Tips for Effective Advertising

The nature of outdoor advertising requires a unique formula in order to be successful in reaching your audience in the most effective way possible. Below, we’ve put together a list of 5 tips that we’ve found to be the most important features in determining what makes successful billboards.

Keep It Simple

When creating a marketing message, it’s tempting to go out of your way and add lots of style and flare to convey your message. While this is not necessarily bad, it can detract from the message you want your audience to see. Contrary to this popular belief, simple is actually better when it comes to outdoor advertising. Much of your audience will see your billboard when they’re driving down the road, so you’ll have very little time to get your message across. It’s always best to keep it short, sweet and to the point.

Keep Your Message 5-7 Words or Less

For the same reasons in our first tip, keeping your message under 7 words ensures that your audience will take in your message in its entirety. Find a way to consolidate the unique selling proposition of your message for maximum impact.

Use Large Typeface for Text

This may seem obvious, but you’d be surprised how many billboards use smaller text in order to cram in more information that visitors probably won’t see anyway! Large text combined with a simple, concise statement yields the best results.

Ensure There is Color Contrast Between Your Text and Your Image/Background

The reason for this is to make sure that you’re offering enough visual appeal to capture the reader’s attention without detracting from your message. Imagine if you had a bright yellow background with white text. This would probably annoy your viewers or worse, get them to ignore your message entirely.

Don’t Forget the All-Important Call to Action

Your audience needs to know how to respond to your ad, so you need to tell them exactly what to do whether it’s to pick up a phone, take the next exit, send a text or visit a website. Be sure your call to action is clear, immersive and sensitive to the fact that your audience will only have a few seconds to see your ad and respond in kind.

The key to creating a very successful billboard isn’t hard, it just requires you to be able to put yourself into the audience’s shoes and imagine seeing things from their perspective and their reality. If you manage to create your message and artwork around this principle, your billboard will be highly effective at generating ROI, building brand awareness, and improving customer engagement.

Questions about creating an effective billboard? Give Accel Advertising a call today and speak with our team about some of the ways you can put together a winning billboard message.