With all of the cars on the road, the people who are driving those cars have no choice but to look out their windscreen at their surrounds. Part of those surroundings are the marketing campaigns utilising advertising outdoors. With the popularity of holiday ventures to rural areas as well as camper trailers, not to mention urban driving becoming more and more common, there are avenues for any marketing campaign that will get seen by thousands or hundreds of thousands of people a day. The advertisements outdoors make big statements and cannot be ignored, unlike other advertising mediums, such as a reader skipping advertising pages in a magazine.

On top of guaranteed views of an advertising campaign, there is a high level of repetitive exposure to the same advertisements. The typical commuter drives the same route five days a week so that means that any given outdoor advertisement will be viewed by that driver repeatedly during the week. Repetition in advertising is difficult to obtain in most mediums but while advertising outdoors, it is one of the most cited reasons for choosing this medium for advertising.

With any marketing campaign, timing is everything. A bold advertisement is lost if there is a large amount of time, from the advertising impression, to the decision to make a purchase. Outdoor advertising minimises that time, sometimes dramatically. Advertising a product utilising an outdoor ad in front of the store where that product is sold is the most striking example of this. However, even having a product featured on the expressway will still leave an favourable advertising impression when a person stops at their local market before heading home after a long day at work.

The initial cost for an outdoor advertising campaign is fairly low as well, depending on the location and size of the advertisement. As with other marketing outlets, size and the variety of colours affects cost. However, compared to most other marketing mediums, the initial cost is most often lower and the monthly cost after the first month is more of a rental agreement and maintenance fee agreement, rather than a reoccurring fixed cost.

If you had a product to sell that was used only by people over the age of 50, it probably would do you no good to advertise in magazines or on television shows that are aimed at people between 20 and 30 years of age. To be effective, marketing and advertising efforts need to be placed in front of the people that can actually use the product and not the thousands of others who can not and will not ever consider it. Many old time advertisers believed it is better to fire a single bullet from a rifle aimed directly at the target instead of shooting a hundred pellets from a shotgun and hoping one gets close.

Blind canvassing or taking the shotgun approach only works in certain industries where the potential customer base is undefined. Industries such as fast food or many family oriented restaurants and those that cater to wide range of consumers can often benefit from shotgun advertising.

However, niche companies and those that are after a specific demographic rarely achieve success unless they conduct specific research on product marketing.

It is considered the best use of the marketing budget by being aimed at the best customer. The return on the investment is the best measure of the marketing effort as well as how many new sales or repeat sales are generated by the fewest dollars. In many areas of advertising it is a numbers game and the more people who see the ad, the better chance there is of making a sale.

However, smart business owners look at the return on their advertising investment to determine the meaning of a successful campaign. For
example, by sending out 10,000 ads to a generalized area, there may be only 100 responses. Of that 100, one turns into a customer. Although the 10,000 ads only cost you about $100, that translates into $100 per new customer.

Targeted ads, historically return four times as many respondents with a fourth of the effort. This translates into 2,500 ads going out with 100 respondents with four turning into customers. With A $50 charge, this translates into $12.50 for the new customer, a significantly higher return on the investment. While the numbers will vary based on the type of product or service being offered and the quality of the ad going out, it is representative of the difference in the approaches taken in advertising.

If you have every stopped at a roadside travel center along an interstate highway, you have probably seen volumes of advertising about travel spots. Tourist attractions and vacation information fills racks at these centers because they are geared towards the traveler. There is a reason these same brochures are not handed out in elementary schools.

Being able to target the marketing effort will take research to determine the location of the most people that can use the information you have to offer. However, once you find the potential customers and send them the right message about your company, you can be prepared for a much bigger return on your investment.