while driving. That’s more than two-thirds of people. That’s a really big deal. The second stat is Americans spend almost 300 hours in their car each year, 300 hours in your car. Imagine how many billboards you pass by now. Just like anything else, consistency is key when it comes to billboard advertising. If you advertise for a month and you think that you’re going to have a huge success, you’re going to be super disappointed. So the third stat that we find that’s really interesting that we wanted to share with you guys is there are roughly 342,306 billboards in the United States alone, and almost 8,000 of those are digital billboards.

Billboards are starting to transition from print to digital, as we mentioned earlier, because it allows you to rotate ads. There are even billboards out there that can detect the type of cars that are driving by. They do this by picking up their radios and what stations they’re picking up. Before, they would change the ad based on the traffic and the time of day or simply on a timer. So digital billboards are on the rise. The technology is getting better. It’s allowing the people to be more targeted versus the time of day or playing certain ads for certain intervals throughout the day.

How to Use Billboard Marketing

Billboard Marketing 101A lot of people don’t even realize how effective billboard ads are and that they’ve used them on many occasions. Billboard ads are ways to direct us right off the freeway to a local business. There are ways to get exposure for a real estate agent to get out funny branded messages.

Messaging

This is where most people fall short. The majority of billboards we see aren’t doing it correctly, and it’s all about keeping things simple. A lot of individuals try to cram too much text into their advertisements, which is the most important element on the billboard. They take up three-quarters of the space with their logo; no one cares about your logo on a billboard; they’re concerned about what’s going to benefit them.

Understanding what’s in it for them, and making your billboard revolve around that with your messaging, is an essential aspect. Then, in addition to the message of why they should be looking at it and taking the time to do so, you also need to give them some way to take you up on your value proposition. Consider the following:

  • Do you have a QR code on the billboard?
  • Do you have a phone number on the billboard?
  • Is there a website address?
  • How do people reach you?

The majority of people make this portion of the billboard too tiny, failing to include a strong call to action. This is something we don’t want you to make the same mistake with, so be sure you have the appropriate messaging on your billboard.

Location

Understanding the demographics in the area where that billboard is erected is critical. Who is going to see it and how much traffic will there be? What type of traffic are we looking at here? It’s very important to understand that this is a local marketing campaign rather than a national one. This will assist you a lot if you place it in the right position, such as on a high-visibility and heavy-traffic intersection where people will notice it while waiting at a red light.

If you’re sitting at a stoplight in your neighborhood and there’s a billboard there, and you sit there for minutes and minutes and minutes, seeing this billboard all the time may be a fantastic location. It’s critical to get the correct site since if you spend money on a billboard advertising campaign for an extended period of time with no success, you’ll lose money. So we want to ensure that you have the appropriate spot.

Consistency

If you’re walking into the meeting saying that we’ll run this billboard ad in the first month and make such a large profit that we’ll be able to pay for the following month, you’re walking into trouble. You’ll get angry and claim that billboards don’t work, which isn’t true. If people didn’t spend billions of dollars on it, billboard advertising wouldn’t exist; therefore, staying consistent is critical.

Why It Works

Billboard Marketing 101There’s something special that happens when all of these tips are utilized that makes billboard marketing a force to be reckoned with. If you understand the strategy and the science of marketing, which we’re going to talk about in future articles, you know that this technique relies on neuroscience to activate the recognition centers in the brain.

Typically, you have to see something 13 times at least for it to pass through the reticular activating system in your brain. That is a part of your brain that filters out the information that keeps us from literally going crazy. If we took everything and saw everything and absorbed everything that we saw, we’d suffer from sensory overload. It protects us, and each person retains a different amount of information each time they encounter it. So, you have to see something over and over again consistently for a long period of time. The number is typically 13.

It takes about 13 weeks for something to plant into someone’s brain so that they can recognize it after seeing, hearing, or looking at it a total of 13 times. Memory recall is crucial, therefore the longer you run those billboard advertisements, the better your performance will be, and with the correct messaging in the right place at the right time, you’ll really benefit from it. Being consistent, patient, and prepared pays dividends here.

Track Your Billboard Marketing Progress

Billboard Marketing 101These are just some of the things that you need to know about billboard advertising. Some important elements we hope you wrote all that down because there’s a lot of information, but billboard’s great if you’re a local business. We would definitely encourage you if you’re at that place where you’ve got other digital marketing going, and you want to really brand your name locally in your town. That’s a really good way to do it. That’s all we got for you guys today. We know that’s a lot of information, but our goal is to help you guys get a breakthrough in your business and really understand all of the spokes of your offline marketing, so thank you guys so much for reading this article today. We look forward to seeing you guys on the next one and, as always, keep looking up.