How Are Billboards Made

How are billboards made and what does the process look like? The process of making a billboard requires different components and decisions. Some components cover what materials the billboard is made from, which is usually fixed. Those hiring for a new billboard build can select from design options and creativity that coincides with their billboard marketing strategy and campaign. Decisions such as choosing what the billboard will be made out of, what it will convey, what it will look like, how big it will be, how long the billboard contract will last can be decided at the initial start of the campaign.

Edits and updates to a billboard campaign will likely vary for each business, but overall the components to building a new billboard are uniform. We’re reviewing how billboards are made and how they can be enhanced to produce the most effective billboard marketing campaign.

process of billboard creation

How Are Billboards Made?

Making a billboard is a process that consists of several key steps and a variety of different choices. Each one of the steps and choices that comprise the process of making a billboard is incredibly important and allows for a successful billboard marketing campaign.

Every billboard is designed to convey a very particular message that leads to a very particular result. Results such as “more website viewers” and “more people calling in”. But, as mentioned, in order for this result to be obtained a billboard must convey a message that entices people to engage with the offer in a way that leads to the desired results.

Once the intended results are known, a message must be formulated, for the billboard, so that those results can be created. Ideally, this message is clear, concise, and easily conveyable using visuals and as few words as possible.

making billboards

Designing a billboard

Marketing messaging usually determines the mood and setting that the billboard can prove to be most effective. If humor is an underlying theme within the billboard messaging, bright colors might enhance the imagery and, thus, make it stand out a little more. Similarly, if the attempted theme is serious or professional, colors may correlate with these emotions. Hiring an expert graphics team that is experienced in billboard creativity is especially crucial because visual aids are one of the highest priorities. A good billboard makes use of the medium’s visual nature to entice and engage the viewer — who is most likely driving their car — so that they will then engage with what is being offered.

After the billboard has been designed, it must be set-up. Setting up the billboard involves several key choices. Choices such as choosing the material that the billboard will be made of, choosing where your billboard will be displayed, and choosing how long your billboard will be displayed.

Most billboards rely either on paper or vinyl, due to the strength and affordability of those materials. Of course, there are digital billboards and, as mentioned earlier, hand-painted billboards. Both options are also valid, but billboards made of paper or vinyl are far more conventional.

More often than not, a billboard made of those materials will need to measure 48-feet in width, and 14-feet in height. The reason for this is because most billboard frames possess those measurements, due to it being an industry standard. But, there are plenty of billboard frames that have different measurements, which is why it’s important to know where the billboard will be located before printing.

A standard billboard contract lasts for at least one month. If the billboard is doing well, then the contract should be extended, but if it isn’t, then the billboard should be revised or moved somewhere else.

 

how are billboards made

How Do Billboards Work?

 

To better explain how billboards work, here are the most important factors that make billboards an excellent part of an advertising campaign.

Billboards work by using a giant print to market a particular brand, product, or campaign. Ideally, billboards are placed in high-traffic areas to increase brand awareness. 

It is estimated that a person sees about 1,000 advertisements daily, with only 7 that can be remembered. Therefore, if you drive a car every day, you will see many billboard ads.

Now that we have a fair idea of how billboards work, there are vital factors that you need to keep in mind that affect their cost. So here are some tips for creating an eye-catching billboard.

  • During times of traffic jams and repetitive halts, billboards installed on major roadways keep the audience engaged.
  • Above all, billboards can reach a large audience compared to other kinds of advertising.
  • Billboard adverts are excellent options for a marketing package for a company looking to improve regional targeting in marketing.
  • Billboards are inexpensive and capable of producing low-cost impressions since they target a large audience.
  • The billboards do not close; they are open 24 hours daily so potential customers can see us. It is a showcase for your business, open all day. 
  • Easy segmentation: with billboards, we can choose where to advertise, segmenting the geographical area and our area of influence. 

Billboards generate brand awareness, making your brand great and powerful, gaining positioning and notoriety. 

We must be cautious when creating a billboard because not all are good for your brand; several factors make an excellent and coveted billboard.

  • Visual field.
  • Position concerning traffic, distance, and orientation.
  • Traffic concentration of the road on which it is located.
  • Competition: if the billboard is among many others, it loses prominence.
  • Location: a billboard at the access to a lower-level area of the city is not the same as a fence at the access to a high-value residential area.

How Do Billboards Work?

What Are Billboards Made Of?

Every billboard consists of three major facets. The frame that holds the billboard, the billboard itself, and the electrical mechanisms that illuminate the billboard. If one of these facets was missing from a billboard, then the billboard medium would be very different.

How are billboards made and what is the process during the physical build? Most billboards are supported by tall steel poles that hold up a large frame. To support the large frame, the steel poles are designed for durability and longevity, relying on stainless steel to support both the frame and the billboard that it holds.

Right at the top of the steel poles, there’s the frame itself. Within this frame, a billboard can be held, as well as various pieces of lighting and electrical equipment. These components are particularly vital as they allow the billboard to display an ad for longer periods rather than just in daylight.

All across the surface of the frame, there’s a material known as “facing”. Facing allows the art that comprises the billboard to be attached to the frame. Large sheets of paper or vinyl artwork are spread across the frame’s surface.

Most billboards rely on using printed sheets of paper and vinyl, rather than hand-painting the frame of a billboard because it’s much cheaper. But, there are still a variety of hand-painted billboards around, and many of them are quite popular due to the fact that they are hand-painted.

To illuminate the billboard, there are lighting and electrical systems embedded within the frame and right outside of it. Most of these lighting and electrical systems rely on automatic timers because it’s far more convenient than manual activation.

 

What Does Billboard Maintenance Consist Of?

In answering the question, how are billboards made, you must also account for their continued maintenance.

Print Billboard

Maintaining a print billboard is quite easy, due to the fact that print billboards rely on very few individual components and facets. Most print billboards are made of strong and durable materials that last for a considerable amount of time. Unless a billboard has been displayed for a very long time, it’s unlikely that fresh sheets of paper or vinyl will be needed.

Digital Billboard

Maintaining a digital billboard is far more complex, due to the variety of systems and components that comprise a digital billboard.

How Are Billboards Made: Common Issues

What can be problematic, though, is the lighting systems that billboards rely on. If a bulb goes out, then that bulb must be replaced. If the lighting system is damaged, then it must be repaired. Without the proper lighting, drivers will be unable to see the billboard at night.

Maintaining a digital billboard is quite different from maintaining a print billboard. Digital billboards rely on complex hardware and software, all of which must be maintained on a regular basis. Most of the time, digital billboard maintenance consists of things like making sure the software is up-to-date, that the display is set-up properly, that each cord and cable is connected, and that the billboards are being displayed in the manner intended.

 

 

Outdoor Advertising Analysis

Billboards and other outdoor ads are some of the most effective and valuable advertising mediums businesses continue to utilize. Although many of us might only look at a billboard for a short period of time, they are still successful at grabbing our attention, and they’re everywhere we go! You can always find an ad on highways, buildings, transit vehicles, and more. These are just some reasons why businesses trust OOH (out-of-home) ads like billboards to bring in the highest number of views and reinforce brand recognition. However, many forms of outdoor advertising don’t come with the same kind of automated metrics and analytics that digital ads provide. So, how do you know how well your outdoor advertisement is working, or if it’s even working at all? The answer is through a detailed Outdoor Advertising Analysis.

advertising analytics

Outdoor Advertising Analytics

This thorough assessment uses analytical data and tools that help businesses efficiently monitor their marketing campaign within a specific industry. Advertising analytics let marketers know if their campaigns are targeted to the right audience and if they are using the right medium to do so.

Why is Outdoor Advertising Analysis Important?

Companies that use data-driven insights have a 10-30% improvement in their overall marketing performance. This is because the practice provides you with the data to determine if your outdoor advertising campaign is working or not. A thorough outdoor advertising analysis will prove just how effective your billboards can be.

Having this information allows businesses to make changes to their strategy accordingly, such as reallocating budgets, or changing the ad’s approach. Analyzing this information properly and carefully will guarantee a greater impact for any advertising campaign.

 

How to Measure Advertising Analytics

There are many metrics that go into measuring the success of your outdoor advertising campaign strategy.

billboard for outdoor advertising

Here are the most common:

Impressions

Impressions are used to quantify the times a user encounters an advertisement. This is also known as a view-through. Essentially, impressions represent the number of times an individual consumer sees a message from your advertising campaign. Traditional billboards measure impressions by referring to how many show the specific ad in a given area. Some brands might have a more saturated presence in one area compared to others, which can pull focus from your ad.

Reach

Reach refers to the total number of different people or households exposed to your advertisement. When it comes to billboards and other forms of OOH, this is calculated using the Daily Effective Circulation (DEC), which is the average number of people or vehicles that are exposed to your billboard within a given timeframe measured in hours, referred to as the effective illumination rate.

Reach can also be measured through:

  • Demographics
  • Census Data
  • Eye Tracking
  • Traffic Counts and Vehicle Analytics

Frequency

Frequency refers to the average number of times your ad is exposed to a unique user. This is calculated by dividing your ad’s impressions by its reach. High-frequency rates increase the chance that a customer has a high-quality engagement with your ad and that there were multiple interactions with your brand. Essentially, this statistic takes into account how many times the consumer will be exposed to your ad throughout the campaign. Frequency can be measured by:

Traffic and Location

Before businesses decide on a location for their billboard or outdoor ad, we recommend using government data, census, road traffic counts, and manual travel data to measure foot and vehicular traffic. This will allow businesses to get a sense of how many vehicles and pedestrians will pass by the ad in this proposed location. This data can also be used to measure metrics while the ad is live.

Analytics

If your business has a unique brand name, slogan, or catchphrase, try incorporating that into your ad. Data scraping methods will allow you to analyze how often terms unique to your business are typed into search engines, similar to keyword research. Search levels will give you insight into how often consumers are viewing your ad and engaging with it.

Hashtags

Businesses can utilize hashtags to help them evaluate the effectiveness of their billboard or other OOH ad. Hashtags are a popular way to track conversations surrounding the brand, product, or service. Including hashtags on an outdoor ad can motivate consumers to engage with the ad and eventually use the hashtag on social media. This method can provide useful insights for businesses such as audience reaction and customer retention.

Sales Analytics

An increase in sales can determine if an outdoor ad is bringing in more customers or not. It’s recommended businesses monitor sales reports and see if there is a correlation between sales and the outdoor ad campaign. If there is an increase in sales and customer retention during the lifespan of the ad, it’s safe to say that the ad is working!

advertising analysis

bMedia Group: Puerto Rico’s Advertising Experts

Here at bMedia Group, we understand how specific data and metrics can help optimize your advertising efforts. As Puerto Rico’s advertising experts, we can offer you the best ROI through our extensive outdoor advertising opportunities.

With over 500 billboards available in a variety of formats, located in high traffic and high impact areas, we guarantee your ad will be seen.

Our group of professionals uses data and vehicle analytics compiled from accurate and real-time information and they are always ready to provide effective and measurable solutions to your business. bMedia knows that with the right data and analytics, we can help your business reach new heights in Puerto Rico.

For more information on how to find the right billboard and location for your next advertising campaign, reach out to bMedia today! 

Difference Between Traditional and Digital Marketing

Over the last 50 years, the marketing game has changed drastically, which has led to a major shift in the difference between traditional and digital marketing. It has closely followed developments in technology starting with print, then moving to radio, television, and now the Internet.

Because of all this change, some marketing practices are completely outdated, while others are more relevant than ever.

While there are many similarities between traditional marketing and digital marketing, there are a lot of differences, too. A modern strategy should focus on a mixture of things, so we’ll break down the different areas to focus on.

Difference Between Traditional and Digital Marketing

What is Traditional and Digital Marketing?

Before we get too deep, what is traditional and digital marketing?

Traditional marketing is using methods that have been around for a long time, and most include practices that pre-date the Internet, such as:

  • Billboards
  • Print ads (magazines, newspapers, etc.)
  • Radio/TV commercials

Digital Marketing, on the other hand, is utilizing computers and the Internet to reach your customers. This can include:

The most interesting thing to remember is that digital marketing doesn’t have to be online or on a computer. It can also be on billboards or other screens that can get more customized messages to customers while they’re out and about.

Key Differences Between Traditional and Digital Marketing

With the unwavering popularity of the Internet, this form of marketing has infiltrated our daily lives to an extent that no one could have ever predicted. Beginning on a single household computer, now every member of most families has multiple devices that connect them to the online world. From phones, to tablets, to laptops, the average person connects to the Internet multiple hours per day!

This has presented advertisers with an opportunity to reach their audience like never before, but it also presents significant challenges. In the industry, we call it ‘too much noise’ – and the basic concept is that people are being so over-marketed (especially online) that it’s hard to cut through all the noise to get your message across.

For example, social media advertising is slowly becoming a very lucrative and effective way to reach a wide audience. However, the popular platform of the moment seems to be constantly changing, and each has a specific target audience where marketers see the most impact.

Some social platforms require paying “influencers” for anyone to listen, while others rely on hyper-targeting to make sure your message is seen by the right person. That’s why it’s critical to go with expert help when making your marketing plan, and really understand the difference between traditional and digital marketing.

Similarities Between Traditional Marketing and Digital Marketing

Traditional Still Reigns Supreme In Some Markets

While many companies have moved online for their advertising efforts, traditional efforts still reign supreme in some markets.

One good example, which is also the one we work on every single day, is billboard marketing in Puerto Rico. As anyone who has lived on or visited our wonderful island knows, traffic can be a major problem. Nobody likes traffic, it adds to a lengthy workday, and can be overwhelmingly frustrating just sitting in your car and not being able to move for long periods of time. While most would agree that there’s nothing really good about the traffic in Puerto Rico, the one major benefit comes in the exposure of billboards. The driver of a car should never be looking at their phone while operating a vehicle, so their only choice is to look out the windshield at what’s in front of them.

Strategic billboard placement in high traffic areas can be a very successful method of getting marketing messages across as drivers really have no choice, but to look at them.

Effective traditional marketing efforts are not limited just to billboards though, believe it or not there is still a large sector of the population that reads the newspaper every morning and orders magazines for their interests! While online has inevitably engulfed a large portion of these types of marketing mediums, for specific products usually targeting an older demographic, traditional print and other forms of marketing are still used often.

Similarities Between Traditional Marketing and Digital Marketing

There is a big similarity between digital and traditional: they’re both trying to reach your customers in the most useful way. Plus, when combined as a strategic marketing mix, they really can build off of each other.

In a world where people are exposed to nearly 5,000 advertisements every single day, cutting through the noise can be a very difficult endeavor. This is where strategy and creativity come into play which when combined produce some of the most beautiful and effective advertising. Appealing to people’s sense of humor or humility are common methods of getting a message across, but even being different and creative is no longer original enough to make an impact. What marketers are seeing these days is that volume and frequency of advertisements is one of the most effective ways to cut through the noise. Content marketing is a common tactic for companies to get their brand in front of people on a regular basis.

This is where the marriage between traditional and digital marketing comes into play. Advertisers must constantly remind their audience of their products and services, so the best way to do so is to get in front of them as often and in as many different ways as possible. Let’s revisit the example of outdoor media in Puerto Rico. If a driver is on their way to work and gets stuck in some traffic trying to get across San Juan, they will see a number of billboards along their way. At one particularly slow point, they notice a billboard for a beautiful new watch. They’ve been in the market for a watch for a few months now and this advertisement managed to catch their attention.

Difference Between Traditional Marketing and Digital Marketing

Now fast forward to the rest of this potential customer’s day. While they are at work, they decide to take a break during lunch and investigate some more information about the watch they noticed on the billboard during their drive. An effective web strategy would be able to capture this web visitor’s information, drop a cookie in their browser, and then show personalized ads to them on the web and social media for the watch they were looking at.

While the billboard may have sparked the initial interest in the product and caused the person to gather more information, it will be the persistent reminder of targeted Google advertisements in their web browser or ads showing up in their Facebook newsfeed that eventually lead to making a purchase decision.

Traditional vs Digital Billboards

We mentioned that billboards and other outdoor advertising can be extremely effective in the right markets, and it’s even more exciting when you add in the possibility of digital billboards. Whether a sign at a busy intersection, on the side of a bus, or placed inside of a building, there are plenty of options.

The only real downside to a traditional billboard is that you create one ad, and it shows to all people at all times of the day. Digital billboards completely solve this problem!

A digital billboard allows you to display one targeted ad during the morning commute, say, for airline tickets to an exotic vacation. That will put travel in the mind of the viewer while they’re sitting at their desk at work all day.

Then, during the evening rush hour, you can advertise a movie or a restaurant. People are in their cars thinking about evening entertainment, and this might make them change their plans.

In other words, the difference between traditional and digital marketing really blurs when you start factoring in digital billboards.

Key Differences Between Traditional and Digital Marketing

Cost of Digital Marketing vs Traditional

As a businessperson, you’re probably concerned with the bottom line. What’s the cost of digital marketing vs traditional?

The answer to this is exactly what you’d expect: it depends.

Just like it’s much more affordable to put an ad on page 7 of a small-town paper than a billboard in Times Square, some digital ads are cheaper than others. You can get social media ads virtually for free if there isn’t much competition, or you could pay top dollar to be high on the page in popular Google search.

Again, it really comes down to finding the right mix that will achieve your goals with your customers. If you’re not sure how this looks for you, please reach out to us. As the local leaders in outdoor media in Puerto Rico, we can make sure your business is reaching your audience.

Media Planning and Buying

The process of media planning and buying is vital in determining the success of your business. Advertising is the key to making sure that your business reaches its target audience, but how can you implement a clear strategy for advertising effectively?

Media planning and buying will see your business successfully appeal to the right audience, so it is an important step to take. Keeping up to date with advertising and new media will ensure that your campaigns are successful. On the other hand, using outdated media campaigns could see your business not gaining the attention that it deserves.

In this article, you will learn two important things:

  1. How to strategize your media planning to reach your target audience
  2. Key performance indicators to use through OOH advertising to promote your business

What Is Media Planning?

To start off, what is media planning?

The media planning process determines the way in which media will be shared with your target audience.

Media planning decides what media will be shared where and what will be the best ways to reach your target audience. It also ensures that you do the correct market research to discover the best ways of reaching your target demographic.

Although the process can be difficult, it takes a lot of planning to make sure that it works for your business and advertising campaigns. However, once you are focused on creating the best possible OOH advertising for your target audience, you’re on track to successfully promote your business.

Media Planning and Buying

What Is Media Buying?

The process of media buying is to further direct your advertising campaigns to your target audience. Media buying refers to the process of buying advertising space that will reach your target demographic.

The advertising space can refer to:

  • Websites
  • Magazines
  • Newspapers
  • And many other areas

Think of it as the space that will reach your target audience for your business.

Media buyers take control of negotiating with the advertising spaces that you want to purchase to promote your business. It is important to make sure that you are purchasing the right space for the right length of time for maximum optimization.

The Media Planning Process

The process of media planning and buying can take a lot of time to get right as it involves a lot of research. The research is especially important as you need to make sure that you are using the right platforms to target your audience.

Follow these steps for the media planning process:

Plan Your Objectives

Different campaigns will have different objectives, so it is important to make sure that you plan your objectives to make sure that you hit all of the goals. Once the objectives have been thought out, you can begin your research into the best way to advertise your company.

Having clear objectives helps you to decide what media you would like to work with and what media won’t work for the objectives of the campaign. You need to make sure that you are aware of your brand and what you want to achieve from advertising your business.

Decide The Budget

Media buyers need to make sure that they have the right amount to spend on advertising campaigns. This allows them to then plan how they can make the most out of the budget to optimize the advertising campaign.

Media buyers must then work on negotiating after they have established their budget and what can be done with the budget. This will allow the company to make sure that they can create the best form of advertising for their campaign.

Media Planning Process

Market Research

Making sure that you understand your target audience is key in successfully planning your advertising campaigns. Market research will allow you to understand your target market so that you can promote your business the right way for them. 

If you don’t understand your target market when advertising, there will be a possibility that you will miss them in your campaigns. Advertising the wrong way to your target audience comes with the risk that they won’t see the campaign.

Frequency And Reach Of The Campaign

The frequency of the advertising campaign shows how often your target audience will see the advert. This will help to increase the exposure of your campaign and make sure that it reaches your target audience when you want it to.

Continuity, flighting, and pulsing are all factors in planning the frequency of the advert. You will need to decide if continuity will be best for your business as the campaign will consistently advertise, or whether flighting will work best, where there are breaks in the campaign. If you think both will work, then pulsed advertising combines both forms.

The reach of the campaign refers to the number of people who will see the advert over a certain amount of time. This will help you to analyze the exposure of your advertising campaign in front of your target audience.

Make Sure That You Analyze The Success Of Your Plan

Once your campaign is in place, media buyers need to continue to track the success of your OOH advertising. Changing the campaign after it has been set is difficult for media buyers, so having marketing performance insights can help media buyers to keep track of the optimization of the advert.

Examples Of Media Channels

OOH Advertising

OOH advertising has become increasingly popular to get the attention of your target audience not only in their home but outside their home in public spaces.

Popular forms of OOH advertising are billboards as they can reach up to 10,000 people a month if they are situated in the right public spaces.

Digital Media Planning

Magazines are still popular to read, but they are often read electronically instead of in print. Digital media planning is a great way to advertise your business as magazines often have target audiences. If you share the same target audience as a certain magazine, having advertising space in the magazine will optimize your business.

What Is Media Planning

Social Media

Social media is a very popular way to promote your business and it can target your chosen demographic. The reason that social media is very popular with advertisers is that it is very profitable. Social media can reach anyone as it is an incredibly popular platform and a very modern way of advertising.

Key Performance Indicators

Analyzing your campaign is important for keeping track of the engagement. Keeping track of the engagement can help marketers determine what the main factor behind the success of the advertising campaign was and how it can be applied to future campaigns for success.

You need to make sure that your key performance indicators are relevant to not only your target audience but to your marketing strategy. It is important to make your key performance indicators attainable for your business, but there is no limit to how many key performance indicators that you need to have.

How Can bMedia Help?

bMedia can help you by offering its services of high-quality OOH advertising. Reach is one of the most critical points of media planning as you need to make sure that your advert is seen by a lot of people. bMedia can help optimize the reach of your advertisement campaign.

bMedia has digital billboards in over 50 locations that are easily seen by the public. The locations of these billboards are in prime locations where the public can see the advertisements, either at highly populated shopping centers or on highways that are used daily.

Reach is the most important element of media planning as you need to determine how many people will see the advertisement. Having your advertising campaign in a location where no one will see it won’t optimize your campaign or your business. This is where bMedia can help to optimize the reach of your advertising campaign.

How to Promote Your Business in the Community

Promoting your business is essential if your goal is to stand out from your competitors and gain brand recognition in the community. Therefore, it’s important to take advantage of promotion opportunities in your area that will generate more customers and help solidify a trusted brand-consumer relationship in your community. In today’s digital age, promotion opportunities are endless. Businesses can spread the word about their product through search engines, social media channels, online directories, or even go with the ever-so-trusted billboard. To reach your target audience, you must make your brand visible on multiple platforms. Here are some different ways how to promote your business in the community.

how to promote your local business

Out-of-Home Advertising (OOH)

The first step to promoting your business is to make it visible. What better way to do it than out-of-home advertising (OOH). Outdoor advertising techniques include street signage, flyers, street teams, promotional events, and the beloved billboard.

The most trusted and original forms of OOH advertising are billboards. Billboards work because they are eye-catching and one of the most trusted forms of advertising for consumers. The majority of Puerto Ricans live in urban areas, and the great thing about billboards is that they can target local high-traffic areas where customers can interact with your campaign.

Today, we are seeing billboards evolve, boasting endless advertising potential for business. Digital billboards continue to rise in popularity because it allows users to directly engage with the advertisement, creating a memorable experience that highlights the product/ service you are offering.

To ensure a successful billboard campaign, we have determined some best practices to help maximize your promotion:

  • Keep it simple
  • Use borders and cropping appropriately
  • Be intentional with colors and contrast
  • Leverage key locations and seasons
  • Be careful of fonts

Establish a Social Media Presence

There are 2.32 million social media users in Puerto Rico as of January 2021, equivalent to 81.6% of the total population. Social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, and Pinterest are great marketing tools because of the ability to engage with existing customers while reaching out to new customers. As of December 2020, Facebook received 80.3% of all social media site visits in Puerto Rico. Facebook advertising is all about getting your message on the right news feeds using targeting options. Facebook allows you to advertise using images, videos, and even polls for interactivity.

Additionally, social media can be used as a marketing tool by creating brand-specific content. Social media has provided us with a range of posting formats such as images, short video stories, live sessions, tutorials, and more. Creating content for these platforms is an opportunity for business owners to engage with consumers while promoting a specific product, service, or event.

promote business with SEO

Take Advantage of Search Engines Like Google

Being visible on Google is great for your brand, it puts you directly in front of consumers seeking solutions. Creating and verifying your Google Business profiles allows your business to show up on Google Maps and caters results to the searcher’s current location. Creating a Google My Business account is free and once verified, you can optimize your listing to show up as a high-ranking result for relevant searches using a good SEO strategy.

Be Involved in the Community

If you’re wondering how to promote your business in the community, a good place to start is to be active and attentive in your community. Businesses can sometimes be involved in the community for the wrong reasons and they show. Be sincere, be genuine. Don’t push your business if it’s not relevant or actually helpful. In one way or another, your business will come up and your community will support it after they’ve seen and felt your support.

Being involved in the community involves giving back to it. Donating to a local charity will bring your business closer to locals by making it more approachable. Consumers are likely to support your business if you’re associated with a charity or cause close to them. You can give back to your community in several ways including:

  • Annual contribution to charity
  • Special promotions with a percentage of sales going to a cause
  • Donate products or services to local schools or community centers

5 star reviews

Get Online Customer Reviews

Set up profiles on platforms like Yelp and Tripadvisor to increase brand exposure. These platforms are used by locals and visitors when looking for local businesses. 92% of consumers purchase from a business after viewing it on Yelp. These platforms allow customers to leave reviews, making it easy for business owners to monitor and respond to any business inquiries. Make sure all business information, such as hours, phone number, address, and website are all accurate for potential customers.

Importance of a Good Marketing Strategy

A good marketing strategy is a blueprint that will determine how your message will reach out to your target audience. Your business might be making a profit, but to remain successful, you must consistently stay ahead of your competitors. The best way to ensure this is to have a good marketing strategy in place. Not only will good advertising give you an edge, but it can also give you insight into how your business is performing, allowing you to make the right business decisions.

Market research is crucial in creating your promotional strategy. Data and information collected from this research will allow you to develop your product or service to boost profit potential. It can also help you create a detailed organization plan, ensuring optimum utilization of resources to get the message in front of the target consumer.

How to Measure the ROI of Your Campaigns

Once you’ve learned how to promote your business in the community, it’s then important to know how to measure the effectiveness of your promotional efforts.

Marketing ROI involves attributing profit or revenue as a direct cause of marketing growth initiatives. To determine whether your advertising campaign is successful or not, there’s a straightforward formula you can use:

ROI = (Sales growth – organic sales growth – Marketing Cost) / Marketing Cost

Marketing costs include but are not limited to:

  • Overhead and internal expenses
  • Agency fees
  • Media buys
  • Creative costs

ROI helps determine budget allocation for ongoing and future ad campaigns. It’s important to consistently evaluate KPIs such as reach, frequency, and impressions so you can determine if your marketing efforts are benefiting business growth and help you allocate your budget accordingly.

Strategize with bMedia Group

If you’re looking for ways to promote your business within your community, reach out to bMedia Group. We are Puerto Rico’s leading experts in outdoor and billboard advertising. Our professionals can help you strategize, execute and maximize the effectiveness of your promotional campaign and market research.

Contact us today! We’ll guarantee your ads will be seen and remembered, helping you unlock unlimited business growth.

How Much Does a Billboard Cost?

They’ve been around for centuries and have proved valuable, but what is that worth? It’s the question we all want answers to – how much does a billboard cost? Well, that depends on a few things. Let us explain.

How Much Does a Billboard Cost

What is a Billboard?

At the risk of stating the obvious, the Miriam Webster Dictionary defines a billboard as a flat surface, panel, wall, or fence on which information is posted, specifically outdoors. They can be on giant sides of the road, on buses, in airports, or pretty much any other surface you can imagine. Also, there are now many great digital options to allow for ever-changing and interactive billboards.

How Prevalent are Billboards?

Some estimate that there are between 425,000 and 450,000 billboards dotting the landscape along American highways.

The effectiveness of billboards is not limited to the United States. bMedia Group contends that billboard advertising is an ideal way to promote products and services and build brand awareness in Puerto Rico.

Effectiveness of Billboard Advertising

In a Forbes study, almost twenty-five percent of those surveyed stated that they visited a store the same day that they saw a billboard advertising their products. And even when they didn’t, the brand often lodges in their mind to return next time they find themself considering that product or service.

Financial experts have calculated that the return on investment for billboard advertising is almost six dollars for every dollar spent.

It is little wonder that companies like Cracker Barrel spend almost half of their advertising dollars on outdoor advertising.

How Much Do Billboards Cost?

Exactly how much does it cost for billboard advertising? The answer to this question is not as simple as it sounds. Several factors determine the cost of a billboard. However, here is one example:

If you print an advertisement on a fourteen-foot by forty-eight-foot billboard, you will need seven hundred square feet of vinyl. The cost of the materials will run anywhere from three hundred to five hundred dollars.

Renting the advertising space for your ad will cost between five and eight hundred dollars a day. Prices vary with location, as well as how many days you want the ad space.

How Much Do Billboards Cost

How Much Does It Cost to Get a Billboard?

The question of how much do billboards cost has multiple factors that go into the answer.

Location

As with real estate, the location of your billboard is crucial. Your aim is maximum viewing by your niche market.

How much does a billboard ad cost in cities around the US? In New York City, renting a billboard for a month will cost between $1800o and $12,000. In Los Angeles, the same space would cost between $1500 and $9,000. Chicago billboard space rents for between $1200 and $6,000. Philadelphia billboards cost between $1200 and $6,000 while in San Francisco, you can rent space for the same costs.

Size

It is not surprising that billboard costs increase with size. Studies show that the larger the advertisement, the more impressions it will make and the bigger the impact on the consumer. Larger billboards require more material and higher labor costs to erect them.

Rental Time/Campaign Duration

Writer Kelly Main points out that size, location, and duration all play a part in billboard costs. For example, billboard costs average between $750 and $1,500 per month in rural areas. In small to midsize cities, the costs rise to between $1, and $2,000. In larger cities where many more people will see them, the cost of billboards rises to between $14,000 and $15,000.

Billboard Type

Costs also vary with the type of billboard. There are three types:

  • Classic or print billboards are typically vinyl.  They usually cost less than the other types.
  • Digital billboards are more dynamic advertisements than static billboards. They incorporate elements like a moving image. Digital billboards can be easily switched, based on your market and the time you want the bulletin board to appear each day. This can benefit you if you are targeting an off time, but raise costs if you want prime time.
  • Billboard advertisements on busses, cars, and other moving vehicles are called mobile billboards. They are more likely to be seen by your target audience because vehicles move while they showcase your brand, products, or special event.

Market or Demographics

Demographics consider the people who pass by the billboard. Your niche market considers the age, gender, socioeconomic level, education, and occupation of the people you are trying to attract with your advertising. If you are trying to attract a larger audience, higher-income individuals, or those with higher education, the cost will likely be higher.

Market Population

Generally speaking, the larger your target market, the higher the cost of billboard advertising.

How Much Does It Cost For Billboard Advertising

How Much Does it Cost to Put a Billboard Up?

Aside from the costs associated with the physical structure of the billboard, there are also other costs relating to the creation and setup of a billboard. So, how much does a billboard cost?

Designing the Billboard

When it comes to the actual design of the billboard, it’s not something you want to take shortcuts on. You can pay premium fees for a billboard in a prime location, but if it looks low quality, it can actually hurt your brand.

There are essentially three aspects to a billboard ad: the concept or idea, the copy (the words), and the visual design.

Definitely consider hiring a specialist for all three of those areas. Many people think they can come up with an idea, write it, and then pay a graphic designer to whip up a beautiful image. That can work, but creating ads is a skilled craft (especially considering the strategy involved in outdoor media), so you may be surprised at the quality (and return on investment) you’ll get from expert help.

For any stage of the process, you essentially have three options:

  • Create it in-house: If you or someone at your company is creative, good with words, and skilled with visual design, this method keeps the most control. The downside is time, costs of doing it yourself, and it’s sometimes a disadvantage to not have an outside perspective.
  • Hire a freelancer: With the prevalence of sites like Upwork and Fiverr, this has never been easier. It can be fast and cost-effective, but the downside is it can take time to find a quality freelancer, and they aren’t always available when you need them.
  • Working with an agency: Many billboard companies keep the necessary staff to be able to design quality outdoor advertising. And considering it’s their business, they can be pretty good at it! There isn’t a huge downside here, just make sure you understand the pricing structure before getting started, as well as who has ownership over the designs they create.

The prices for these different options can vary significantly depending on your location and who you hire. A rough estimate is everything from $30 to hundreds per hour. In many cases, it will take striking a balance between quality and affordability.

Physical Cost of the Billboard

An obvious, but sometimes overlooked, cost with billboards are the actual materials. This really will only come into play if you’re building your own sign because any outdoor advertising agency should already have this factored into their cost structure (but, double-check!).

If you are building your own, you will have to consider the cost of the real estate, the building materials for the structure, the vinyl for the sign, the printing on the vinyl, and the construction and maintenance costs.

Maintenance and Other Recurring Costs

The costs don’t necessarily stop once the sign is installed. Depending on the local climate, you have to maintain the billboard to keep it looking fresh. Most billboard companies will have any fees built in the initial contract, and they usually cover the agreed-upon time period. Keep in mind that you may again have these costs if you decide to extend.

Billboard Variations

Rapidly changing technology has made it easier for billboard advertisers to capture the attention of those who drive or walk past. Interactive technology has transformed billboards from static images painted vinyl frames, walls, and vehicles. The Internet has made billboards increasingly smarter. These electronic billboards appear next to bus benches, shopping centers, or on walls in high traffic areas.

Once popular, digital billboards proved easy to ignore. On the other hand, new interactive billboards speak—literally and figuratively—to your niche market. “Smart” advertisements can dynamically react to their environment. They can send and receive data. These billboards can adapt to demographics, weather, and time of day. Billboards of the future will react to their environment and audience by changing the content based on information collected about those who view them.

How Much Does a Billboard Cost to Rent

Why Invest in Billboards?

If you want to get higher brand recognition, you have an event to publicize, or you want to drive more traffic to your website, billboards are an economical and effective tool.

Billboard advertising broadcasts your business, products, services, or an upcoming campaign to a wide audience.

People spend an average of 70% of their time outside their homes. Compared to other types of marketing, billboards give you maximum exposure.

How to Get Started

  • Whether you want to advertise your brand on billboards or you want to start a billboard advertising business, you have some decisions to make first.
  • What are your advertising goals?
  • Where is the best place to locate your billboard?
  • What is your market audience?
  • What message do you want to give them?
  • What types of billboards do you want to utilize?
  • What skills/information do you need?

Why Choose bMedia Group?

Now that you have the answer to the question how much does a billboard cost, you may be wondering about next steps or other additional information. Advertising experts like bMedia can break down billboards according to price, type, format, and message.

They can help you achieve your advertising goals using their experience in outdoor advertising and their technical skills. bMedia Group offers a wide variety of out-of-home media choices. They have one that will fit your goals and your budget. They have proven success at targeting any audience.

To discuss how bMedia Group can help you achieve your advertising goals, learn more about our billboard advertising.

Outdoor Advertising Trends

Today, billboards are one of the most popular and effective advertising mediums. While the rise of new advertising technologies has transformed the advertising market, billboards remain both popular and incredibly effective, due to the fact that they can adapt to new advertising trends with ease.

In Puerto Rico, there’s an average of six-hundred-and-fourteen automobiles for every one-thousand people. That’s a lot of traffic! Moving across highways and roads, drivers are usually looking to pass the time. For this reason, advertisers strategically place billboards where drivers can easily see and take note of them, even if subconsciously.

Each billboard, if designed properly, conveys an engaging and unique message. Each message has the potential to turn the driver, who may not have even heard about that particular company or product, into a customer. Or, at the very least, into someone who is interested in considering what the billboard is offering.

Outdoor Advertising Trends 2022: How Did We Get Here?

If you want to fully understand the outdoor advertising trends 2022 marketers are focusing on, it’s best to take a step back and think about our history with outdoor advertising.

As an advertising medium, billboards are quite old. In fact, they’ve been around since the late 19th century. As years progress, billboards continue to grow and transform. This allows them to remain both relevant and effective, especially as a source of true guerilla marketing.

In order to make a truly excellent billboard advertisement, it’s important to understand the history of outdoor advertising trends, as well as where outdoor advertising stands today.

Outdoor Advertising Trends

How Did Billboards Begin?

In 1867, the first billboard advertisement was leased. As time passed, billboards became more popular, and the advertisements became far more elaborate and unique. With the rise of the automobile, roads and highways were created. On these roads and highways, billboards could be placed on the sides. It was this development that lead to billboard advertising becoming one of the primary advertising mediums of the 20th Century.

If you go back to the year 1867, that was when the first billboard advertisement was leased. Just twenty-four-years after that, in 1891, the Associated Bill Posters’ Association was formed. This association was designed to expand people’s understanding of the billboard medium and to organize and coordinate efforts that had to do with designing and setting up billboards.

With the rise of the Associated Bill Posters’ Association, billboards became far more popular. People began to understand the medium and the advertising potential that lay within it.

Outdoor Advertising Current Trends

When the first mass-market automobile was released – the Ford Model T – everything changed. The Model T became one of the first affordable automobiles. Instead of relying on more archaic forms of transport, people drove automobiles.

As automobiles became more popular, cities realized a need for efficient networks of roads and highways. This led to the creation of what we know today as roadways.

Advertisers quickly flocked to empty spaces along these roads and found a true potential for different forms of advertising. Since then, billboards have become an important aspect of the advertising landscape. In fact, they’re one of the more evolving forms of marketing that continues to adapt to newer forms of technology.

Quick Facts of Historical Outdoor Advertising Trends

  • In the mid-to-late nineteenth century, billboards became an advertising medium
  • When the Associated Bill Posters’ Association was formed, people became aware of the medium and its potential for advertising
  • The Ford Model T led to roads and highways, which changed the advertising industry
  • Billboard were placed across roadway networks and became one of the most popular advertising mediums

Outdoor Advertising Future Trends

What Is The Current Billboard Advertisement Design Philosophy?

In today’s outdoor advertising trends, there are several design choices that almost every billboard makes, in one way or another. Each one of these design choices began as trends before morphing into a set standard.

Billboard advertisements are, first and foremost, a visual medium. Words are often used, but sparingly, because the images are designed to speak for themselves. Effectively, outdoor advertisements should be clear and succinct, primarily because viewers don’t have longer than a few seconds to digest it. If there are too many words, there’s a good chance the billboard won’t be read or understood.

In the earlier days of billboard advertisements, visuals were often used alongside words. Billboards were still a visual medium, but words were given more weight. An example of this was advertisements for circus shows and theater acts.

Today, that is no longer the case. Billboards now use striking visuals as an incentive that immediately captivates the essence of what is being sold. While words are still important, they are used sparingly.

Digital Outdoor Advertising Trends

To go along with the striking visuals, viewers may find the use of strong colors that are both engaging and visually appealing. Today, many billboards use colors like blue, yellow, black, white, and red. These colors are complementary. Their contrast also makes it easier to read and to emphasize certain aspects of the advertisement.

The most important aspect of designing a billboard advertisement is simplicity.

Today, people are bombarded with the flow of information. The internet is responsible for most of this. In fact, online advertisers are hard-pressed to truly identify and convert the right customers. Billboards often follow a different goal. Billboards, first and foremost, are seen by a wider public audience. This gives advertisers the chance to get in front of larger crowds. However, it means, also, that outdoor advertisements must be as simple, engaging, and captivating. For this reason, it’s important to work with outdoor advertisers that are as experienced in design as they are in formatting language for marketing purposes.

What Are The Current Outdoor Advertising Trends?

Digital billboards were undeniably a game-changer in the outdoor advertising industry. So much so, in fact, that there was a time that this list of current trends could focus on that alone. The exciting news is we’ve evolved past that, and here are the outdoor advertising future trends that we think you should keep your eyes on:

Innovative Out Of Home Advertising

Digital Outdoor Advertising Trends

One of the primary outdoor advertising current trends is to make use of digital billboards. A digital billboard is a canvas that boasts endless advertising potential. For one, using a digital billboard, allows you to use animation, distinct (and dynamic) color choices, unique typography, among other creative choices.

With a digital billboard, the set-up process is much easier and much shorter. This usually reflects longevity, as well. Setting up a digital billboard consists of making the advertisement, and renting the digital space for a specific period of time. That’s it. The advertisement is displayed until another takes its place.

As digital billboards continue to become more and more popular, a variety of unique and creative advertising choices and trends directly related to the medium will catch on. Right now, interactivity is very popular, and many advertisers are experimenting with it.

Outdoor Advertising Trends 2022

Dynamic Messaging is Taking Over Innovative Out-of-Home Advertising

Carrying on with the theme of using digital billboards, they can be changed instantly and on-demand. That means that the days are finished in which you had to put up one sign for a certain amount of time.

It’s now possible to have your ad displayed at the most ideal time for your target market.

This is beneficial in two ways:

  1. You can get your ad in the eyes of your specific target market. If you’re targeting early birds, you don’t need to bother displaying your message late at night when they’re at home tucked in bed.
  2. The pricing rates can vary. If you’re looking for a high-traffic time (such as rush hour), then this won’t really impact you much. But if you have a lower budget and think that an off time is better for your strategy overall, you won’t necessarily have to pay peak prices.

Interactive Messaging is One of the Main Outdoor Advertising Future Trends

We touched on this earlier, but we are very confident that the future of innovative out-of-home advertising involves interactive messaging. As futuristic as this sounds, it can take many forms. As a matter of fact, using reflections or interactive physical elements have been successfully done in the past (especially in urban environments, such as at bus stops).

Many current forms of this strategy involve some kind of camera on the billboard itself to capture the viewer, but there are also increasingly easier ways involving smartphone integrations.

When thinking about mobile interaction and billboards, most people assume this involves the type of tracking methods used in online advertising, but that’s not necessarily the case. For a fun example of what’s possible, imagine creating a video game on a billboard. Viewers could scan a QR code and then use their phones as a game controller.

More Focused Ads Are a Major Strategy in Outdoor Advertising Current Trends

This is probably the most significant way to sum up current outdoor advertising trends. They can be updated easily because they’re digital. They can be displayed at specific times, and they can even be interactive and customized for individual viewers. Put all that together, and the game has changed significantly since the days when you put a generic headline up with a product photo to keep your brand in viewers’ minds.

In our world where print publications are going extinct and online browsers are loaded with ad blockers, outdoor advertising is one of the most effective ways to reach your customers. As always, it’s important to keep up to date on the trends, as well as focus on best practices.

Digital Outdoor Advertising Effectiveness

Using an interactive digital billboard, you are able to directly have the user directly engage with the advertisement. This leads to a far more memorable and enjoyable experience, while also serving as a wonderful way of highlighting what you are offering.

Soon enough, there will be other trends related to the medium. These trends will transform digital billboards, and digital billboards will continue to transform the billboard advertising medium.

Interested in learning more about outdoor advertising? Contact bMedia, a leading provider of billboard advertisements in Puerto Rico.

Unique Billboard Designs

With the dawn of the internet, it’s amazing watching some of the most unique shares go viral. This has to be one of our favorite picks because it involves billboard advertising! Check out these truly unique billboard designs made out of snow! Some are dubbing it snow graffiti.

Have you ever been stuck in a snowstorm and started dreaming of warmer climates?  You surely have if you’ve ever spent any significant amount of time in a colder area, as it’s a common problem that everyone complains about.  Even though many people seek out tanning beds and other temporary solutions, they always daydream of warm sun and sandy beaches. But, have you ever considered that this might just be a great way to get the attention of your customers?  You might not have the budget to send them to an exclusive beach, but what about planting the idea in their head? When images fail, nature speaks!

Billboard Design Best Practices

If you’re looking to create unique billboard designs, there are a few traits that you shouldn’t forget:

  • Keep it simple. Stick to one goal for your billboard and don’t distract from that. It’s easy to get carried away when thinking about innovative billboard designs, but too much going on will just confuse people.
  • Make it fast. Most viewers take in billboards quickly and look away. The most successful either cause a double take so the potential customer will look back, or stick in the back of their minds so they will think about it later on.
  • Have a main takeaway. You ideally want there to be one key message from your billboard. A new product you have, an upcoming sale, or even just a reminder that your business is around. Instead of combining messages, an alternative would be to have multiple billboards with the same theme but different messaging.

This isn’t an exhaustive list of billboard design best practices, but these points are key to successful campaigns.

Unique Billboard Designs

A Whole New Meaning of “Cool Billboard Designs”

Mexico’s Board of Tourism was trying to attract cold people from their urban homes, and they wanted to motivate them to hop on a plane and come to support the Mexican economy.  They took the concept of cool billboard designs to a whole new level when they found the perfect opportunity in the third most populated city in the US. They took advantage of the fact that citizens of Chicago hate the long and cold winters.

During a spring snowstorm, some artists took to the streets of the city with the goal of using frozen water to spread warm thoughts.  They either packed the snow onto surfaces, or they shoveled it off.  In both cases, they made it into a message of words that were easily read by viewers.  They all discussed how warm it is in Mexico to try and inspire people to book a beach vacation to warm up their bones.

Four Noticeable Slogans

It was mostly text (not images), and the words weren’t random.  They used four specific slogans that made these unique billboard designs amazing!

1) “Take your clothes off.”

2) “Beaches with sand this white.”

3) “Mexico: Always a warm Welcome.”

4) “Come melt under the sun.”

Snow Graffiti for Attention

One thing that makes this campaign stand out is how simple these unique billboard designs were when compared to many of the high-tech ads that have been turning heads lately.  All it really took was a few guys with snow, shovels, and ladders.  They needed something to put it on (or take it off of) and plenty of creativity.  It didn’t need virtual reality, artificial intelligence, or any other technology that seems to belong in a science fiction story.

Unique Billboard Design Ideas

Playing to What People Want

Chicago is famous as being a place with cold and bitter winters, and that fact was absolutely necessary for this campaign.  There are many cities that occasionally see snow, but a lot of them generally have temperatures that are much more comfortable.  This could have physically been done in warmer places, but it wouldn’t have been as noticeable to the residents because they wouldn’t be bordering on the feelings of desperation for anything hot.

The Results Were Hot

This whole stunt was put on by Lapiz, which is a branch of the Leo Burnett Group.  They were working with an area artist, NosE Lanariz, to actually create the messages, and this helped them connect with the local scene.

It’s been viewed as a great use of outdoor media in an innovative fashion, and it’s a nice example of how a low-budget campaign can still have very successful results.

Taking Advantage of Other Ads

There have been plenty of ads talking about the nice weather of Mexico.  For example, just think about any commercial for Corona that you’ve ever seen.  That means this campaign was benefitting from all of those.  The image that the tourism board wanted to convey was already in the minds of customers, so it wasn’t really necessary to show it to them.  All they had to do was trigger those thoughts, and once they were pulled out of the depths of frozen minds, they were now associated with the idea of taking a trip to Mexico.

Not Just Snow: Other Unique Billboard Designs

While we’ve been focused on this icy example, there are plenty of other cool billboard designs that take advantage of their surroundings.

Show Your Product With Innovative Billboard Designs

It’s hard to find a more iconic brand than Coca-Cola, but you would think there are only so many ways to put a drink on a billboard. Think again. They ran this clever campaign where giant straws left the top of the sign and interacted with the surrounding environment.

Simple Billboard Designs
Source: Ads of the World

Everyone knows what a cold Coke tastes like, and seeing this automatically makes you taste the bubbles.

Nature Works With Simple Billboard Designs

There are situations where people think that billboards distract from the surrounding environment – whether that’s urban or deep in nature. An artist named Brian Kane decided to show how innovative yet simple billboard designs can actually highlight their surroundings. These digital billboards display different images depending on the time of day, but they always show a beautiful scene behind them. Sometimes trees, sometimes celestial bodies.

Cool Billboard Designs
Source: Today.com

This isn’t really a billboard you’d want your company to create since it doesn’t advertise anything, but it’s a great example of how to get noticed.

Taking Advantage of Digital Billboards

Now for an example where a digital billboard showcases a specific product. A lot of people use digital billboards the same way they would an ad online, but that can miss out on a huge opportunity!

Billboard Design Best Practices
Source: The One Club Awards

McDonald’s used this billboard where an Egg McMuffin mimicked the rising sun, and that really helps it stand out from other digital ads that don’t take advantage of its surroundings.

Breaking Out of Standard Media

Trying to get away from using standard media channels can be very challenging, but it can sometimes be far more successful than sticking to the same methods being used by everyone else – so it’s always worth thinking about.  This strategy can have amazing results when you have such an opportunity as the Mexican Board of Tourism did in Chicago.

Even if you don’t have an idea this great, you can still think of innovative ways to use established forms of media.  For example, billboards can take advantage of 3D solutions, or they can integrate some sort of technology.

Have You Made It Snow on Your Customers?

Being different and unique is a great way to get a customer’s attention.  It’s made even better when it plays upon their desires to solve a problem, as it did in this case.  However, don’t make it snow just because you can.  If all you are doing is trying to be creative, you might attract attention, but it won’t necessarily increase your sales.  So make sure that when you bring the snow, you drop it on the people who are actually ready to book a flight.  If you want some feedback on your ideas, reach out to us.  We love hearing your creative plans for unique billboard designs, and we’re happy to give advice!

Measuring Advertising Effectiveness

To a certain extent, advertising can be a trial and error process. Not all marketing campaigns start out great, right off the bat. Most successful strategies are built on little errors businesses weed out over time by measuring advertising effectiveness.

What’s the Importance of Measuring Advertising Effectiveness?

Measuring Advertising Effectiveness

Sure, you can equate a sudden influx of clients to your recently implemented marketing campaign, or a downturn in lead conversion to seasonal variables, but unless you have the metrics and cold hard statistics to prove it, you can never be sure how your strategy is performing.

When it comes to advertising your business, you need to know the real-world effects of every decision you make, as each of these decisions is costing you money. So, let’s take a look at the different ways of measuring advertising effectiveness, and what advertising metrics you should be using.

Advertising Performance Metrics

Before you can apply any advertising metrics to your campaign, you need to ensure that it is measurable, and this is done by setting time-sensitive, advert-specific goals.

Establishing Objectives

Objectives are everything when it comes to marketing. After all, if there is no goal to work towards, it’s impossible to measure success, as success becomes irrelevant – which isn’t the outlook you want to have if you’re trying to grow your business.

Once you’ve established the objective of an advertisement, you’ll know what metrics to apply to measure performance.

These are known as key performance indicators.

Deciding on Key Performance Indicators

You can think of KPIs as steps that must be taken to achieve your marketing objective.

For example, your overarching objective might be to drive sales of a particular product up 20% by next quarter. Therefore, a KPI to observe would be the number of visitors the product page receives after the release of the ad compared to the traffic it was logging beforehand.

Once you’ve established a quantifiable backdrop for your advertisements, there are literally hundreds of ways to track the performance of your advertising campaign and determine whether you’re pulling in an ROI. Let’s take a look at some of the more commonly used metrics.

Reach

Reach is quantified in different ways depending on the medium, but it always tells you the same thing. It simply refers to the total number of people exposed to your advert — the more, the merrier!

Frequency

Frequency is the number of times each individual sees your advert. Repetition plays a huge role in memory retention, so if each person sees your ad a few times, it’s definitely a good thing; however, too much exposure to the same advert will cause fatigue, and it will start to fade into the background.

Impressions

Impressions metrics are basically a combination of reach and frequency metrics. They measure the total number of times your advert has been seen, even if by the same people.

Cost Per Customer

How much does your advertisement cost when split between the customers it brings? If the cost per customer is less than the revenue they brought in, then your advert is, at the very least, not drawing a loss.

Cost Per Click (CPC)

Similar to cost per customer, this metric measures how much the ad is costing you when divided across the clicks it has garnered.

Click-Through Rate (CTR)

How many people are clicking through on one of your online advertisements? If the number is exceedingly low when compared to the overall reach of the ad, it’s underperforming.

Advertising Metrics: How Is the Efficacy of Out-of-Home Marketing Measured

Advertising Metrics

 

With advancements in technology, thousands of metrics have been made available to the online digital marketer, which may leave you questioning the relevance of traditional outdoor advertising. How would you even go about measuring advertising effectiveness through the impact of a billboard or poster campaign?

Well, you’d be surprised how quantitative this area of the marketing industry is. In fact, as your outdoor ads are mostly going to direct viewers to engage with your brand online in some form or another, it means you can use a lot of the same technologies utilized by digital marketers, to assess your outdoor advertising effectiveness.

One Strategy at a Time

Firstly, to assess how well your outdoor advertising is doing, you need to stabilize all other marketing activities. If you see an increase in interest or revenue, you need to be able to say with confidence that the outdoor roll-out is responsible for the growth.

Traffic Data

Here at bMedia, we use a state-of-the-art car tracking system in all our billboard locations to give you an accurate estimate on the probable exposure of your advertisement.

Landing Page Tracking

Just because your adverts are out in the real world, doesn’t mean you can’t use computers to analyze their performance. By placing a unique URL on your advertisement, you can then use an online tracker to measure how many visitors the URL receives, just by viewing your out-of-home advertising.

Hashtags and Social Media Tracking

You can do a similar thing with hashtags. Assign a unique hashtag to your billboards, and monitor proliferation online across various social media platforms.

Promo Codes

The same principles apply to promo codes too. Let’s say that you’re a watch manufacturer, and you wanted to entice customers with a modest discount. You could print, “Use Promo Code WATCHTHISSPACE for 10% off” on just your billboards, then measure how many customers applied the code at checkout.

Keyword Tracking

It’s quite possible that people will see your advert, get the general gist, but miss the exact wording of a promo code or hashtag. They may then respond to your ad by searching your brand online alongside phrases such as “new deal”, “watch offer”, or “promotion”.

By keeping an eye out for those keywords in your online analytics, you’ll have a clearer picture of how many people your outdoor advertisement is influencing.

Customer Surveys

Don’t get us wrong – state-of-the-art analytics technology is great and all, but you could also just try asking your customers where they heard about your brand and what brought them to your site. Try this in your online contact forms, email marketing campaigns, or even social media.

Mobility Tracking

Another way you can drum up more of an idea about reach, frequency, and impressions is to measure the movement of journeys people make in vehicles or otherwise in a certain area. This can be done by monitoring the GPS location of willing survey participants or, perhaps, asking them to write and submit a travel diary.

Outdoor Advertising Effectiveness: Why Outdoor Advertising Is Essential to the Success of Your Business

Outdoor advertising effectiveness

As more and more of our lives are playing out in front of screens, we’ve seen a massive spike in the popularity of digital marketing, and while this is an effective means of reaching people, it’s not necessarily the best way to advertise to prospective clients/customers.

The constant barrage of online ads and lead acquisition emails we experience in our day-to-day lives is enough to drive anybody up the wall. Rather than enticing the viewer, they tend to cause irritation and feelings of distrust.

In response to this over-exposure to digital marketing mediums, the value of traditional outdoor marketing has skyrocketed, and bMedia is at the forefront of this surge in popularity.

When people see a bMedia billboard, they’re not scrolling past it at lightning speed or distracted by a million other bits of data, they’re focused on your advert and your advert alone, reading it slowly, weighing up each word, enjoying the visual accompaniment, making a mental note to investigate further once they get to where they’re going.

bMedia Can Help You Grow Your Business

Contact us today and gain access to over 500 high-exposure areas across the entire island of Puerto Rico, meaning that we can single-handedly optimize the reach of your outdoor advertising campaign.

Our intuitive billboard location map makes it incredibly easy to explore your options, but we do so much more than simply provide the space for your advertisements. Our crack team of marketing strategists with years of experience in the industry will help you build your campaign from the ground up to serve your specific business goals.

Effective Billboard Advertising

Billboards are a great medium to use when you really want to get your message to your customers.  Some people think they’re outdated in an increasingly digital world, but there’s a reason they’re still going strong. Everywhere from Times Square to Puerto Rico, they work! However, there are a few key factors worth noting that really contribute to effective billboard advertising.

Some say TV and radio advertising are losing out to streaming services. Others champion using online ads, but each channel there has a critic claiming no one uses that social network anymore. What’s undeniable is that people will still venture out into the world on a regular basis, and there’s no need to update their device in order to read a billboard.

The effort and detail put into everything behind the billboard will help maximize its message and effectiveness. In other words, the more you focus on the goals behind the ad, the audience, the design, and the location, the more optimized your billboard is for maximum effectiveness.

Here’s where to start your quest for effective billboard design:

effective billboard advertising

Tips for Most Effective Billboard Advertising

To make sure your billboard advertising is reaching its full potential, there are a few things you’ll want to pay close attention to.

Follow these 7 guidelines:

  1. Make sure you know your target audience
  2. In most cases, simple is better than complex
  3. Use clear messaging
  4. Follow best practices for ease of reading
  5. Always aim for a goal
  6. Focus on one call to action
  7. Never forget to use this to build your brand

This may seem like a lot of steps, but it really isn’t since many of them build on each other. Learn on to read how to best accomplish each one of these.

Define a Target

The first important aspect of creating effective billboard advertising is making sure that it’s targeting a specific group of viewers. Since such a wide variety of people will be exposed to it, it’s very tempting to try to advertise to everyone. Studies have shown that targeting a specific demographic using your billboard can often get the message across far more clearly than going after a broader group. Instead of a lot of people getting your message, it generally turns into no one hearing it.

When you decide on a target group, you’ll know who you’re talking to. Once you know exactly who’s going to be listening, you know how to craft your message in a way that they’ll hear it.

Keep It Simple

Too many words end up being too much information to remember. Don’t forget that people often see billboards when they’re driving or busy doing something else, so they don’t always have the chance to stop and read – even if they want to. Make sure you get your point across as quickly as possible.

A good general rule is to use a maximum of six words on your billboard, as this is about the most that people can quickly take in.

But, just because you can use six doesn’t mean that you have to. Using only one word can be great. Zero words can be amazing.

effective billboard design

Make Sure People Understand You

The next step is to keep your billboard understandable.  When you’re trying to sell something, you don’t want to show off in a way that strains the brain of your customer.  If someone really has to stretch to understand what you’re saying, they might start feeling stupid.  Once they associate your brand with that feeling, people aren’t really going to have a lot of motivation to give you their money.

But, if you make your billboard easy to understand, your customers will start to feel good about themselves.  Suddenly, you’re the brand that they relate to, and that’s who they want to have in their life.

Make Sure People Can Read It

We’ve already covered why your billboard should only have a few words and why it should be easy to understand, but it’s also extremely important to make sure people can read it.  By this, we mean to make sure the actual design can be taken in by the eyes of your customers.

Don’t use elaborate fonts that are difficult to make out. Don’t use colors that are so similar that they’re hard to tell apart. Make sure the billboard has lots of contrast between the different elements, but also make sure they’re colors that go well together.

Set a Goal

This is near the bottom of the list, but it’s still one of the most necessary parts of creating an effective billboard. It really should be done at the same time that you define your target. Make sure that you have a specific result that you hope for the sign to accomplish, or you’re just going to be creating a colorful banner.

Are you looking to create more brand awareness? Perhaps you’re marketing a specific product or service, for which you can track sales through the billboard campaign?

It doesn’t need to be a complicated or difficult goal.

Do you want to get more people in your store?  That’s a great goal.

Do you want to make sure potential customers learn about a promotion?  That’s another.

What about just making people interested in your brand?  That’s one of the most common reasons for creating a billboard.

effective billboard advertising examples

Define a Single Call-To-Action

What are you wanting your audience to do when they see your ad? Is there a phone number you want them to call? Maybe a website or social media channel you want them to visit? Is there a discount code you’d like them to enter? Don’t forget your contact info somewhere within the billboard advertisement, to make sure viewers don’t just see your ad – they engage with and respond to it.

Go With Brand Building

Now that we’re talking about your brand, that brings up a really good piece of advice.  Think about using the billboard mostly to keep your brand in the eyes of your consumers.  They’ll see your message every day on their way to work, but they don’t always have the chance to stop and read it.  Or, they may not even have a need for your products or services at the moment – but the sign will still be there.

If your name has been melted into their brains during a morning commute every single day, they’ll take that into consideration when they encounter you in a shop.  You’ll feel like a trusted friend who has always been there for them.

Don’t Be Intimidated By Overdone Effective Billboard Advertising Examples

If you do a search for “effective billboard advertising examples”, you’re likely going to come up with some pretty impressive results. You might find these amazing pieces of art to be inspiring, or you might be prepared to throw in the towel because you’ll never be able to think of an idea so great.

Take a deep breath and remember that out of millions of billboards, the internet will be happy to point out a few amazing success stories. These were developed by the top advertising agencies, and often had a bit of luck to really make them happen.

Just focus on the fact that the point of your billboard is to achieve your goals with your customers. Having an award-winning ad that will go viral online feels great, but it doesn’t contribute to your bottom line. Stick with the tips above, and you’ll be fine.

How to Buy Billboard Advertising

Now that you have more of an idea of how to do billboard advertising, you’re probably wondering the specifics of how to buy billboard advertising. Essentially there are two ways to go about it: building a billboard or renting space on one that already exists.

Pros of building a billboard:

  • You have more control over the billboard as a whole.
  • You don’t have to worry about the contract running out and not being able to renew.

Cons of building a billboard:

  • You need to either own or rent the land where it is placed (or the building it’s attached to).
  • You’re responsible for building and maintaining it.

Pros of renting an already existing billboard:

  • There is a lot less planning and commitment on your part, and the whole process can be significantly faster and easier.
  • If you decide the location isn’t working for you, you can move when the rental term is finished.

Cons of renting an already existing billboard:

  • Depending on the contract, the price or availability of the billboard could change in the future.
  • Some (but not all!) companies will place restrictions on what you can put on the billboard.

How bMedia Can Help With Effective Billboard Design

Now that you have all this new knowledge about billboards, why not put it to the test?  Give us a call, we are the largest provider of outdoor media in Puerto Rico and can help you get started with creating effective billboard advertising. As we consider your audience, your message, and the size of the ad, we’ll make sure that your billboard ad is most effective in its location and performance.