Billboards were used long ago as the best marketing strategy but today, people no longer look at these billboards in the same way they used to see 20 or 30 years back.
However, the billboards are still considered as the premium advertising space that most of the branding agency in Melbourne use, while consumers are engulfed in their smartphones, tablets, and gaming systems. That doesn’t mean that billboard advertising is to be discounted or ignored. As you can see now that billboards are everywhere and even though you had a glance of it, they can still have a powerful branding impact on your mind.
Today, outdoor advertising is taking a step ahead and have also become increasingly more competitive along with digital advertising becoming the medium of choice, it’s important to know how to make your advertising count.
Get Noticed or Avoid Distraction
Billboards are there to grab the attention of bikers, cyclists, and pedestrians. Due to this, it causes an unusual dilemma for the advertisers; you want to get noticed but don’t want to be responsible for the accidents. Much of the news is covered in a way where drivers are distracted while reading billboards. So billboards should not distractive.
Six Words Or Less Is the Rule
Imagine, you are on a move and suddenly you read a billboard, while you won’t have much time to read it fully. This is where the six seconds rule comes in as it has been touted as the industry average for reading a billboard. So around six words should get the message clear.
However, you can push this to a few more words depending on their length and ease of reading, but as a rule of thumb, less is more! While the concision is tough to read and headlines with small paragraphs will not get any read. That means if your brand has a complex brand, product or service, you probably should stay away from the billboards.
Be Smart
Everyone knows that no one will ever read a boring billboard. On the other hand, a smart billboard grabs all the attention and will leave an ever-lasting impression. While a billboard that will try to act over smartly will get be lost forever.
As a golden rule, billboards shouldn’t be such that will make people scratch their heads and wonder what’s going on. Like complex visual metaphors are not considered good here. It was said that advertising should be like a puzzle to solve and should give the audience a sense of fulfilment to know that they figured it out.
Although, billboards should be much simpler than that as you are in a billboard advertising firm in Perth and not showing how smart you are.
Aren’t for Direct Responses
There are many billboards out there which have website addresses and phone numbers printed on them. In reality, people who read such billboards will never call or visit the website even once. This is because a billboard is a secondary advertising medium. These billboards are great for brand-building and supporting a campaign but they can’t do all the heavy lifting.
If you are willing to start a conversation with your target audience then you can use print advertising, television, radio, fliers, websites, and direct mail system.
More is Better
Billboards aren’t cheap and are also not very effective either. They are a mass-market medium but they support. Every billboard has a rating which is called Gross Ratings Points (GRP). These GRP are based on traffic, visibility, location, size, and so on. This rating will give you a showing score between 1 and 100. If your billboard scored a score 50 then it means that at least 50% of the population in the area would see one of your boards at least once a day.
So, if you have only one board then your impact chances are very less as compared to four or five billboards. So, if you want to get 100 GRP score then you need to spend money on your billboards.