Maximum impact, minimum waste: making Out of Home advertising work for councils

te: making Out of Home advertising work for councils In an era of cuts to local government, making every penny count has never been more important. No sector must place a greater emphasis on delivering value for money and avoiding waste. Out of Home advertising can be an effective and powerful choice for local councils, offering the opportunity to communicate messages clearly, and directly, with minimal waste. Here is how local council can get Out of Home advertising right in a high-pressure era.

Why advertise at all?

The vast majority of local government advertising campaigns focus on driving users to services or actions that save money in the long run. Out of home advertising can be extremely effective at driving behavioural change. For example, a campaign to reduce littering in a particular area will save money on council-funded clean-ups. A campaign encouraging people to pay their council tax will save money on costly and time-consuming follow-ups with late payers. Of course, the caveat is that in order to successfully drive these cost savings, the campaign needs to reach the right people, at the right time, with the right information. That’s where Out of Home’s precise targeting comes in.

All the right people – and no waste

Clearly, Out of Home advertising, whether via billboards, digital screens or bus shelters, is tailored to target a specific geographic area. As such, there are no problems with specifically targeting residents in a particular council’s jurisdiction. The key point here is that, unlike other advertising mediums, there is no money or effort wasted on targeting people outside those areas. For example, Clear Channel’s frequent advertisers are City Councils. They could if they wished, choose to advertise on radio, an impactful advertising medium that offers the same tailoring to the time of day as digital Out of Home advertising. Yet in doing so, councils would also be needlessly reaching out to residents in places outside of its own area – and paying for that outreach. By contrast, local Out of Home advertising can hone in only who they need to reach – and nobody else. Meaning advertisers don’t pay for irrelevant reach.

Informing and instructing

In more saturated advertising formats, it can be more tempting to make an outlandish creative statement in order to stand out. But Out of Home advertising sites stand alone. They offer big, bold impact because of their scale and location offering local councils the opportunity to be informative without being boring, instructive without blending into the background.

Tips 

• When deciding whether or not to launch an Out of Home campaign, work from the costs you are ultimately trying to save. Out of Home advertising has a clear upfront cost, with no nasty surprises further down the line. You can easily calculate if and when it will pay for itself.
• Zoom in on the postcodes you need to target. There’s no point in applying an anti-littering campaign to postcodes that don’t need it, or a ‘pay your council tax’ message to postcodes that are rarely late. Take advantage of the precision targeting that Out of Home offers.
• Adverts need to be attention-grabbing - but the primary goal for local government is to inform and instruct. Digital technologies can offer creativity and innovation with real return on investment – for example, by targeting commuters on their way home from work, or parents specifically on their school run.

Want to learn more about Out of Home advertising tailored for local councils? Contact us at Clear Channel today for a discussion of precise ROI with no waste.