Digital Marketing VS. Billboard Advertising | Simplemachine

Many forms of traditional marketing still offer benefits to businesses like your own. Depending on your target audience, taking out television spots or print ads in the local newspaper might still bring desirable results. However, there are some forms of traditional marketing that have become obsolete. One such form is billboard advertising. Companies spend thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars on large billboard ads throughout the city and along highways. Yet these signs are nothing more than glorified lawn signs (only substantially more expensive). If your business is considering a billboard advertising investment, or you have done so in the past, now is the time to stop. Instead, you need to take on a new digital marketing campaign and utilize the benefits of digital over billboard advertising.

Display Branding

A billboard advertisement is what is known as display branding. Basically, it’s a giant sign with your logo and a quick blurb about your business. The quick blurb may just be your phone number or a simple tag line. After all, someone driving on the highway needs to be able to take it all in during the time it takes to drive past the sign.

Display branding isn’t just a billboard though. This kind of advertising is anything that places your logo and basic business information in front of a consumer. It’s the same as a display branding set in a storefront window or a singular image advertisement placed on Facebook. So, while a billboard ad is larger in sheer mass, it’s not different from most other forms of advertisement.

Targeting is Nonexistent

Your business isn’t targeting a key demographic when you create a billboard advertisement. It’s placed on a large sign by a street corner or highway. You have no control over who sees it, who drives past it or whether anyone even looks up at the billboard. What if the city decides to close the intersection for summer maintenance right after you took out a six-month lease on the billboard plot? That’s money completely down the drain.

However, even if traffic remains as is, there is no targeting for who will see it. This makes it one of the least impactful forms of advertising out there. Sure, a good number of people will likely drive past it, but how many will actually be interested in the services you offer or fall under your target audience? It’s not the number of people who see your advertisement that matters. It’s the quality.

This is where digital marketing on services like Google and Facebook are completely different. Take Facebook, for example. You’ll create an advertisement designed to load on the social media’s platform right in the middle of a user’s feed. In many ways, this works like a billboard, only instead of driving past it, people scroll down it.

This is where the similarities end though. With digital forms of advertising, you can specifically target who sees it. You can fine tune not only the location of where people are in the country but also their age, gender, likes, dislikes. and even if they have visited your website in the past. The ability to target an audience is exactly what makes digital advertising that much better. With billboard ads, random people will be seeing your advertising material with no guarantee they will be quality consumers in your target audience. When using digital advertisements on search engines and social media, you are guaranteed those individuals will be exactly the kind of people you’re attempting to attract to your business.

Save Money with a Better Return on Investment

The ability to directly target a specific key demographic is vital. This allows you to create segmentations within your marketing approach. Instead of creating a single billboard ad that you hope will attract some customers, you can create varying digital ads that are geared specifically to a target audience. By doing this, you’ll always see a higher return on investment.

Additionally, when advertising online you can determine how much money you’re interested in spending. A billboard will cost you a flat fee, usually per week or per month. When you create ads for search engines or social media platforms you establish a pay range for the minimum you want to pay per day and the maximum you’re willing to pay. This way, if you want to ramp up advertising for a given period you can do so, and yet at the same time, you can turn down your daily ad amount to cut spending at the same time.

Instant Conversions

The biggest problem with billboard advertising is even if someone in targeted audience sees your billboard and wants to take action with the information you’ve presented on the sign, they are driving in their car. They can’t just whip out their computer and visit your website and they may not even be able to call your number right away. It can take multiple passes for the individual to remember your phone number and make the necessary action to contact you. By this time, they may have decided not to make the purchase, or they simply went online and ended up on the first result Google presented to them.

Billboard advertising doesn’t have an instant conversion option. This is the biggest downfall of this kind of advertisement unless you own the billboard and it’s located right on top of your building (in which case you might as well use it because it’s not costing you anything). There is no viable way to instantly convert an interested customer, and you’ll miss out on more than you land with a billboard ad.

This is not the case with digital advertising. When an interested customer sees what you have for sale or they want to know more about the products you offer, they will click on the ad and instantly be taken to your Facebook profile, your website, your product listing, or any other destination you want to send them. By giving the customer what they want right away, you’ll capitalize on their excitement, which in turn will help improve potential sales.

Mobile Options

Some might consider billboard advertising a mobile option because potential customers drive past it. However, with digital ads, your marketing material will load right on a user’s smartphone. This way, whether they are walking down the sidewalk, at a restaurant or sitting on a bus on their way to work, your digital advertisement will always be there for them. No billboard ad can do that.

There are all kinds of marketing and advertising approaches your business needs to take. But no two businesses are the same, so you need an approach tailored specifically to what your business is, your key demographic and your budget. This is where the team at Simplemachine comes in. With advertising and marketing experts ready to assist no matter your budget, you’ll have a digital marketing campaign customized to fit your every need. So, whether you’re looking to boost sales, grow your social media presence, expand your email list or a combination of them all, Simplemachine is ready to help. All you need to do is give our team a call at your earliest convenience.