Why Your B2B SaaS Company Should be Advertising on Billboards

When you drive by billboards on your way to work, or to drop your kids off at school, what kind of businesses do you see?

Lawyers? Check.

Car dealerships? You bet.

Concerts at the convention center? Definitely (especially when someone really good is playing).

But if you’re at a B2B SaaS company, you may not think big digital billboards outside the expressway make much sense for your industry.

Here’s the truth: if you think out-of-home (OOH) advertising can’t help you, or that your peers aren’t pouring big bucks into the medium, you’d be wrong.

The Challenge All B2B SaaS Companies Face

It seems like new B2B SaaS companies pop up every day.

In the U.S. alone, there are over 15,000 such businesses.

If you’re in that rapidly-growing field, you have a tremendous opportunity – with one problem: rising competition over the same pool of potential customers.

Companies like yours need a constant source of fresh chum for the funnel – more and more fuel for the sales and marketing pipelines that drive revenue and growth.

However, while SaaS providers have gotten more effective at down-the-funnel activities, and have focused like a laser on optimizing conversions, the top of the funnel is still the biggest single obstacle to hitting quarterly numbers.

There’s also another part that makes the competition even tougher: everyone is more or less doing the same thing online.

Whether it’s emails, webinars, LinkedIn posts, social media messages, and online ads, customers are surrounded by SaaS brands trying to get their attention and promote their thought leadership – and before long, it all starts to run together in their minds.

What’s a company to do to stand out and make sure its thought leader’s voice is the one being heard?

Grow your brand awareness using methods that your competition isn’t using (yet).

Getting the Brand Out There: One Proven Approach

The counter-intuitive appeal of OOH advertising for SaaS companies is simple: digital billboards create top-of-mind brand awareness as good as – or better than – any other medium out there.

And when you’re struggling to keep the top of the funnel full, more of that is what you need.

Everyone likes numbers, so here are a few (feel free to tell your friends):

71% of consumers pay conscious attention to billboards as they drive or ride by
46% of adults said they searched online for something they had viewed in an OOH ad (like a digital billboard)
People who view an OOH ad are 48% more likely to later click on an online version of the same ad

Those last two stats really hit the bullseye: digital billboard spend can actually be a force multiplier for your online spend.

Why? Brand awareness and recognition.

We’re simple creatures at heart. What we see often, we think about often; what we think about often, we do. See, think, do – rinse and repeat.

By presenting your message out in the real world, where it’s difficult to avoid or not notice, you’re implanting a favorable impression (with a well-designed ad, of course) in the minds of your potential customers who – might we remind you – do most of their own research for solutions.

That means the consumer is more likely to either:

Look for a SaaS advertiser’s name directly, or
Recognize that name when it pops up online

Having this kind of awareness also pays dividends when the buyer eventually meets with the B2B sales rep. It’s easier to get someone interested if they’ve seen your ad before they take your call, after all.

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Put another way, billboard advertising is basically the same as Inception. Minus Leonardo DiCaprio. (Just kidding – he’s totally on billboards.)

Of course, while all of this sounds good, putting it into place by getting your ads on billboards is complicated and expensive…right?

Not quite.

Blip’s Advertising Plans take the hassle out of utilizing OOH advertising for B2B SaaS companies, as they allow for longer-term advertising at a lower cost.

We built our 12-month plans to give the best ROI for B2B SaaS companies since that time frame is the perfect length for the industry’s typical business cycle. These plans include additional advertising credit to put towards your campaign, professional billboard designs from Blip’s team of designers, dedicated billboard specialists, access to Customer Success “office hours,” and professional photography to share online and with their client base.

Oh, and making your ads go live on our digital billboards all across the country is about as easy as can be, using the power of the Internet – something SaaS providers know all too well.

Simply put, B2B SaaS companies are turning toward billboards because they help solve a problem in a counter-intuitive way – but one that works.