My answer: YES!

I recently did an interview with my pal Dale Richardson on why billboards caused such a fuss in a PR battle between the government and the teacher’s union in Saskatchewan.

Here’s the article: https://lnkd.in/g38qa95T

Billboards (and other physical signage too) are more tangible than other forms of advertising.

You can’t turn them down or scroll past them, they are right in your face as you drive by them every day.

They are also a shared experience. Not everyone you know is listening to the same radio station or scrolling the same feed, but you know the person next to you saw the same thing. So it feels more real and public.

In fact, you’ll find people who buy billboards often take a picture of themselves with the billboard because there’s status attached to purchasing billboards.

Think of the renaissance of advertising in the United States and Times Square. That’s where Pepsi, Camel Cigarettes, Admiral Televisions and more hit it big.

We feel like billboards are a “big move” and we’re a “big deal” if we have billboards up, just like those massive brands.

I remember going to the 10X Growth Conference in Miami a few years back. Grant Cardone who runs that conference talked about how he spent over $1 million on Facebook Ads to promote the event but his favourite ad was a billboard on the Miami freeway.

Grant considered the few thousand dollars he spent on that billboard to be a bigger deal than $1 million spent on digital ads.

This fact is not to discount the power of digital advertising, my speciality – but I’ve found billboards increase conversion rates on my digital campaigns. I have several examples of conversion rates increasing as soon as billboards launched and there’s research to back that up.

Physical signage increases trust in brands because we assign legitimacy to brands with billboards. If they have a billboard they must be big, important and likely trustworthy.

So when people see your digital ads where they can actually convert, people are more likely to take action because trust has been created.

The only caveat is that not all billboards are created equal – location and noise matter. I love billboards in smaller cities like Saskatoon and Regina. Those cities have excellent locations right next to major roadways with few distractions.

In larger cities, there’s more traffic, distractions and most of the billboards are too far away from the road. In those situations, I’d say your billboards are a waste of money unless you can find that perfect location.

There’s much more I could say but I’ll leave it here.

Perhaps I’ll do a Part II on billboard design and other forms of signage.

Derek Robinson,
CEO of Mash Strategy

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