When we go for long trips on a highway escaping from the hustle-bustle of cities enjoying the landscape we often come across large billboards beside the highway advertising the products of various companies, billboards are also visible in a crowded area or in main areas of cities although they are costly as compared to highway billboards. Billboards are a popular method of advertising used by companies all over the world to advertise their products or services, given below are some of the advantages and disadvantages of billboard advertising –
Advantages of Billboard Advertising
Good Visibility
The first and foremost advantage of billboard advertising is the visibility factor as the average billboard is large in size and the only thing that consumers will see is the product of the company and hence remember it for an extended period of time as opposed to other forms of advertising. In simple words, if you are in a jungle and you will see many small animals but the moment you see an elephant you will stop and look at that elephant with excitement, in case of marketing billboards are like elephants which consumers can’t ignore.
Economical
Another advantage of this form of advertising is that if the company has put a billboard on the highway than it is more economical as compared to other forms of advertising like television advertising or radio marketing or digital advertising and hence even small companies can afford to have billboard advertising of its products or services.
Static
In the case of television or radio advertising, the advertisements keep running and hence chances are consumers will forget the company’s advertisement due to other advertisements. While in the case of billboard advertising since there is only one advertisement which is static and hence once the customer sees the billboard he or she will not forget that advertisement.
Disadvantages of Billboard Advertising
Risk of Damage
In the case of billboard advertising, there is always that risk that the billboard will be damaged due to extreme weather conditions besides sometimes some mischievous individuals will damage the billboard thus reducing the impact of this form of advertisement. In simple words in the case of television advertising if one person breaks his or her televisions that do not impact the advertisement as other people can see the advertisement but when it comes to billboard advertising if one person does some damage to the billboard than it will result in no one being able to see the company’s advertisement on the billboard.
No Creativity
In the case of television, radio or digital medium companies can be creative with regards to their content as well as their presentation but when it comes to billboard advertising there is no such scope due to less space and also it is a static medium of advertisement hence companies cannot be that creative as they can be in other modes of advertising.
Less Targeted
Billboard advertising is less targeted because they are placed on roads or market area where everyone irrespective of their age, preference, education, and gender goes which is not the case with other forms of advertising where company can target specific niche or markets as far as their advertising campaign is concerned. Hence for example in the case of the digital form of advertising a pharmaceutical company can target health-related websites or a publishing company can target education-related websites and so on.
As one can see from the above that billboard advertising has advantages as well as disadvantages and that is the reason why any company thinking of using this strategy for its products should carefully read the above points and then only should take any decision regarding the use of this strategy for the marketing of its products or services.