If you have been wondering about how to successfully develop a Minneapolis billboard campaign, here is everything you need to know! 

How Do You Design a Great Billboard?

When it comes to designing your billboard, most people would agree that the winning criteria would be effectiveness. If your billboard helps pull people into your storefront or gets you more foot traffic on your website, then you can rest assured you did a job well done! However, getting people to make this step takes some convincing, and here’s where the strategy behind the design comes into play. 

  1. First, Pick a Type of Billboard

This might sound a little basic, but it’s the first part of your billboard design. Billboards are famous, well known, and one of the most recognizable marketing tools in the United States. The biggest businesses and the most well-loved brands the world over have used billboards to market their products. This is also a great reason why billboards bring a sense of credibility to any business that invests in them. 

But even though billboards are nothing new, there are different ways of presenting them to the world and the first thing you have to choose is the type of billboard. The most classic style billboard is a static image, a literal huge poster that hangs along the highways or over a parking lot. The second is a digital billboard.

Digital billboards offer a few unique advantages although they can tend to cost more than a non-digital billboard. Digital billboards offer an easier experience when it comes to uploading an image, and they allow you to have almost unlimited creative power. Depending on your budget, there are digital billboards that allow for motion graphics, special effects, sound, and even interaction. 

  1. The Design

So yes, you can go CRAZY with a billboard and in some situations maybe there is a good reason for crazy effects and an ornate design; however, simplicity is typically the best place to start from. The reason why more is less when it comes to billboards is that clarity is king. Beyond the specific tools of a marketing campaign, the first thing that you do when planning is define your goals. The goals of a marketing campaign are what keep things together and guide the proverbial ship. 

A billboard is a device that will at most get a few passing moments of interaction with a potential customer to get that goal across. This is why clarity is so important no matter what design or approach you use in creating a billboard. If a potential customer interacts with your billboard on the highways, they may only have a matter of moments to take in the message. In a case like this, having a complex or undefined message might just cause the billboard to fade into the landscape.

Successful billboard designs take advantage of those few moments to get a clear, concise message across. The good news is this can happen in any number of ways. Billboards can be funny, serious, colorful, busy, or minimalistic. As long they get the point across and leave a potential customer a little closer to being an actual customer – your design was a success! 

  1. Placement is Key

OOH, media relies heavily on placement because it is a passive form of advertisement. Unlike an ad on a social media platform, streaming service, or network TV channel, these signs do very little to interrupt an experience. Instead, they are a part of the landscape and it’s up to the design and placement of the billboard to garner attention. 

Placement of a billboard is important because the more people that interact with your billboard the more chances you’ll have of a potential customer being reached. Price is also another factor that plays into the importance of a billboard’s placement. Even though OOH media typically represents a great value for the results, it’s far from cheap. If your budget is a concern, then placement can play into this to help secure a billboard you can afford.

Yes, the more visibility the higher the premium, but even lower priced placements still garner significant interactions and can be great investments.

  1. Know Your Demographic

The last point is to make sure and do your research and know you’re demographic. One of the biggest drawbacks to most OOH media is that it doesn’t lend itself well to targeting one specific audience. A billboard might garner millions of interactions, and there is no ‘filter’ for who does and doesn’t see your advertisement.

Knowing your audience will help you make the right decision about investinging in a billboard, the kind of message that will catch their eye, and where they physically live so you can acquire proper placement.

Conclusion

Designing a billboard for Minneapolis can be an exciting and fun experience. With the right billboard, you can get the success you want to see out of your marketing campaign!