What are the disadvantages of a billboard?

While billboards can be an effective means of reaching a broad audience and creating brand awareness, there is also  several disadvantages of a billboard, including high costs, limited targeting, and challenges in measuring effectiveness. Advertisers need to weigh these drawbacks against the benefits and consider integrating billboard advertising with other marketing strategies to maximize impact and reach.

You are locked in one location without sound and unless the billboard is the newer more expensive electronic “big Screen” version you are without motion as well. Unlike radio or TV where your message can be placed in different day parts and narrowly targeted at a specific market, with a billboard you are communicating to a non specific audience.

In order to communicate effectively, you are limited by a billboard to a short message and one visual aimed at a variety of audiences, of all ages, incomes, and genders as they pass your billboard in their cars with only have a few seconds to take in your message.

I found that the best way to utilize billboards was with TV advertising, the same way POS (Point of Sale) works in store to reinforce and promote a product at point of sale. Here is an example of what I did for Ralston Purina Butcher’s Blend Dog Food. This spot is a refreshed version of the commercial I did, and is the second in a series. My original commercial was posted on YouTube, but I wasn’t able to locate it, so this will perfectly illustrate my point given it’s virtually the same commercial as mine, just updated with two more dogs.

What worked so well was the way we were able to work billboards into our buy to extend and reinforce our TV spot. As you will see, at the end of the commercial the dog having been dreaming of beef,liver and bacon, jumps up into the billboard to help himself to a bowl of Butchers Blend beside a large bag of the product. The spot reinforces the promise that the product offers beef, liver and bacon, 3 meaty tastes.

We froze the last frame of the Dog in the billboard enjoying the product and that was our visual along with same short sell copy as seen in the commercial for our outdoor billboard. We received a number of great positive responses for the TV ad and for the billboards, additionally, I produced the billboard shot as a POS piece that was placed in the dog food section of supermarkets to once again remind consumers of the ad and to motivate them to purchase the product. The mix of TV, Outdoor and POS as a multi faceted campaign generated a big jump in sales and share, well above what we were targeting.

Of note, is the fact that they are actually using my original live action segment with the Dalmatian, this spot was updated by adding the two other dogs.

disadvantages of a billboard…..

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