marketing Archives

Holiday Marketing Guide for 2024: Maximizing End-of-Year Sales

info on November 14, 2024

The holiday season is one of the most lucrative times of the year for businesses. Shoppers are in a festive mood and ready to spend. To capitalize on this opportunity, you need a well-crafted holiday marketing strategy that stands out in the crowd. Create effective marketing strategies to boost end-of-year sales with these tips.

1. Plan Early and Set Goals

Start your holiday marketing preparations early. Review your previous holiday campaigns to discern successes and ineffective tactics. Then, set specific, measurable, and achievable goals for this season. Whether it’s increasing sales, boosting website traffic, or growing your email subscriber list, clear objectives will guide your strategy.

2. Understand Your Audience

Knowing your target audience’s preferences, behaviors, and shopping habits is crucial. Analyze data from previous holiday seasons and use it to tailor your campaigns. Consider creating customer personas to guide your messaging.

3. Create Engaging Content

Craft compelling and festive content that resonates with your audience. Use holiday-themed visuals, videos, blog posts, and social media updates to capture attention. Share stories, gift guides, and user-generated content to build excitement.

4. Optimize Your Website

Ensure your website is ready for the holiday rush. Optimize load times, improve mobile responsiveness, and streamline the checkout process. Highlight special offers, discounts, and gift ideas prominently on your homepage.

5. Leverage Email Marketing

Email marketing remains a powerful tool during the holidays. Create a series of holiday-themed email campaigns that promote exclusive offers, gift guides, and limited-time deals. Personalize your emails to make customers feel special.

6. Harness Social Media

Leverage the reach of social media platforms. Develop a content calendar with a mix of promotional and engaging posts. Host holiday-themed contests, giveaways, and challenges to boost user engagement.

7. Paid Advertising

Allocate a portion of your budget to paid advertising. Use platforms like Google Ads and social media ads to target holiday shoppers. Create visually appealing ads that highlight your products or services.

8. Offer Special Promotions

Entice shoppers with special promotions, discounts, and exclusive offers. Consider running flash sales, bundling products, or offering free shipping to sweeten the deal.

9. Incorporate Influencer Marketing

Collaborate with influencers in your niche to promote your products or services. Influencers can reach their dedicated audiences and provide authentic recommendations.

10. Enhance Customer Service

Exceptional customer service is crucial during the holiday season. Ensure your team is well-prepared to handle inquiries, process orders efficiently, and address customer concerns promptly.

11. Monitor and Analyze

Regularly monitor the performance of your holiday campaigns using analytics tools. Pay attention to key metrics like conversion rates, click-through rates, and ROI. Adjust your strategy based on real-time data.

12. Post-Holiday Follow-Up

Don’t forget about your customers after the holidays. Send thank-you emails, request reviews and feedback, and offer post-holiday promotions to encourage repeat business.

The holiday season presents a golden opportunity for businesses to boost their end-of-year sales. To make the most of it, careful planning and a well-executed marketing strategy are essential. By understanding your audience, creating engaging content, leveraging various marketing channels, and offering enticing promotions, you can stand out in the competitive holiday market and maximize your sales for a successful end to the year. Start your holiday marketing preparations early, and make the 2024 holiday season one to remember for your business.

Influencer Marketing: The Future of Collaborations

info on February 16, 2024

Influencer marketing has been a game-changer in the world of digital advertising. Over the years, it has evolved from a novel approach to a critical strategy for brands seeking to engage their target audience authentically. As we peer into the future, it’s evident that influencer marketing is set to become even more vital, offering a plethora of opportunities and collaborations that can redefine the way brands connect with their audiences.

The Evolution of Influencer Marketing

To understand the future of influencer marketing, let’s first look at its evolution. Initially, it revolved around macro-influencers, individuals with vast followings and celebrity status. While macro-influencers still play a role, the focus has shifted towards a more diverse ecosystem of influencers, including micro-influencers and even nano-influencers.

Micro-Influencers: The Sweet Spot

Micro-influencers, individuals with a smaller but highly engaged and niche-specific following, have gained prominence. Their authenticity and relatability resonate well with audiences, making them valuable collaborators for brands. In the future, we can expect brands to build long-term partnerships with micro-influencers, prioritizing authenticity over reach.

Nano-Influencers: The Hyper-Local Connect

Nano-influencers, with even smaller follower counts, are becoming essential for hyper-local and grassroots campaigns. These influencers have a highly concentrated, loyal following within their communities, making them perfect for local businesses looking to build trust and credibility.

The Future of Collaborations

So, what does the future hold for influencer collaborations?

1. Authenticity Reigns Supreme

In the years to come, authenticity will remain at the core of influencer marketing. Audiences are increasingly savvy and can spot inauthentic endorsements from a mile away. Brands will seek out influencers who genuinely align with their values and can deliver authentic content.

2. Long-Term Partnerships

Short-term, one-off campaigns will still have their place, but long-term partnerships will be the future norm. Brands will collaborate with influencers over extended periods, allowing for more profound connections and consistent messaging.

3. Diversification of Platforms

While Instagram and YouTube have been influencer marketing hotspots, other platforms will gain prominence. TikTok, Snapchat, and emerging platforms will offer fresh opportunities for influencer collaborations, especially when targeting younger demographics.

4. User-Generated Content Integration

Influencer-generated content will find more extensive use in brand marketing. Brands will leverage influencer-created content for their own channels, creating a cohesive narrative and building trust through social proof.

5. Data-Driven Strategies

Advanced data analytics will shape influencer collaborations. Brands will use data to identify the most effective influencers, measure campaign impact, and fine-tune their strategies for maximum ROI.

6. Inclusive Influencer Marketing

Diversity and inclusivity will become central to influencer marketing. Brands will work with influencers from diverse backgrounds, promoting inclusivity in their campaigns to connect with a wider range of audiences.

Influencer marketing is not just a trend; it’s a dynamic field that continues to evolve. The future of influencer collaborations is marked by authenticity, diversity, and data-driven strategies. As brands adapt to this changing landscape, they’ll discover new and innovative ways to connect with their target audience, making influencer marketing a cornerstone of their advertising efforts. So, whether you’re a brand looking to grow or an influencer eager to partner with like-minded companies, the future holds exciting possibilities in the world of influencer marketing collaborations.

2024 Marketing Trends: Personalization, Balance, and Diversifying for Audience Needs

info on January 8, 2024

In the ever-evolving world of marketing and advertising, staying ahead of the curve is crucial for success. The 2024 landscape is poised for significant changes driven by technological advancements, shifting audience behaviors, and a growing emphasis on authenticity and sustainability. In this blog post, we’ll explore ten cutting-edge trends that are expected to shape the marketing and advertising industry in the coming year. From AI-driven personalization to the evolution of influencer marketing and the rise of secondary advertising channels, these trends offer insights into the strategies that businesses and marketers should consider to thrive in an increasingly dynamic digital environment. Let’s dive into the future of marketing and discover the exciting possibilities that await in 2024.

AI-Driven Personalization: AI and machine learning will continue to play a crucial role in creating personalized marketing campaigns. Marketers will use AI to analyze data and consumer behavior to deliver more tailored content and experiences.
Voice Search Optimization: With the growing popularity of voice-activated devices like smart speakers and virtual assistants, marketers will focus on optimizing their content and ads for voice search, including long-tail keywords.
Diversifying Advertising Channels: Media buyers will diversify their advertising efforts by exploring secondary and emerging channels to reduce their reliance on dominant platforms like Meta, concreting a more balanced and resilient marketing strategy.
Social Media Channel Shopping: Social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok will lead the way in transforming themselves into e-commerce hubs, allowing users to shop directly within the apps, making the shopping experience mobile, seamless, and convenient.
Video Content Dominance: Video marketing will continue to thrive, with a shift towards short-form videos for platforms like TikTok and Instagram Reels. Live streaming and interactive video content will also gain traction.
Influencer Marketing Evolution: Influencer marketing will mature into a holistic approach, where campaigns are strategically planned to include a blend of macro-influencers, secondary influencers, and supportive talent creators. This diversified influencer mix will allow brands to reach various audience segments effectively and build more authentic connections.
Apple Spatial Video Capture: Apple’s spatial video capture technology will enable marketers to create immersive 3D video content, enhancing user engagement and providing innovative ways to showcase places, products and services.
Interactive Content: Interactive content formats, such as quizzes, polls, and shoppable posts, will become more popular as they engage users and provide valuable data for marketers.
Programmatic Advertising Growth: Programmatic advertising will continue to grow as it offers more efficient and data-driven ad buying across various channels, including display, video, and streaming.
Privacy-First Marketing: With increased privacy concerns and regulations like GDPR and CCPA, marketers will adopt strategies that prioritize consumer data privacy and opt-in consent, while still delivering personalized experiences.

Hanging On by a Thread

Morgan Moresco on August 9, 2023

Written by: Frankie Ciccotto

Few online events were as inevitable as Meta’s release of its highly awaited application Threads, a text-based conversation space where communities of like-minded people can come together to discuss trending topics, share current photos, or just casually scroll through who they follow to keep up to date. Whether you’re a digital creator or a casual poster, Threads aims to be the next Twitter alternative, amassing 30 million user signups within 24 hours of release. Now, two weeks later, that online platform has grown to over 100 million members worldwide, securing the title of the fastest-growing online application of all time.

Securing Your Handle

As Threads is directly linked to Instagram, setting up a new account could not be made any easier. For users with an active Instagram profile, it’s as easy as downloading the application from your iOS store, logging in with your Instagram credentials, and boom — you’re ready to start posting your first thread. Your Instagram handle, profile picture, and bio have the option to automatically transfer over to your Threads account. In contrast to Twitter, its main competitor, Threads has a 500-character limit, whereas Twitter has a cap at 280. In each Thread post, users can additionally include links, photos, and videos up to five minutes long, further giving Twitter a run for its money. So far, the app is proving to be extremely user friendly.

What Can I Use This For?

Threads aims to target a multitude of markets, including content creators, casual posters, and everyone in between. Their current business model rejects the implementation of monetization, meaning traditional forms of advertising are prohibited — for now. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, stated that his main goal is to make the product work well, and he expects the user base to grow far beyond that of Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. While Meta clearly states that traditional forms of advertising and branding are not in the cards for Threads, this creates the option for traditional marketers to do branding and promotion on their own, without a built-in ad-monetization strategy. For the moment, it appears that Meta is attempting to acknowledge the need for built-in marketing materials without subjecting users to an overflux of traditional ads.

This seems to be Meta’s way of keeping basic users happy so that they are not turned off by an overabundance of adverts before Threads can actually become a staple in our day-to-day social media usage.

With millions of people already flocking to Threads, scrutiny has arisen. One of Threads’ founding principles includes the ability to limit news as well as political and social debates — creating a “friendly shelter” to limit the amount of information spread on the app. It seems the app is more focused on bringing niche communities together, whether they are focused on sports, music, fashion or entertainment.

The app is booming, users are excited, new content is brewing, and communities are alive and thriving. What more could a new app’s entrance into the social media world hope for? The threat of the unknown is what most users are perplexed about. How far is Threads willing to go to appeal to all consumers? With only three weeks up and running, Threads is off to a great start, but it is clear that work still needs to be done if it truly wants to become a front runner in the social media limelight. With its already ever-present commitment to positivity and moderation, Threads has the opportunity to become the default conversation-based app, winning over users seeking a refreshing change. On the other side of the coin, it has the opportunity to raise fear in those who believe the app’s main purpose is to limit and supervise what we say online. The question is: Will Threads be the ultimate gateway app that changes how conversations in the social media world are made, or will it backfire, and leave this revolutionary app hanging on by a thread?

Augmented reality will change how people experience the world around them, and it will expand the social reach of advertisers who will be able to directly engage with the consumer.

The Future of Augmented Reality and Digital Advertising

Morgan Moresco on June 27, 2023

Written by: Danielle Gazda

With the announcement of the Apple Vision Pro headset at the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference, augmented reality (AR) as a part of daily life is becoming increasingly more real. The headset’s $3,500 price tag is out of reach to a significant portion of the population, but, as the technology improves and becomes more commonplace, it could quickly become more accessible.

What AR Is Available?

The discussion of AR as a part of everyday life isn’t new, but the technology is still in its infancy. Google Glass was announced in 2013 and hit the market in 2014. They are now ceasing production and sales later this year. Snapchat, the popular limited-time photo-sharing app, released its own version of the tech with Spectacles in 2016. These are still around, and their primary purpose is to capture photos and videos from the user’s perspective.

Nreal, a Chinese start-up company, has seen great success in its home country and is expanding to Britain this year. Nreal Air is designed to look like sunglasses and allows users to interact by “Air Casting” or “MR Space.” Air Casting allows users to see their full phone screen in front of them in a virtual display, while MR Space combines a digital overlay with the real world surrounding the user.

AR Uses

The concept of the MR Space is where digital advertising can play a key role. AR can be used to show pop-ups or interactable digital items as people wearing these headsets/glasses interact with the world around them. Brands can share virtual coupon codes or prompt a user to visit their website. There’s also the potential to show an advertisement that will make the user want to purchase the product.

This type of advertising will be the bridge between social media/digital marketing and out-of-home marketing. It will be more interactable and accessible than QR codes on billboards, and quicker and more convenient than having to click through a number of links after seeing a digital ad.

Augmented reality will change how people experience the world around them, and it will expand the social reach of advertisers who will be able to directly engage with the consumer.

Breaking Down Cannabis Policies on Social Media Platforms

Morgan Moresco on May 25, 2023

Posting about cannabis-related or CBD products on social media can be tricky. Regulation of the words used on creative and in captions/hashtags can cause your post to be flagged and your account to potentially be suspended.

Cannabis-Related No’s and Go’s

A good rule of thumb across all platforms is that you shouldn’t share images of the marijuana plant or people smoking. And stay away from the obvious words relating to cannabis: marijuana, weed, cannabis, kush, high, joint, THC, pot, and so on.

A common replacement across all platforms is “canna,” however, this can still be flagged. Everything is about carefully wording your captions and being strategic with ad campaigns, if possible. Here are some general guidelines for the major platforms to keep in mind.

Facebook:

Posts: Marijuana, cannabis, CBD, etc., are safe to use in organic content if it is educational and informative. Facebook bots can be fickle about this, but any issues can usually be resolved quickly.
Ads: Only topical CBD products can be advertised on Facebook, and you should still avoid using any cannabis-related language.

Instagram:

Posts: Instagram is a key marketplace for all businesses, but your cannabis/CBD company will not be able to utilize Instagram Shops. Many cannabis/CBD companies also opt for minimal to no hashtags in posts to protect their accounts.
Ads: Since Facebook and Instagram are both under Meta, their policies are pretty similar. However, in ads, you can use “hemp product” but not “CBD product.”

TikTok:

Posts: TikTok users have some fun workarounds when it comes to hashtags and caption wording. Alternative terms and spellings of cannabis-related words include “ouid,” “w33d,” “st0ner,” and “b0ng.”
Ads: TikTok is very aware of its young demographic, so they make cannabis/CBD advertising impossible.

Twitter:

Posts: Twitter is another place where sharing cannabis-related educational content is permitted. Many companies opt to share articles or their own blog posts.
Ads: Twitter only allows topical CBD products to be advertised. And you should only target locations/states in the U.S. where CBD is legal.

LinkedIn:

Posts: LinkedIn is very open to the sharing of information. If you promote primarily educational and informational content, then you’ll be fine. And, obviously, there are no restrictions to what you can show as your company name.
Ads: You still can’t directly advertise your products, but ads can show educational information that will still lead new people to your page/website. LinkedIn has never shut down an account and all ad reviews go to real people, who may be more forgiving than bots.

Pinterest:

Posts: When it comes to organic content, Pinterest is forgiving about using words/hashtags like cannabis, CBD, and hemp. People post informational graphics and recipes that usually don’t see any issues.
Ads: Pinterest is one of the only platforms that actually lays out its CBD-related advertising guidelines: “We will allow ads for topical hemp seed oil products in the United States that contain negligible amounts of THC and no CBD and make no therapeutic or medicinal claims.”

Google:

Ads: Since January of 2022, Google has started enforcing stricter rules and policies for advertising, which has significantly and negatively impacted cannabis/CBD ads through the platform. It is considered best to avoid it entirely and advertise elsewhere.

The Take-Away

Clearly, it’s not easy to advertise, let alone post, cannabis and CBD content on any platform. We hope, as various forms of marijuana become legal across the country, that social media regulations will change along with the laws. But until then, the keyword is caution.

The information listed about these social media platforms’ policies do not guarantee that your accounts won’t be shadowbanned or flagged at some point. In many cases, bots are the first ones to check accounts, and they can be unforgiving. But, we hope, this can help to avoid that as much as possible.

Contact 270M to learn more about how we can help promote your CBD business the right way.

Optimize Community Management for Your Brand

Morgan Moresco on April 24, 2023

By: Danielle Gazda

Good social media content and a good product are the baselines for a successful online presence. However, great customer service keeps people coming back. Achieve the best online customer service with proactive community management.

What Is Community Management?

Community management is run by an individual or team that acts through the brand’s social media accounts. They address questions in direct messages, respond and engage with comments, and help the brand stay present in the wider community.

Community management is made up of all these bite-sized activities that can be done across social media channels to generate a brand’s organic, personable reputation.

Best Practices for Community Managers

Direct Messages

Whether it’s Instagram DMs, Facebook Messenger, or other platforms, it’s important to review these direct messaging channels daily. This is where people will often direct questions and complaints about products and orders — and they should be addressed in a timely manner.

Knowledge of your brand and what it sells is very important for this type of activity. Be sure to have an FAQ that community managers can refer to or a customer service email that can be shared for more in-depth questions. Give your community managers as much information as you can. They’ll be able to help your customers better and continue to grow your FAQ document as new questions arise.

Comments

It is nice for community managers to be active in the brand’s own comments. For smaller brands, try to respond to them all with an appropriate short reply, the answer to a question, or simply an emoji.

If you typically receive dozens to hundreds of comments per post, you can take a more measured approach. You can respond to the first dozen or so comments that the post receives or check the post frequently and reply to various comments as they come up.

Be sure to always respond to comments made by partnered brands or influencers. This includes unexpected comments from celebrities or influencers you don’t currently work with to build those relationships.

Community Engagement

Don’t forget about the wider community your brand is a part of. Like and comment on posts that are relevant to your brand and industry. These can be posts by those partnered brands and influencers to show your support, posts about industry news and knowledge, and fun, broader content.

Comments don’t have to be extensive. Simple replies such as agreement or emojis will often do, since this shows that your brand is aware of its larger community.

User-Generated Content

A brand’s image is only as good as what its most loyal customers have to say about it. Utilize user-generated short- and long-form content to your advantage. Potential customers are more likely to make a purchase after seeing real people use a product or service. This is great free content to share in places like Instagram Stories — but be sure to request permission before posting it directly to your feed.

Has your brand been keeping up with community management?

Google Ads: Best Basic Practices

Morgan Moresco on March 24, 2023

Written By: Danielle Gazda

What Are Google Ads?

Promoting businesses and products through Google Ads is one of the most effective ways to increase conversions, revenue, and meet business goals. Google Ads, also known as Google AdWords, makes building campaigns easy through automation and machine learning, but there’s still some work you need to do first to ensure that everything runs smoothly.

From knowing what information to add to your client’s (or your company’s) website to understanding the nuances of Google Ads’ abilities, here are some best practices for optimizing your campaigns.

Best Practices for Google Ads

The Website

Know that Google Ads has specific requirements for websites advertising on its platform. Some are fundamental, such as offering unique products or services, the website owner being over 18, working directly with the owner of a site (or the owner’s company), and not displaying any copyrighted material. A website must also be at least six months old and have a certain amount of traffic already going to it.

Lesser-known Google Ads requirements involve having technical pages — such as an About page, a Contact page, and a Privacy page — included somewhere on the website. These pages need to be well-defined and hold appropriate information, including a refund and return policy (even if it just states that you do not give refunds or do returns) and information regarding using and selling customer information.

Conversion Tracking

By adding UA or GA4 tracking code to the pages of a website, you’ll be able to track all conversions from Google Ads, no matter the specified landing page.

Whether you add a UA code or GA4 code to a website depends on the platform you’re using. Google has step-by-step instructions on how to find the right tracking code for a site in the Google Ads account page.

Ad Tools and Assets

Google Ads offers a number of tools and assets that can increase the performance of your campaigns.

Keywords

Group keywords into ad groups by topic, feature, or item to help Google build comprehensive and relevant Responsive Search Ads. This type of ad automatically pulls relevant descriptions, headlines, and creative assets based on what you supplied and the search query that’s prompting the ad.

Landing Pages

Landing pages must make sense alongside the keywords to be served and drive conversions. Whether it is a website’s home page, an About Us page, a specific product, or a specific service, make sure they are correct for their ad group.

Ad Extensions

Utilize the tools available to you, including sitelinks, callouts, calls, prices, and promotions, that will provide the searcher with options and relevant information that can lead to a higher conversion rate.

Performance Metrics

Weigh performance and metrics against your industry’s benchmarks when starting new campaigns. These industry benchmarks will help you make adjustments to your campaigns by experimenting with everything from descriptions to ad extensions. You may also find that you’ve surpassed industry benchmarks with your campaigns.

For example, one of 270M’s real estate clients maintained a cost per conversion that was 64% lower than the industry benchmark throughout a campaign. The conversion was for a tenant application being filled out for an upscale new development in Dumbo, Brooklyn.

Another example is a wholesale vendor client of 270M that maintained a click-through rate that was 75% to 100% higher than the industry benchmark for a hyper-targeted campaign for specialized produce wholesalers.

270M is proud to be a Google Partner. We earned that distinction by proving that we consistently had at least a 70% optimization score for all of our clients’ accounts and managed at least $10,000 in ad spend over the course of three months. Additionally, 50% or more of our account strategists demonstrated proficiency in Google Ads by earning Google Ads certifications.

By following these best practices, you can optimize your Google Ads campaigns and achieve better results for your clients.

Purchasing Popularity: Verification Subscriptions

Morgan Moresco on February 23, 2023

Written by: Danielle Gazda

For years, brands and content creators have worked hard to build loyal communities and notable social media accounts in order to earn their verifications. The elusive and exclusive blue tick of verification across Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter is now a purchasable commodity. It’s part of a growing trend toward paid social media subscriptions.

Snapchat+

The first to provide a subscription service was actually Snapchat. In August of 2022, they announced Snapchat+, an “exclusive, experimental” service available for $3.99 a month. This innovative idea is decently priced and meant for the most consistent and passionate users of the photo-sharing app. Some of the exclusive features of Snapchat+ include various icons, notification settings, the Story Timer, and a badge. This exclusivity has produced moderate results for Snapchat with 2.5 million subscribers since the announcement in August 2022 to February 2023. This is compared to its 750 million active users and 375 million daily users.

Other apps have taken note of this success and have begun to integrate subscriptions of their own, providing additional incentives and services for users — and an alternate source of income.

Twitter Blue

Elon Musk announced in a tweet on Nov. 1, 2022, that blue checkmark verification would be purchasable through a Twitter Blue subscription for $8 a month. This announcement came with mixed, but primarily negative, reactions. Public figures would now be obliged to purchase Twitter Blue to maintain their verification, while Musk cited this as a way to “give Twitter a revenue stream to reward content creators.”

Twitter did release information on the updated Verification Requirements. It addressed some of the concerns and outlined the grandfathering of accounts that were previously verified through the original system. The company also specified that accounts must be non-deceptive with verification revocation a possibility for those who violate subscription policies. No matter the rules and criteria put in place, a verification no longer carries the weight it used to.

Meta Verified

Now, three months after Musk’s announcement, Mark Zuckerberg has revealed that Meta platforms will also be offering a verification subscription. It’s being marketed as a safety net for creators. Meta’s official announcement describes the program as “a subscription bundle on Instagram and Facebook that includes a verified badge that authenticates your account with government ID, proactive account protection, access to account support, and increased visibility and reach.”

Users can verify their accounts so Meta can work harder to remove bots, as well as fake and impersonated accounts — though reporting offenders has not been fruitful in the past. Creators are already voicing discontent, as they’ll be forced to purchase Meta Verified to protect their real public accounts.

Note that because this system is based on verifying an individual with a driver’s license or similar document, as of now the subscription is not available to businesses.

What’s Next?

While these changes don’t directly affect personal accounts, they do affect brand and creator accounts. It’s important to weigh the positives and negatives for your brand when considering a purchase of these verification subscriptions. They do come with other useful tools, like the ability to edit posts, longer tweets, etc.

Will you be purchasing verifications for your brand when available?

OOH Advertising: Take Your Campaigns Into the World

Morgan Moresco on January 24, 2023

Written by: Danielle Gazda

Traditional out-of-home marketing (known as OOH advertising) and digital marketing can coexist and complement each other for your brand’s benefit. Blend the digital and real world together to boost brand awareness, drive campaign success, and promote products and services.

What Is OOH Advertising?

OOH advertising brings your brand directly to the people — specifically, to your audience. Out-of-home advertising goes beyond TV ads and placements in magazines. Instead, it’s about advertising where people are. You passively experience ads every day — from billboards you pass on the highway to planes carrying banners over the beach. Physical ads can still be very effective in this digital age, even when given a digital twist.

Where Can OOH Ads Be Placed?

OOH ads are made for high-traffic areas. The most common places are centered around transportation. Transportation OOH ads can take the form of various types of billboards, and they can be seen on bus shelters and benches, in airports, on top of taxis, and on wrapped vehicles. Other options are more visually dynamic, such as drone shows, murals, skywriting, and wild posters. The last main group of ad locations are experimental. These are more closely related to the type of brand you represent. These can include coffee cup sleeves, coffee or ice cream trucks, or various types of walk-through experiences. The key is advertising where you are in front of your audience.

What Do You Need to Consider When Placing OOH Ads?

Demographic Locations

OOH ads are typically placed in high-traffic public locations. But high traffic doesn’t necessarily mean immediate or considerable success. Your ad placement should not be based only on exposure or foot traffic but also on the demographic you’re targeting. You want to make sure you’re ads are located where your target audience works and commutes from.

Telling a Story

The story told needs to be succinct and eye-catching, whether you decide to advertise on a billboard, a transit location, or a pizza box. The decision is brand specific, of course, but there are a number of options between both imagery and text to choose from. For text, there can be no wording, one word, a short phrase, or a brand slogan. For imagery, you can choose a bestselling item, the brand’s logo, go bold with vibrant colors, or go bold by being minimalist. The choice is yours, but telling the right story is what will transform awareness into conversions.

How Do I Integrate Digital Marketing With OOH Advertising?

Geolocation Data

There are numerous OOH ads that blend digital and traditional advertising methods. These are often kiosk-style boards like those found at bus stations or in malls, as well as digital billboards such as those found in Times Square. Ads can adapt to target consumers based on information discovered through carrier data, mobile ad networks, GPS, mapping apps, sensors, and beacons. This data offers a host of opportunities for retargeting, as well. 48% of consumers exposed to an OOH ad are more likely to click on a mobile ad for the same brand according to studies.

Digital Add-Ons

Brands can directly integrate digital marketing with OOH ads. A great example of this is adding a QR code to your advertisement. You can send people to download your app, straight to your website, or to a social media page. It makes the transition quick and easy without the consumer having to do the work of finding you. There are other straightforward methods of adding your website URL, social media handle, or physical address to your ad to achieve the same goal. It’s always a good idea to test these methods to see what consumers respond to the best.

If you’re interested in integrating your digital marketing strategy with OOH advertising, reach out to the 270M team to learn more about our latest service. Contact us at info@thisis270m.com or visit our website.