Are you looking to make your Boston billboards look they’re very best? Anyone who’s been in the marketing game, especially in the out-of-house (OOH) realm, knows how important the design of your billboards can be to the success of your campaign.
Boston billboards not only need to be placed in the best possible locations for optimized and maximized marketing benefits, but the designs should also follow several different throughlines and elements. Both are extremely important.
The best Boston billboards will be the right amount of eye-catching yet simple and readable and quirky. Ready to learn a little more?
Don’t be Too Decorative
When in doubt, it’s likely best to be as simple as possible. Don’t let your designs get too elaborate, even if you think that the aesthetics of the billboard could look much better with extra texture and calligraphy. This could actually keep you from being as successful as you would like your campaign to be.
Instead, you should focus on simple lines and solid backgrounds. Make sure that your fonts are bold, large, and extremely plain-looking. While serifs may look good for your longer essays and other types of copy, passersby simply won’t have very much time to ingest the information you’re trying to spread about your products or services.
Even if potential customers eventually do recognize the more complicated designs and fonts you create, if you do decide to make these a staple in your brand guidelines, it will likely take much longer than you were planning to achieve brand familiarity.
Billboard campaigns, including those on your Boston billboards, will generally be focused on the long-term rather than immediate results. Making your designs more complicated will actually require you to pay more money for your even further stretched-out campaigns for similar results to your competitors.
You likely don’t need to do this, unless this complication and potential confusion is something you aim to prioritize for your brand overall.
This means you should pick just one image to add to any simple lines and fonts you apply to your graphics. Use any extra space to take advantage of larger font sizes and enlarged logos.
Use High Contrast
Especially in the case of digital billboards, make sure that all of your delineations and images are easily viewed by anyone driving by. Following closely in line with the last tip, make sure that potential clients or customers can see the Boston billboards you put up with minimal friction or confusion.
The biggest goal is to make sure that everything in your design can be absorbed in five seconds or less, which is approximately the amount of time that most people who see your billboards will have to take it all in. The only situation in which they would have much more time would be when traffic comes to a standstill.
However, even when considering traffic at a standstill during everyone’s commute, you don’t want to make them even more annoyed when they look at your design because they can’t dissect all of the elements you’ve put into place.
Whether you’re using a digital billboard or not, making sure that your colours and lines don’t all blend together is probably for the best. That means that if you’re using a dark blue for your background, you probably want to put a lighter colour on top instead of something that is a middle or dark shade as well.
Don’t Block Yourself
While some billboards will cost less, be sure to consider exactly why they cost less. Maybe they stand they’ve set up is on the left side of the road, putting your ad further away from average drivers in Boston. Or maybe the situation is even worse.
Have you ever noticed that some billboards are partially blocked out by buildings, trees, or other tall elements in your city? It makes it really difficult to read everything or get a good look at a product shot. So even if your billboard designs are otherwise perfect, you could be shooting yourself in the foot if you’re covering up your ads.
It’s like going to the effort of blocking out your ads for your potential customers, instead of them needing to go into the extra effort.
Because of this, I highly recommend looking at all of your potential billboard locations in person if at all possible. And this should especially be done if you notice that the price is suspiciously low.
Put Your Ads Up Near Train and Bus Stops
This is a bit of an uncommon tip, especially since many of these billboards won’t necessarily make it onto the highway. But if you’re working with an OOH marketing budget that is smaller than ideal, this could be a good way to maximize the effects of your budget.
You won’t have access to the largest possible audience, but people who are using these alternative forms of transportation will have more time to allow your ad to really sink in and be remembered. Additionally, local commuters who are entering or leaving the area will also be likely to see these ads. This gives you a bit of the best of both worlds, even with a limited wallet size.
