Billboard Advertising in San Antonio

The overarching purpose of this blog is to assist the local business in making advertising decisions. For the small to mid-sized local business that cannot afford an advertising agency, it pays to know what features the various advertising media can offer your company. Not all advertising medium is suitable for every campaign. However, since BillboardConnection San Antonio is in the business of out of home advertising, I am going to spend the next 3 posts discussing the various features of out of home advertising.

Characteristic #1 - Lowest cost per thousand impressions

Out of home advertising, billboards, and other non traditional media gives your business access to the lowest cost per thousand impressions. This is an important metric to larger companies who buy advertising for branding purposes, but for the smaller local businesses, this is important to keep in mind because although out of home advertising can seem expensive on an absolute basis, if you have determined you want to pay for exposure, this is the least expensive way to do so on a per impression level.

Low cost per thousand (CPM) impressions allows you more exposure for every ad dollar you spend. This feature can also allow you to reallocate portions of your ad budget to outdoor so you can increase your CPM, but reducing your net ad budget outlay.

Characteristic #2 - Local Exposure

Outdoor advertising affords the advertiser a large amount of flexibility in determining the area to advertise. Newspaper, television, and especially radio are good ways of advertising to general market (spraying and praying), but out of home delivers a targeted message to a targeted audience. For example, if you are located in San Antonio and want to target Stone Oak residents, you might want to consider advertising on an LCD flatscreen inside a classy Stone Oak establishment. This allows you to save money by minimizing the wasted exposures that reach ineligible prospects.

This is the theory behind dry cleaning ad bags, supermarket floor posters, and interior beauty salon billboards. All of these venues allow you to target a specific type of shopper, and based on geography, you can segment this demographic further.

Characteristic #3 - Clutter busting

As we have discussed, traditional media is becoming increasingly competitive and cluttered with advertisements. Advances in technology have allowed consumers to download and stream tv shows from the internet, listen to satellite radio, pipe their mp3’s through their automobile speakers, and block web advertisements. The only advertising medium not affected helped by technological advances is out of home and non traditional advertising.

Billboards are soon to become giant LCD screens. Bars, grocery stores, and other high traffic areas are moving in a similar direction by installing LCDs in their venues for the purpose of placing advertisements on them. Aside from electronics, the other non-traditional advertising options available provide a great way to cut through the clutter and reach your prospect. Door hangers, gas ‘pump toppers’, and other out of home media are slowly starting to catch on as more advertising agencies include this media in their offerings. This ensures your unique selling position is made clear to your customers. As we say in the industry, “you can’t turn off, turn over, or throw away outdoor advertising”.

Characteristic #4 - Scalability and Versatility

Advertisers need a variety of different media products which can be scaled to fit any budget. A business that is more concerned with strengthening brand equity and top of mind awareness is able to take advantage of the tremendous scalability that a multi-faceted outdoor advertising campaign can offer. A typical strategy might be a 30 sheet, 8 sheet, and bus poster campaign (similar to what the campaign the San Antonio Water System is launching regarding the grease monster).

A smaller company that might not be able to afford a large-scale billboard advertising campaign, might be better suited with a dry cleaning ad bag campaign targeted to a specific zip code in San Antonio to reach the female decision makers who frequent retail locations in that area.

The features and benefits of out of home advertising are formidable and operate as ways to help your company invest in the market no matter what your size or objective.