With 24% of customers visiting a store or digital shop front immediately after seeing an OOH (out of home) or outdoor media advert, it isn’t surprising that more businesses are looking towards outdoor media to get people through the door. But what is outdoor media, and how can it benefit your business?
What is outdoor media?
In simple terms, outdoor media is any type of advertising that is used outside of the home, but which is also placed outside.
In today’s world, that could mean literally anything that can be used to advertise products or businesses. For example, four years ago we would not even have considered hand sanitising stations a necessity, let alone a perfect place to advertise your business. Now, hand sanitising stations are on every street and in every shop, in one form or another. If there’s space on something, we can put an advert on it – anything to promote the awareness and consistency of your brand.
It’s this adaptability at the heart of outdoor media that helps it compete with the ever-growing world of online advertising. The situation is improving, too: people aren’t just growing bored of ultra-targeted ads following them from site to site, they also don’t trust them. This leaves the playing field open for a return to more traditional forms of advertising – albeit with many technological and environmental updates, and increasingly new ways of displaying them.
Types and benefits of outdoor media
The two main benefits of outdoor media are the scope of possibility for placement, and the sheer scale on which you can create adverts. Without the limitations of the size of indoor spaces, you can create outdoor media as large as you choose. Whether you need to create graphics for an event or to give directions, or you simply want to increase awareness of your business, there is an outdoor media format for you.
If you’re a small business with no bricks and mortar, customer-facing base, outdoor media can help to assert a physical presence for your brand. One of the easiest ways of doing this can be a livery or wrapping on your vehicle, turning your work vehicle into a portable billboard. This can also give your business the perception of size and add to your perceived legitimacy, as well as expose you to customers who may not otherwise know you exist.
Transit advertising
Transit advertising can include vehicle wraps, fleet liveries or advertising on the side of taxis, lorries, trucks or cars – we even wrapped a Navy warship! Transit advertising is particularly useful, as it is close to a full-size moveable billboard. This means it will be seen by a larger geographic field than a stationary poster or sign, and may grab the attention of the relatively capricious audience of motorway drivers, but can also be parked strategically when called for. It’s also fairly low cost when compared to renting space on someone else’s property, and is usually a one-time investment that can last as long as you want it to.
Traditional large format printed outdoor media
Traditional, large format printed outdoor media can include billboards, bus stop posters, and banners of a huge variety and style. Here at PressOn we can apply graphics to pretty much any surface, and as we treat each project individually, we can advise you on what is best for your own specific needs.
We also produce large format prints on banners and hoardings to promote local events and locations. These prints take into account the surrounding area, the natural environment that could affect the graphics, as well as any way that we can make them stand out or be more effective for a given audience, such as our living wall installation at the National Gallery.
Construction site hoarding & building wraps
One of the most effective – but easily forgotten about – forms of outdoor media is that used on construction sites. It can take many forms: from a simple hoarding around the site itself, to a wonderfully intricate copy of the building replicated onto a wrap to cover unsightly scaffolding. Every business needs updating sometimes, and while building upgrades can be lengthy, good management can turn them into a powerful brand promoting tool.
An excellent example of this is when Harrods asked us to make a truly impressive hoarding to cover their ongoing refurbishments. The 3D bank vault design created a talking point, as well as being visually appealing, making the disruption of remodelling an event rather than a hindrance.
Recent studies have shown that people are 17% more likely to check out a brand on their mobile device if they have seen an OOH advert featuring them. This can be taken even further with active steps to invite the customer to you, such as using QR codes or other calls to action.
A well-planned piece of outdoor media marketing can use this to help expose your brand to customers online. When an advert gets talked about or is particularly funny or beautiful, it tends to be shared online, creating organic traffic back to your site as it reaches more people. Good examples of this can be found all over social media and the internet.
The future of outdoor media:
The world of physical advertising has spent years coming up with ways to compete with online advertising, and the results are impressive. We can expect to see more dynamic adverts – such as ones based on the weather of the local area, or ones that involve user interaction – as time progresses.
Then there are the amazing anamorphic and 3D billboards that have been growing in popularity in the East, with cities such as Seoul, Kuala Lumpur and Tokyo making the urban media landscape look like something out of a sci-fi movie set. We look forward to seeing them on a street closer to home in the near future.
It is always worth expanding the reach of your business with outdoor media, especially in a world where everything can be accessed online. We are always here to help you consider the best options for your brand, and to help you create the perfect outdoor advertising plan, using our years of experience and expertise along the way.
