How Billboards Help Your Social Media Efforts
Looking to double your followers and engagement on social media? Try billboard advertising! Keep reading to learn how billboards work alongside your social media efforts.
While most businesses use social media as a main part of their marketing mix, only a small percentage of brands take advantage of billboard advertising (or other out-of-home mediums). However, creating cross-channel advertising campaigns is the best way to market your business! Combining billboard advertising with your current social media efforts (both organic and paid) allows you to maximize your advertising and boost your business. In fact, 4 in 10 adults surveyed in the US say they have visited a Facebook page or posted on Facebook after seeing an OOH ad, and 25% have posted to Instagram. Here’s a few ways coupling billboard advertising with social media efforts can boost your business:
Boost Brand Awareness
Both billboards and a strong social media presence are great ways to increase your brand awareness. Imagine what your brand awareness would look like if you utilized both channels! On average, it takes 6-7 times for your brand to make an impression on someone. By utilizing multiple channels, you increase the amount of touchpoints a customer can make with your brand.
Blip advertiser Pretty in Pinkston was faced with the problem of increasing brand awareness. Owner Kimberly Pinkston was looking to use a different form of advertising for her brand, as she was already using Facebook, Instagram, Google, and Pinterest ads (as well as organic efforts). Since social media is so bombarded, she needed something to increase brand awareness and set her brand apart from its competitors. Using Blip allowed Pretty In Pinkston to advertise on billboards at an affordable rate that brought high amounts of exposure to her existing online presence. You can read more about Pretty in Pinkston’s experience using Blip here.
Increased Following
Alongside building brand awareness comes an increase in social media followers! If you’re trying to build your online following, billboard advertising can help. Grandma’s House Catering wanted to use broadcast media, specifically billboards, to build brand awareness, increase sales, and develop long-term client relationships. After just four months of advertising with Blip, Grandma’s House Catering nearly doubled their following on Instagram. Their Facebook page also received more likes, followers, and overall engagement.
Many businesses choose to put their social media handles on their billboard designs, signifying their social media pages should be the next place where viewers should go to learn about their brand or product. Once they’ve visited a social media page, they can continue to learn about the brand and be led to the website. This is just one example of the buyer’s journey and how to move a customer through the marketing funnel.
Create Cross-Channel Campaigns
As we’ve mentioned, when you use billboard advertising alongside social media and other marketing mediums, you create a cross-channel campaign. Marketing efforts should never be siloed, and creating cross-channel campaigns eliminates that problem. Having consistent messaging and branding across mediums like social media, billboards, paid online ads, and email marketing allows you to reach a wider demographic and continue to create impressions among your audience.
A recent study found that over 70% of consumers prefer to make contact with a brand on multiple channels such as social media, email, etc. before they make a purchase. This is because people don’t want to feel like they are being targeted or advertised to. They want to discover a brand, product or service on their own and decide for themselves if they want to purchase it or not. If you’re launching a new social media campaign, try coupling it with a billboard advertisement to increase brand awareness and lead more people to your social media pages. You’ll be amazed at how the engagement and awareness of your social campaign improves with the help of billboards, not to mention the leads and product sales that will increase with it!
Create Viral Content
Did you know that billboards and other OOH mediums are some of the most “Instagrammable” content right now? Instagram and other social media platforms are all about sharing content that is big, bold and makes a statement. Billboard advertising does just that. Emma Leishman from Movia said, “Brands are now encouraging social media interaction through Out-of-Home (OOH) advertising with things like, ‘instagrammable billboards’ and Digital OOH signs. The campaigns become art installations that represent an advertisement rather than blatant advertising itself. They often encourage passersby to stop, stare, engage with, and take pictures of, whatever the campaign displays, which usually ends in social media sharing. The consumer then becomes the vehicle through which the advertisement is being distributed and promoted, essentially making the consumer the ambassador of the brand. OOH advertising as a social media tool has become quite the trend lately and has proven to be cost-effective and worthwhile for advertisers to invest in.”
Your billboard ads should make an impression upon whoever sees it, leading them to engage with your advertisement. Try hosting a giveaway on your social media channels to everyone who finds your brand’s billboard and posts a photo on social media. Make your followers and customers aware of your OOH ads and figure out ways to make them engage with both your social media and OOH content.
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