What is Outdoor Marketing and How Can it Be Useful for Your eCommerce Store?

Marketing is an integral part of your entire business strategy. You need to put your products out in the market to ensure that you create customers’ requirements and make them aware of your products. Gone are the days when one type of advertisement did the job of increasing sale. Now, you have to invest in every channel and understand the returns it brings to you. 

With real-time data available with digital marketing channels, sellers sometimes believe that digital marketing is enough to gather the audience and eyeballs they need. However, outdoor marketing also has its advantages to reap the benefits of a successful marketing plan.

According to a report by trailered, 71% of consumers often look at and digest the messaging featured on roadside billboards. A common study shows that over 68% of consumers make decisions while driving, especially in India, where the significant population is stuck traveling. 

Let’s have a look at what outdoor marketing is and how you can benefit from it. 

What is Outdoor Marketing?

Outdoor marketing refers to the marketing and advertising efforts that take place outside of the computer screen. It can consist of billboards, bust of posters, stickers, shop signs, flex boards, etc. 

On the giant billboards consisting of all relevant information you see when traveling or forms of outdoor advertising and marketing. When we were younger, many people would stick their company’s sticker on the windshield of a car to reach maximum people around. An excellent example of this was Fun & Food village in Delhi. 

Outdoor marketing may seem like a redundant idea for eCommerce businesses, but there are many ways you can adapt it for your business. With the advent of QR codes and digital outdoor advertising, you can directly get your customer to your website by making them simply scan a QR code that is placed on an outdoor poster. Along with that, several digital marketing billboards are coming up that display videos instead of just static images on giant billboards.

Difference Between Outdoor and Digital Marketing

The significant difference between outdoor and digital marketing is the audience segregation and analytics.

Outdoor marketing offers you the advantage of meeting several eyeballs; however, you cannot target a specific group to whom you would like to sell. Digital marketing gives you the benefit of selecting a very specific demographic and showing them your products. Digital marketing proves to be helpful in this area as it can approve the conversion rate online. But outdoor marketing is effective to grow your brand name & improve brand recall. 

Secondly, there is no set way to track the results from outdoor advertising. Digital marketing helps you receive real-time data to see how many people viewed your content and purchase the product. This allows you to form elaborate user journeys and enhance your marketing efforts accordingly.

But this does not mean that outdoor advertising has become useless in the current times. There are still many people in India who do not have ample knowledge about the internet. With outdoor marketing, you can help them come online and shop from your website and become the first point of contact for their purchase.  

Here are a few benefits of outdoor marketing that you can utilize for your eCommerce business. 

Benefits of Outdoor Marketing

Coverage of Local Markets

Outdoor marketing gives you the advantage of gathering attention in local markets. Not many businesses reach out to local markets or connect to them digitally, as people usually go to these markets to purchase things. For example, if you have a grocery store in your neighborhood, you can easily advertise your products in their shop and attach a QR code so the person can directly download the app or go to your website to browse three products. 

Create Awareness

Outdoor marketing gives you a chance to create awareness and improve your brand recall. Suppose you target customers in a specific geographic area in your online campaigns and show them the same advertisement in an off-line setup. In that case, their chances of purchasing from you become higher. Similarly, if you install billboards with your brand’s tagline and a witty design, the chances of the person remembering your brand or higher as they would have seen it in a separate set up rather than a standard set up just scrolling through other ads and similar content. 

Cost Saving

As you can reach many people with minimal investment, outdoor marketing can be a cost-saving method. You can target a larger audience by just showing a billboard add or printing out a few sheets and distributing them in the shop. If you add a QR code, your strategy can be enhanced even further. Most people do not convert directly on the website, but if you give them an innovative way to engage, they will try it out. Also, outdoor marketing gives you a chance to improve word of mouth marketing, and you reach a large number of people when they talk about your campaign and products. 

Higher Frequency

Since the purchase cycles are lengthy for outdoor marketing, consumers’ chances of being exposed to the ads are higher. Therefore, one consumer is shown the ad more times as compared to digital marketing. This increases the likelihood of conversion and improves the chances of a successful purchase. 

Encourages Impulse Buying

If your campaign is very catchy, gauges the customer, and creates a need almost immediately, it encourages impulse buying among a group. If one person is seen purchasing from the billboard ad in a locality, the others will follow sooner or later. If you can generate the need for impulse buying with your outdoor ads, you can influence many people in a short period. 

Final Thoughts

Outdoor marketing can be a real boon for your business if done in combination with digital marketing. With the upcoming innovations, eCommerce can see a massive boost from outdoor marketing as video ads and QR code scanning become common. These practices are also very engaging for customers and increase the chances of conversion by a significant margin. We hope this information helped make you understand the importance of auto marketing and how you can incorporate it into your eCommerce business strategy.