You might already be familiar with the term ‘OOH advertising’. It means ‘out-of-home advertising’, as a Marketing Donut article clarifies – though you may prefer the simpler term ‘outdoor advertising’. Whatever you call it, it works because everyone can see it when they leave their house.
Nonetheless, you should still be careful where exactly you advertise. This is because certain outdoor settings can work better than others for your advertising, depending on what customers you are attempting to reach with it. Here’s why the high street can be an especially good choice.
Why is outdoor advertising effective?
One reason why is that it’s highly visible, as people aren’t required to go out of their way to see it. They don’t have to switch on a TV, open a newspaper or magazine or click a link to see the ad; instead, they are likely to see it automatically as they pass it.
Part of the beauty of OOH advertising is that, despite all of this, many people don’t deem it intrusive compared to other forms of advertising. For someone who has sat down on a bench in the high street, such as to nibble a snack or wait for a friend, a nearby advert can even be a welcome sight.
When should your particularly consider high-street advertising?
A quite simple answer: when you want to catch the attention of someone who is already in shopping mode. For example, if someone is in the town or city centre in the first place to shop for an engagement ring to present to their beloved, you could advertise exactly that – an engagement ring – with a poster close to where you might already run a high-street jewellery store.
You should, however, remember to keep the ad’s message simple and to the point. As your target customers in the high street could be rushing about, you probably won’t have very long in many instances to make a powerful impression. So, make sure the ad can easily be seen from a distance.
To help ensure this, you could choose a particularly eye-catching photo for the ad – and perhaps even throw in mention of a limited-time promotion. Another option would be a digital display, which could give you ten times the revenue of a more traditional ad, as mentioned in a Guardian piece.
How easily could you book a high-street advertising spot?
Another quite simple answer: more easily than you might have expected. As Marketing Donut observes about outside advertising, “many people don’t realise how cost-effective it is. Because big brands use it, they assume it’s too expensive for smaller enterprises.”
The site adds that, on the contrary, “it’s affordable for almost every firm” – though your company should still be careful where it gets high-street advertising space from.
Clear Channel is one provider of such space, with 27,000 poster panels and over 2,500 digital screens on offer across the UK. You could target a limited subset of people, such as by limiting your focus to just a few high streets or even one.