5 OOH Targeting Strategies that Break Through the Noise

One of OOH’s enduring advantages is in the greater difficulty of ignoring it. You can’t pay for a subscription to avoid OOH ads. You can’t change the channel. You can’t scroll past them. They are there to be seen. And now, the biggest historical challenge of OOH advertising — targeting — is also being overcome through DOOH and cross channel marketing. OOH targeting is leveling up with the digital age, and is quickly surpassing many other advertising channels because of its other inherent advantages.

OOH targeting can be approached from two vantages — one highly technical, the other intuitive. 

For the technical approach, when a user’s phone location is known, this enables personalized and cross-channel marketing using their device and the DOOH advertising around them, wherever they are. 

For example, if a 20-something uploads a photo of herself at a tourist destination and reveals her location in the posting, digital OOH ad locations nearby can now target to whatever else is known about that person. This is the basic concept behind how the most advanced methods of DOOH targeting can work. The question is, once you leverage the technology and get your capabilities for this type of advertising up and running, how should you use it? 

On the intuitive side, even without that level of technical sophistication, smart brands can still target with OOH and DOOH. OOH targeting can extend beyond digital to be even more permanent and effective.

Here are five OOH targeting strategies that include both digital and physical media. 

1. Target by Age

You don’t necessarily need personalized phone data to target consumers by age using OOH or DOOH advertising. Understanding how this can work begins with understanding the variety of OOH advertising possibilities. We’re not just talking about traditional billboards.

Place-based OOH advertising is often inherently targeted. For example, an OOH poster in a shopping mall near stores frequented by families, or by young women, or by some other demographic, would be a great opportunity for an age-based OOH advertisement. 

2. Time of Day OOH Targeting

With DOOH in particular, time of day targeting can be particularly effective for businesses that tend to do most of their business at certain times of day. 

Restaurants are the most obvious example — sending targeted DOOH ads beginning around 4pm in downtown and suburban areas will be more likely to engage people as they come home from work. A similar strategy beginning around 11am can target the lunch crowd.

Other venues such as concerts and entertainment may find time-of-day OOH targeting a more efficient use of their ad dollars. Different companies may find certain times of day their most profitable, depending on their products, and they can use OOH targeting to focus even more effort on those times of day.

Combine this with age and demographic targeting, and you’ll do even better.

3. Wealth Status of Nearby Attractions

A downtown corridor featuring art museums, concert halls, high-end restaurants, and other venues that attract people with more disposable income have great contrast with a suburban strip mall. 

As such, both locations offer very different but promising venues for targeted OOH ads — even non-digital ones since the types of people visiting these locations will tend to be fairly consistent.

Brands that cater to people with certain levels of wealth can use posters, billboards, bus shelters, in-store displays, and other forms of OOH advertising to engage the consumers who tend to frequent certain areas.

4. Reasons Why People Congregate in an Area

When you start thinking about the types of people who go to certain areas, why they go there, and what traits, interests, and needs such people are likely to share, you can target your OOH ads to engage those consumers. 

For example, a large hotel that frequently hosts big business events may be a great location for B2B OOH ads. If you can get the upcoming event schedules for the ten largest hotels in a city, which often tend to be near each other too, you may find some great opportunities for targeted OOH ads.

And consider the tourist example from earlier. 

Some locations naturally attract people with particular demographics and interests. Compare Mardi Gras with the Smithsonian. You would run very different OOH ads near those locations based on what you know about the people who predominate each place.

People go downtown for different reasons than they drive on the interstates between cities. Stadiums attract different crowds than expos. Areas with lots of pedestrian traffic differ from areas dominated by cars. 

5. Meet People Where They Are

Breaking through the noise on a person’s phone poses an endless challenge. OOH and DOOH offer a way around that because they exist in the real world. But the one challenge remains — there is plenty else to distract us even if we’re on foot. 

There is one outdoor location, however, where every single OOH ad will be seen: 

The front porch.

Imagine having a billboard on the front porch of a targeted group of prospects, leads, or customers. You can do that with front door marketing by putting a sturdy, durable door hanger on the front porches of a pre-selected group of prospects. Effective door hanger distribution doesn’t plaster neighborhoods, zip codes, or parking lots with flimsy fliers. Advanced front door marketing delivers large-sized mini-billboards on the front porches of people most likely to be interested in your offer.

And, front door OOH marketing offers another advantage — more effective tracking of results. Most OOH ads must minimize text because they rely on one-glance engagement and communication. This stifles effective strategies like using measurable calls to action, coupon codes, and shifting people from offline to online. Front door OOH marketing brings all these tools back to your fingertips. 

The national leader in front door marketing — Power Direct — offers sample front door marketing campaigns including creative, detailed targeting data, and distribution strategies. It’s worth your time to see what a project with them might look like for you or your clients! 

Power Direct is an advertiser with OOH Today