Outdoor advertising media can be a huge boost for your event, and can help bring in bookings. There are many options available depending on what your budget allows – from billboards, to street poles and trailers.
Billboards will be your highest cost option, due to their sheer size – and don’t forget the costs involved in printing and producing your sign which will be placed on the board. Billboards are usually centered in the middle of the road – or can span the entire road under a bridge or freeway.
Street pole advertisements can come in at varying costs, depending on size and placing. Street pole advertisements are the metal framed signs that you see on street poles and lamps along the road. These spaces are hired to clients, usually for a monthly period, and one needs to book well in advance to secure the spots that you want.
When selecting billboards and street poles, keep their visibility from the road in mind. We always inspect our sites first, before booking them. This is a good way to weed out potential silly mistakes, like a series of three poles, where two of the boards might be hidden behind a massive tree. That would obviously be a bad spot, as your signs would not be visible, but you might not have known this if you had not done an inspection first, and just gone on the area suggested by your booking agent.
Good spots are areas where traffic backs up, either in the early morning, or in the late afternoon, when people are returning from work. Don’t select sites on quiet roads that won’t get a lot of views, unless you are advertising your business in that area, and those poles happen to be right outside your front gate.
Ideally, you want people to be sitting in traffic looking at the same sign, every day, for a few weeks and saying “Wow, I must actually contact these people, this looks like a great event”, and taking appropriate action.
Street pole ads work best with brightly coloured backgrounds to draw attention to them, specifically in the winter months, when it gets dark early. The idea is for them to have maximum visibility at all times, especially if the sun has set already by the time people are in traffic after work.
A good idea for signs that are viewed quickly in traffic is to provide a short, 5-digit number to SMS a code to. If you provide your audience with the option to send an SMS, your office can call them back later, or send them more information about booking, as people are likely to have forgotten website addresses by the time they are out of traffic and ready to book tickets.
Calls to action – such as “Book Now”, or “Text Now” encourage people to take action on that which they are seeing, and can help to make your advertising more profitable for you.
Although expensive at the outset, trailer advertising can prove to be very useful if you are prepared to constantly use them, replace the canvas and strategically place them around the city to advertise your events.
When it comes to advertising larger events, I would definitely recommend the media discussed above, with street poles being my own preferred medium, having proven itself over time, by delivering results through tried and tested campaigns.
