Out-of-Home Advertising: A Key to Small Business Success
December 15, 2022
“The lack of friction in the process of working with a media type can often drive the financial investment.”
I’ve always been bullish on small businesses but even more so in the last few years. The importance of their place in building the fabric of local economies and small towns, and the generations of families they support has been instrumental to the growth of the US but also the communities that can be built around them and for them.
One thing we’ve seen over the last several decades is how the approach of a small business to advertising is critical. It’s highly sensitive, it’s personal, and it’s changing within the generations as ownership changes hands from grandparents to grandkids. The evolution and speed of advertising has changed dramatically in just the last 20 years and the next generation of small business owners require more accountability and speed to market. The lack of friction in the process of working with a media type can often drive the financial investment.
OOH has its challenges. It’s proven itself to decades and decades of small businesses and the next generation knows its weight and value in local communities. Maintaining this is important but as an industry, our role in making it fit better is even more important going forward. We need to better ingratiate ourselves into the fabric of these communities by working with these local businesses to understand how they leverage other local ad mediums. The advertising industry has a tremendous responsibility to these communities; to drive the sales and growth of local businesses; not to overrun them with too much content and irrelevant content just to hit monthly sales targets.
There’s no question that the local billboard sales rep knows the streets incredibly well; we need to build on that knowledge together and partner with the other advertising mediums to enhance the profile of these businesses through more integrated local billboard campaigns...which in turn, will produce media that supports AND matters.
