Billboards

Members of the ISP-Marketing list discuss the efficacy of billboards as a marketing tool. Members also share ingenious methods for tracking the effectiveness of billboard ads.

[February 28, 2001]

On the ISP-Marketing list in February, SS inquired,

"What do you think of billboards? What location works best? Is branding important?"

A number of respondents offered their opinions on ideal placement:

[PF observed] "Billboards have worked very well here. Very cheap, and if you get on the way to a shopping complex, you can't do much better than that! Most of the boards I go after are on local roads going to the shopping centers; those are the people who are in the mood to buy."

[US countered] "I would place them on major arteries into the city. Business decisions to buy are generally made in the office, so if you want to get the most bang for your buck, I'd place them so that they're seen on the way into the office."

[BH added] "Depends on your market, but I would say to focus on highways and interstates inside the city. But do remember to keep your billboard message short: people only have seconds to read it."

SH offered a general suggestion to accommodate all locations:

"You need to implement a process where you can track the advertisement and the response. My suggestion would be to put two or more billboards up in different locations with a different 800 number on each one, and track which advertisement you get the best response from. Once you know that information, switch the billboard locations and check again. Now you have a decent idea which board is more catchy to your customers. Trash the others and only use what works. This goes with all advertising."

US shared his observations on branding:

"Billboards should be used to complement your branding effort, whether you're branding with a logo or a slogan. They should be designed simply; the driver doesn't have time to process a lot of stuff on a billboard. But I don't think that they themselves generate responses. They help with brand awareness, just like radio spots. Then again, most of my marketing campaigns are for brand awareness only: branding is a very powerful thing. Don't junk a billboard campaign or a radio campaign merely because you can't tie signups directly to the campaign."

PF concluded with a universal truth:

"The hard part of advertising is that everyone gets vastly different results from the same exact efforts."

—End