Selecting target and test markets can be a challenge and becomes especially tricky when planning out-of-home advertising campaigns in regions you’re not familiar with. Fortunately, thanks to OOH advertising buying tools, marketers can zero in on specific markets nationwide and have broad OOH knowledge and data available.
Selecting target and test markets can be a challenge and becomes especially tricky when planning out-of-home advertising campaigns in regions you’re not familiar with. Fortunately, thanks to OOH advertising buying tools, marketers can zero in on specific markets nationwide and have broad OOH knowledge and data available at their fingertips.
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| O’Connor |
This data is instrumental to identifying target and test markets. Before planning out your next OOH campaign, here are eight things to consider where markets nationwide are concerned.
1. Test markets
Before you make a big investment in your target markets, consider launching a campaign in a test or exploratory market first. Here you’ll gain valuable insights into how a campaign will fare in other markets. Test your campaign’s messaging, creative, performance, and effectiveness in affordable, less-crowded markets such as Nashville, Philadelphia, or Columbus, Ohio before expanding into markets across the country. In doing so, you can fine tune your campaign, save money, and ensure that your campaign delivers when you launch into additional markets.
2. Inventory availability
The OOH media landscape is fragmented. With well over 1,000 vendors across the U.S. alone, no single vendor can provide coverage, or data, on inventory in every market. In the past, you’d have to reach out to vendors individually to get an accurate picture of a market’s available inventory. It was time-consuming work. With the use of OOH buying platforms, you can shed the inefficiencies of cold calling OOH vendors. Such platforms compile all the nation’s available OOH inventory in one accessible place and make them filterable by market, format, and cost.
3. Unit pricing
OOH pricing varies significantly across markets. For example, the median cost per thousand impressions for a billboard in New York City is $7.61 while only $3.21 in Nashville.
Get a better understanding of OOH media costs in various markets with the help of an OOH buying platform. You can access real-time pricing data by designated market area, city, or zip code and search historical pricing data to ensure you are getting a fair price on OOH ad units.
4. Advertising regulations
Outdoor advertising comes with its own set of rules and regulations like any other advertising format. Regulations vary across state, county, and city lines, but can include political advertising bans on transit shelters, and fast-food, sweets, toys, cigarettes, cannabis, and alcohol ad limitations near schools. Moreover, outdoor ads must conform to standards and regulations set by federal agencies and adhere to media vendor rules. Marketers can avoid setbacks and surprises by partnering with an OOH buying platform that tracks such rules and regulations.
5. Population demographics
Across the U.S. people in neighborhoods, cities, counties, and states differ in terms of characteristics like age, income, whether a household has children, preferred language, and educational attainment. In seeking out geographic markets or zip codes, marketers should look for those with characteristics that align with their target audiences. Researching the demographic data within a specific market can help you narrow down your target markets. If your target audience includes college students, you may want to target areas where college students make up a large share of the population, like Los Angeles, Boston, or Ithaca, New York.
6. Purchase behavior
Some leading OOH buying platforms have established integrations with shopper intelligence providers like Catalina, which enable OOH advertisers to uncover the precise locations –– and even the specific ad units –– that are most likely to reach consumers based on their previous purchases. Tap into consumer purchase-based data, i.e., buying habits, shopping preferences, and brand affinities to better understand which markets are most likely to drive increased sales.
7. Competitor activity
Competition in any OOH advertising can be fierce. Knowing what your competitors are doing in the markets you’re exploring can give your OOH campaign a huge advantage. Leverage free OOH planning tools to see what the top 100 advertisers and your competitors in your vertical are spending on OOH campaigns in various markets and how your campaign spend stacks up.
8. Lookalike markets
OOH advertisers often focus campaigns in large, expensive markets. While their reach is wide, this isn’t the most impactful, or efficient, way to approach campaigns. With the help of free OOH planning tools, you can uncover «deal markets» –– i.e., those with lower average CPMs –– that look like your target, best performing, or ideal large markets. Picking a lookalike market, you can save money, scale your buy without sacrificing effectiveness, and boost campaign performance.
The task of identifying the right target and test markets for your brand shouldn’t be time consuming or overwhelming. With a plethora of market-centric data readily available through OOH buying platforms, you can easily identify the specific markets most likely to perform.