Out Of Home, In-Hand Advertising, Broadcast, & Other Traditional Tactics
It’s Not All About Digital Screens
The hot ticket in all of marketing is anything digital, and for good reason. With the ability to target, retarget, and report on highly detailed metrics, digital tactics are precise and provide tangible evidence of performance. Whether it’s top of funnel or lower, it’s digital tactics provide a true overview of how a campaign has performed.
So Why Traditional Activations?
Traditional marketing tactics are still extremely powerful and have become such a part of our normal daily lives that they aren’t intrusive anymore. They blend in so well that they aren’t obnoxious to a user, but are such great awareness tactics that those that will be interested, are highly engaged in the messaging. It’s a great strategy when you’re looking to reach a massive audience and have as many eyes or ears absorb it as possible. Even when your ad is placed in front of a user who may not be interested in your product or service, they will still absorb the messaging enough to know what a brand may do or are trying to say. They’ll be able to connect a brand to a message down the road, even it was never relevant to them to begin with.
What Tactics Would Fall Into Traditional Marketing?
Prior to the dawn of digital advertising, there only existed what we now call, traditional or legacy. We’re still very much exposed to the traditional tactics every single day. These tactics lack automation, the ability to precisely target a user, and accurately report on the campaign’s performance, but they can still vastly spread a message and offer a real awareness push. These available tactics are what would fall under the traditional marketing realm. The thing advertisers and brands must know is a traditional advertising campaign will be displayed to a very large, non defined audience.
Billboards
Whether it’s the massive posters along the highway or a smaller placement located in business areas of larger cities, billboards are still very much an effective form of brand awareness and ad/brand recall. Without being intrusive, billboard advertising allows your ad to be placed in the sightline of potentially thousands of people every single day. The bonus of billboards is that your ad is placed for a timeline (usually) a month or so. So if someone takes that same route every workday for a month, theres a great chance they’ll not only recall the ad, but your brand as well. The key with billboard advertising is to say the absolute most with the least amount of words. This tactic is extremely popular with local cannabis dispensaries as well as personal injury attorneys with a ‘catchy’ name. The appeal of a billboard is there is no barrier to who can see it. If they are in the area, chances are they’ll see it and recall what they saw.
Though billboards don’t inherently have any paths a user can easily take an immediate action with (outside of a QR code), placements of billboards adjacent to a business can drive users to alter a plan to visit. For example a restaurant or casino may place a billboard a few miles before an exit that leads to their location. A driver may not have initially had the plan to visit on their route, but the billboard saying “Take Exit ‘Insert Name Here’ To The Best Gaming Experience” could lead a user to make a change they hadn’t planned on.
There aren’t many true measurable ways to determine the success of a billboard (or any Out Of Home placement), so how would we do it?
Like mentioned earlier, a QR code on a a placement can increase your chances of someone taking an immediate action like scanning it, but a QR code is trackable. You’ll know how many times it was scanned, how many unique scans it had, and you’ll be able to retarget these users on a digital platform. This is the easiest way to determine how your billboard is enhancing your business’s ability to drive leads. What needs to be taken into account is driver safety. While most people since 2020 have learned how to quickly use QR codes on their mobile devices, drivers still pose a risk whenever they’re forced to use their device while driving.
Phone numbers are a tried and true method to get people to call your business, but with the shifting market and driver safety needing to be the top priority, unless you have an extremely easy to remember phone number, having an easy brand to remember is the next best thing. “Sweet James” in Los Angeles or “Attorney King” in San Diego are easy to remember and when someone can safely get to use their device, they won’t even have to remember the phone numbers. They’ll just use a search engine to look for “Sweet James” or “Attorney King” and they’ll be able to find everything they need. Short and sweet marketing.
Convenience Store Posters
Placing advertisements in convenience stores is a great way to find audiences similar to yours. Convenience store (C-Store) advertisements are eye level posters that are sometimes placed on the exterior of a C-Store to grab a user’s attention right before entry or along highly trafficked walls to drive consideration. C-Store works great for in store products, but also for off location purchases. If you’re a bar and want to reach more potential customers, a C-Store poster would be a great way to reach a (more than likely) 21+ crowd.
In-Hand Advertising
This tactic is extremely powerful because it’s placed in the hands of a potential client or customer. This tactic can be as simple as sponsored bar coasters or hotel key cards, and be as involved as door hangers or actual coupon/flyer handouts at social events. This advertising produces a high conversion rate and high ad recall as people tend to examine what is in their hands. It can also be as concealed as coupons that are on top of a pizza box or an advertisement on a coffee cup.
Print feels like a dying medium but it’s really effective and still reaches target audiences. People invested in print publications are very attentive to everything in their hand. From the stories, to the images to the ads. Print readers take their time in going from page to page and print is still a great way to reach a target demo or geo. There are print publications specific to just the city they serve or those in language print publishers that might be countywide but reach a specific language speaking audience.
Linear television & broadcast Radio
With the recent jump into streaming audio and video and the efforts in making them happen in every home, we often forget that broadcast cable television and Over-The-Air radio are still extremely powerful in brand awareness and ad/brand recall. Many local advertisers turn to these mediums because they still have massive reach. Though there is very little in the way of targeting and reporting, they offer incredible ability to be delivered to engaged audiences.