Brand awareness is one thing. Ensuring that your target audience recalls your brand at the crucial moment when they need to buy a product is another. Building up and maximizing brand recall is vitally important for any company that relies on customers purchasing products after they see an advertisement, not in the moment.
Good news – the right digital billboards can help you build brand recall and provide other marketing benefits. Let’s break down how to use digital billboards successfully in detail.
Digital Billboards Explained
Digital billboards, put simply, are digital displays that showcase different advertisements with a rotating schedule. With a traditional billboard, advertisers or companies rent the billboard space for a certain amount of time, like four weeks, to accomplish campaign objectives.
Digital billboards, on the other hand, don’t showcase just one advertisement but many. For example, digital billboards in Times Square usually rotate between three or four different ads. Each ad takes anywhere from 10 to 30 seconds, meaning that the entire billboard’s collection of ads rotates and/or restarts every few minutes.
Digital billboards are excellent for crowded advertising markets, such as Times Square, downtown areas in major metropolitan cities, and elsewhere. With digital billboards, many companies or marketers can keep the same billboard location for their advertisements without having to pay (very) exorbitant amounts of money.
Brand Recall Explained
Brand recall is a measure of how likely it is that people will remember your brand or products/services when necessary. Technically, brand recall can be organized into two different types:
- Aided brand recall, which occurs when a person or target audience member is prompted or asked to recall your brand using a cue or clue. The cue or clue can be from a poll or from an advertisement asking the question
- Unaided brand recall. This occurs when a person or target audience member recalls a brand, products, or services without prompts or cues
Both types of brand recall are important. But many organizations rely heavily on unaided brand recall.
For example, say that you have a billboard advertisement showcasing your home improvement business. You want people to see the billboard advertisement, then call your home improvement business when they want to renovate their houses.
This is contingent on your brand recall being strong. If people have strong brand recall for your company, they’ll consider your business when they want to start a renovation project. If your brand recall is not very impressive, however, they may turn to a competitor instead.
Bottom line: brand recall is important since it affects how likely it is that customers will make a purchase from your company after seeing an advertisement or otherwise becoming aware of it.
So, How Do Digital Billboards Help with Brand Recall?
Digital billboards can assist with brand recall in a few major ways.
- For starters, digital billboards are places to stick effective advertisements, just like static or standard billboards. The better your advertisements, the more your brand will stick out in the mind of your target audience members
- However, digital billboards are oftentimes even more impressive than standard billboards. They use computer graphics, flashy imagery, and shifting 3-D or visual elements to create a more engaging, converting advertisement. Many of the popular digital billboard ads in Times Square, for example, are popular in large part because of how well done they are!
- Digital billboards also help you secure valuable advertising space in crowded markets. For instance, if the downtown area in your local city doesn’t have any static or standard billboards slots available, you might be able to purchase some billboard advertising time on a digital billboard instead
Essentially, digital billboards assist with brand recall by giving you more marketing tools to advertise effectively to your target consumers.
How to Maximize Digital Billboard Effectiveness
Of course, digital billboards can only provide these benefits if you maximize their effectiveness and cost. The best way to ensure your digital billboards boost brand recall is to:
- Design a visual or animated billboard advertisement that catches the eye and that ties in well with your brand’s aesthetic or visual identity
- Ensure that your advertisements include a call to action. Calls to action also help brands stick in the minds of consumers, making it more likely that they will call your company when they need what you offer
- Position your digital billboard ads in key locations. If, for example, your target demographic rarely goes downtown, it won’t do you any good to place a digital billboard ad. Instead, look for a digital billboard ad spot in a location where your target demographic travels or commutes frequently
Conclusion
Overall, digital billboards can maximize brand recall among your target audience members like very few other marketing materials. Be sure to use digital billboards wisely and strategically and you’ll see improvements in no time.