When building and growing a tech-based business, leaving the digital sphere for your advertising might seem counterintuitive. However, choosing marketing that viewers can physically reach out and touch successfully builds brand awareness, brand trust, and legitimacy among potential customers.
You may think digital marketing tactics are the key to getting these messages out in today’s world, where internet usage is up and there seems to be great importance placed on content having to go viral on social media to be considered relevant and impactful. It’s especially easy to think this way if the business you run is a tech company. However, you shouldn’t discount the power of traditional out-of-home (OOH) advertising methods like billboards or bus wraps. Out-of-home has been proven to be far from obsolete.
In fact, major tech brands are still turning to OOH, even with so many digital marketing options. Big brands that use billboards, like Google, Samsung, Paypal, and Apple, recognize that there are several advantages to OOH. When implemented by the right advertising agency, OOH can produce the same benefits of a billboard for small businesses. Billboard trends prove this style of advertising is still as effective and efficient as ever in 2023 and not extinct in a digital world.
OOH Advertising: What is It?
Out-of-home advertising refers to outdoor marketing campaigns that consumers experience in public spaces outside their homes. Examples of OOH ads include street furniture, bus wraps, wild postings, wallscapes, hotspots, and the long-lasting billboards that people often see on busy, high-traffic roads and highly-populated urban centers.
OOH Trends Indicate Billboards Are Here to Stay
After staying indoors for much of 2020 and 2021 following the pandemic, people are excited to return to public spaces, traveling, and taking trips, increasing the views OOH ads receive. The return to the hustle and bustle allows OOH ads around shops, neighborhoods, bus and train stations, and more to thrive again, something we leverage when we create billboards for clients in Chicago and make them come to life near the Belmont “L” station, for example.
Increases in outdoor activity directly contribute to the growth the OOH advertising market experiences because per the Nielsen Out of Home Advertising Study:
33% of OOH viewers interviewed reported searching for the advertised brand online after seeing an OOH ad.
23% of OOH viewers interviewed reported visiting the advertised brand’s website after seeing an OOH ad.
15% of OOH viewers interviewed reported going to the advertiser’s social media page for their brand.
More people going out in public means increased chances for viewers to see billboards advertising your tech brand and take the actions mentioned above that can drive brand awareness, engagement, and sales. In other words, the common saying, “out with the old and in with the new,” doesn’t apply to billboards. Billboards have been around in the United States since the 1800s, making them one of the oldest forms of advertising. Still, they can stay in with and actually augment the new by providing the benefits described below.
Tech Advertisements on Billboards Drive Offline-to-Online Action
When most people think of billboard advertising, they may imagine large billboards all over Times Square or across the skyscrapers here in Chicago. These large-scale print advertisements seamlessly fit into their spaces yet simultaneously stand out in an effective way. They catch attention for being spatially commanding and aesthetically pleasing, ultimately enabling them to be successful methods of brand marketing campaigns. The ability to convey content and narratives that demand reactions at such a large scale naturally compels viewers to perform immediate actions in response to the ads even before they get home, to work, or to other destinations. It’s this quality that allows billboards to be a timeless form of advertising. They influence viewers to take action on their mobile phones, ultimately driving offline-to-online responses in an efficient yet impactful way that other media don’t.
Social Media and Billboard Trends
Billboards may be the best advertising for emerging tech companies because this timeless form of outdoor marketing still appeals to the digital crowd. That’s why, when creating billboards for brands, our experts consider that members of your target audience are outside and likely have their phones out with them on their person.
Think of how many social media influencers are constantly on their phones documenting their daily adventures, city experiences, travels, and more. It’s incredibly likely billboards for your brand will be captured in influencers’ trending content—something backed by research. Research conducted by The Harris Poll found that social media users, specifically millennials, are most likely to post images of the OOH ads they see on their social media profiles. Per The Harris Poll,
As much as 82 percent of TikTok users, 81 percent of Instagram users, and 80 percent of Facebook users frequently notice OOH ads when using these apps.
Approximately 48 percent of social media users go to the website of the company included in the OOH ad they viewed.
After viewing an OOH ad, more than one-third of social media users feel inspired to search for the advertised company online, read reviews about its goods and services, or ask family and friends about the brand.
This is one of the benefits of a billboard for small businesses: billboards are appealing in a way that organically shared OOH ads on social media platforms can effectively prompt user brand engagement.
Billboard Advertising Can Be Targeted and Data-Driven
The OOH world has gotten more tech-savvy over time. Billboards and other OOH methods are some of the best advertising for emerging tech companies because they can be backed by data. When wanting to make the most of local expertise, ad buyers can use data to pinpoint which OOH units will be most likely to reach their target audience members. When advertisers utilize foot traffic and mobility data, it can help them gain an understanding of consumer movement patterns at specific levels and determine which areas contain the highest densities of specific customer sections. Doing this can help tech brands purchase OOH ad units in the areas they’ll have the highest possible chances of being seen.
Using data, advertisers can precisely target their audiences. Are you looking to advertise your tech brand’s products to consumers? Its growth and profitability to investors? Is your brand expanding to a new location, and you want to inform consumers, investors, talent, and prospective team members of its arrival? For instance, when the insurance startup Vouch Insurance opened its second headquarters in Chicago, we created targeted OOH advertising campaigns to make startup owners in the community aware of its presence.
We were able to do this because:
Our experts use demographic data to reach intended audiences. Chicago is a great city and exceptional for marketing through targeted outdoor advertising campaigns. Each neighborhood in Chicago has unique demographic breakdowns, making it easier to capture the intended audience. Using demographic data, our advertising experts help you target audience members by age, income, and much more and place your billboards in the spaces they’re most likely to frequent.
Our experts leverage the city’s dense population and high traffic. Chicago is a densely populated city with people always moving to and fro. With the high-traffic counts, pedestrian traffic caused by plenty of go-getters on foot, and the sheer volume of transit riders, millions of people will be viewing your billboard as they move around the city. An aesthetic, informative, persuasive, expertly crafted billboard on Chicago’s busiest streets in these high-density areas guarantees millions of impressions throughout your advertising campaign for your tech brand.
The ability to create billboards and include them in more generalized campaigns to reach many people or implement them in campaigns geared toward your target audience makes billboards some of the best advertising for emerging tech companies.
Billboard Advertising is Affordable Advertising
Another one of the benefits of a billboard for small business owners in technology is that OOH advertising is cost-effective. Knowing that big brands that use billboards can afford to have several put up across prominent skylines in Chicago may give people the impression that billboards and OOH advertising are expensive. When considering billboards and OOH for your tech brand, keep in mind that it’s not only the medium but also the location that determines the price of your OOH ads.
Despite its reputation for being expensive, OOH advertising actually has a low cost per thousand impressions (CPM) when comparing traditional and digital media. On average, all forms of billboard advertising cost roughly $2.18 per CPM. This is a steal compared to Facebook ads that cost $7.19 per CPM on average, radio ads with average CPMs ranging between $12.00 and $16.00, and television ads that have average CPMs that range from $25.00 to $36.00.
It’s Effective at a Lower Cost
Nielsen conducted a study that concluded that OOH is most effective at driving online activity when compared with other offline media. OOH delivers four times more online activity per dollar than print, radio, and TV. This factor gives billboard ads, and other forms of OOH increased potential to be utilized in brand advertising and other marketing campaigns, too.
Your emerging tech brand’s audience is outside. With billboards, you can reach them where they spend most of their time in cost-effective ways. And remember, billboards and all forms of OOH ads are exhibited all day and night. That’s another one of the benefits of a billboard for small business owners breaking ground in the tech industry and trying to spread the word about it. For a lower price, your billboard ads get 24/7 exposure - much better than having users skip or block your ad online.
Invest in Billboards for Your Tech Advertisements
Print marketing is still an effective means of sharing information. Likewise, digital marketing is becoming an increasingly effective and efficient way to express your brand’s message and expand its image clearly. Combining the power of both, you can incorporate social media to amplify your digital marketing campaigns. But remember that it’s local OOH ad campaigns that will empower you to market your tech brand in physical locations that your target audience members frequent often. A TikTok video may get hundreds of thousands or even millions of views, especially if you include trending sounds in it. But this doesn’t necessarily mean someone left the TikTok app and searched you or your tech brand online or visited your website.
A billboard, however, has a direct call to action and clear message. And billboard-led calls to action can be instant when QR code technology is incorporated in them, an effective tactic we implemented when creating dedicated wall postings for PayPal that targeted CVS stores. In our packages, the audiences could scan the QR codes embedded in the wall postings, and doing so would bring them to the landing page of the PayPal app. Including a QR code on your billboard that links users to the landing page of your tech brand’s website can ultimately push users further down to conversion.
Even out-of-home without a clear call-to-action sends a powerful message. Large-scale outdoor ads make the viewer feel that your business is a legitimate, trusted organization. For example, tech company Airtable strategically placed billboards around their city where they knew their target market would see them. There was no clear call-to-action messaging, but the ads successfully created brand awareness where it mattered:
At View Chicago, our advertising experts stick to the tried and true basics of advertising while keeping up with the latest trends. With creativity, context, and meaning in our messaging, we break viewers’ attention spans, getting them to stop the endless scrolling on their phones and look up and see something else that they find worthwhile. Using billboards for tech advertising is still as safe as ever, but with increased efficiency and accuracy that comes from data that allows you to connect the dots and advertise in truly intentional, relevant ways.
Ultimately, these high-quality billboard advertisements can boost brand awareness for your small technology business, amplify engagement, and motivate customer action. Rely on our advertising professionals’ local expertise when looking to promote your brand in Chicago. Our experts at View Chicago will begin crafting a billboard campaign unique to your brand image and target audience and suitable for your budget and advertising goals. We’ll give you a custom quote, providing you with exact numbers based on your campaign objectives.