Roadside and traffic hoardings or billboards are quite common in cities. They can be quite effective for marketing, but not all are equally effective. Identifying the right kind of hoardings for your business is something an experienced advertising agency in Ernakulam, Kochi can handle.
Remember that hoardings by the roadside are for passing motorists, and they should be able to convey the message quickly. That significantly raises the challenge. Hoardings are also observed by pedestrians, in whose case a great billboard would make them stop and take a look. Ultimately, you want conversions, so the hoarding must not only attract but also convince the reader to check out the services it advertises. Optimizing the hoarding depends on the audience you target. The kind of hoarding and the message it carries, obviously depends on where you intend to place it.
How to Exploit the Potential of Hoardings
Hoardings can obviously take any form, though they usually have some key ingredients such as:
- An expansive canvas,
- Your logo,
- Your branding style, and
- Contact details of your business
Of course, you also have prominent businesses just mentioning their name and not any other details. The idea here is that mentioning the name alone creates curiosity which would lead readers to search Google to track down the business or ask others. Startups and smaller businesses though would do well to incorporate their contact details or a website at least because they want to maximize their chances for success and they want prospective customers to contact them.
Creativity: The One Constant in All Billboards
One aspect that is constant in all billboards is creativity and ample use of it. Hoardings provide plenty of physical area for various ideas to be put to good use. These ideas, of course, need to be incorporated only after plenty of research. With a large format, you obviously get plenty of potential for graphic design elements or attractive imagery.
The Story
Every successful hoarding or billboard is based on a story. Selecting the story depends on what message you want to convey to your audience:
- What do you want people to remember from your ad?
- Is it your website that you want them to check out?
- Do you want them to visit your business soon?
- Is it your brand which you want people to remember next time they are shopping?
- Is it something you want people to do right away?
The story and the billboard concept are framed based on what your message is. In other words, your billboard must evoke a problem or capitalize on a need and propose a solution to it. Sometimes it could also be evoking an emotion or an urge. When it evokes the emotion, your hoarding must also contain all the details to deal with the emotion.
The Image – the Most Important Aspect of the Billboard
Since there is a story to address, an emotion to evoke or a need to satisfy, and since people need to read through the message quickly, you definitely need an image and the hoarding provides quite an expansive canvas for that. It needn’t necessarily be a conventional image concept. It would need to be something that hooks the attention of passersby and makes them think and act quickly. An image could speak volumes, so you could perhaps do away with words totally. The image could make an impact in less than 5 seconds and convey everything you would have wanted to convey through words. Even if you are adding words, make sure they are short and sweet.
A Bold Font for Your Text
Make sure your message is depicted through a bold font that stands out from the surroundings and captures the short attention span of passing motorists. If they should be able to make sense of your hoarding and be drawn into it, your text plus image must convey your message in just 5 to 10 seconds. Keep the text messages in your hoardings easily understandable and as brief as possible.
Color Contrast and Bright Colors for Your Hoarding
It also helps to add contrasting colors in your hoarding. They will make a significant impact on the motorists and also help retain your message in them for a longer period of time. Bright colors can also help, as long as they add to the contrast. Instead of multiple images, you might want to include just one large image. One large image could provide much more of an impact than multiple smaller images. Keep the background simple and the foreground bright.
Experienced advertising companies in Kerala have a great deal of experience in dealing with challenging marketing requirements. They can come up with the right solutions for your hoardings.