We often hear the debate of which is better for marketing, billboards, or social media. The answer is that it depends on your specific campaign and what you are trying to achieve.
When it comes to running an advertising campaign, many business owners assume that the longer they advertise, the better results they will see. Longer campaigns do offer plenty of benefits, However, short campaigns offer some benefits that are worth considering.
Establishing the ideal time frame for your campaign’s duration will depend on your objective, the the types of OOH media you use to distribute your ad, and campaign type, and the messaging. Let’s take a closer look at some of the factors that go into the ideal campaign duration and how you can optimize your advertising strategy based on them.
Longer Campaigns vs Shorter Campaigns
When it comes to spreading brand awareness, longer ad campaigns outperform short-term campaigns time and time again. Their duration and visibility will ensure customers know your company’s name and message. Branding campaigns typically last three months.
The longer a customer sees a particular ad, the easier it is to ignore. This is especially true if your ad appears in a crowded space with lots of distractions, or if there are a lot of other ads around. Additionally, long-term campaigns will have a higher investment, even if you typically see a better ROI.
A shorter campaign duration works best when your campaign goal is to raise awareness of a limited-time offer, or as a way to funnel customers to your website to boost the success of long-term campaigns. With short-term campaigns, you can avoid consumer ad fatigue, so they aren’t tired of seeing the same ad over and over again. Shorter campaigns are also cheaper and can help you see a spike in sales to help you invest in longer-duration campaigns to maintain your success.
Ideal Duration for Digital Campaigns
A digital marketing campaign requires optimization throughout its lifespan to get the best results. Luckily, digital marketing campaigns can be cheaper to manage than traditional ones, so you can experiment with multiple campaigns at the same time, and fine-tune each of them monthly, or even week-by-week to get the results you want.
There are several digital marketing strategies, and many businesses utilize all of them to some degree. However, not all of them may be suited for your particular campaign objective. Here’s a breakdown of some typical timelines:
- Content Marketing: Blog posts, white papers, videos, and other resources you provide your customers can improve your domain authority and establish your expertise. The more useful content you can post, the more traffic you can draw to your website and the better brand loyalty you can generate. These campaigns typically require six months before you start to see results, but the increase in traffic they provide is long-term.
- SEO Marketing: SEO optimization campaigns will typically run for a year, and you won’t start getting valuable metrics for about 18 months. Still, they can help previous content marketing efforts continue to provide value and work alongside your other efforts to
- Paid Search: Because paid search doesn’t rely on organic results to drive traffic to your web, it is one of the fastest ways to boost your page views. However, it works best for search term results, and as a tool to help you define some targets for your SEO marketing efforts.
- Social Media Marketing: Using targeted Facebook ads and Instagram stories allows you to tailor personalized ads to different segments of your target audience. They are great for boosting page views for your content marketing efforts, and they can also be used to raise general brand awareness. A typical ad campaign runs for 30 days and involve several posts. It’s crucial to update them frequently so that they stay relevant to your campaign goal.
What is the Ideal Duration for OOH Campaigns?
Traditional outdoor advertising media will typically stay up for at least a month, the minimum time you can pay to rent one out. However, because of production costs, static billboards will usually stay in place for an average of three months. For OOH, it is ideal to keep your ads up for extended periods of time since more consistent exposure to your target audience yields stronger results.
Because of the commitment and the time it takes to place, it’s critical to consider your billboard design carefully to ensure to create a meaningful impact with a relevant message. But thanks to advances in technology, OOH campaigns can utilize many of the same tools used in digital campaigns, while having access to OOH attribution and a much larger target audience scale with ads that are harder to ignore.
Outdoor ads are easily geo-targeted, and further segmented depending on the types of people that will pass your ad where it’s placed. You can even access data on performance metrics that help you calculate the number of impressions you made per advertising dollar spent. With digital screens, you can incorporate video ads, adjust your messaging remotely, and create a customer journey from one ad location to the next.
No matter what type of outdoor advertising you use, it’s critical to synchronize your ads across all channels, so your digital and out-of-home advertisements can work together to increase brand awareness, tell your story, and engage with potential customers in a memorable way.
Maintain Control of Your OOH Campaign With True Impact Media
To create the full picture of your audience for your OOH marketing strategy, you’ll need to be able to track your advertising budget and know exactly where your ads will run. At True Impact Media, we’ve developed software that simplifies the purchasing process into one easy-to-use platform.
You can find and collect quotes from millions of advertising opportunities, from billboards to transit ads and beyond. We’ll help you through the process every step of the way with data-driven insights, proof-of-implementation, and performance tracking so you can refine your approach and fine-tune your out-of-home campaigns with ease.
