Making sense of using outdoor media for digital products
Using OOH to drive app engagement
I recently saw a billboard from Spotify on a freeway in India, which got me thinking about the use of outdoor channel for driving digital products. I posted this on LinkedIn (Link) and a great discussion is happening on it there
I am still wondering about the efficacy of using outdoor media for digital products. Media budget is always finite and the investment made in any channel needs to pass the test of ‘cost per metric’ where metric could be reach, downloads, leads, etc. (basically whatever is being measured). May be the money being spent on outdoor can be used better if spent on programmatic campaign
It is a difficult question to answer. I think eventually it boils down to what’s the marketing objective. For a digital product, there are typically 3 marketing objectives:
Acquire new customers: App installs or buy subscription
Increase frequency of use: Provide more use cases, more reminders to use the product, etc. This drives a variety of business objectives - monetization (in case of ad-based model), retention (in case of subscription-based model)
Get churned-out users back to the product
Acquiring new customers is the process which has a very high level of ‘friction’.
App installs - App needs to be downloaded from app store, which needs user to open app store, search and download, everything needs a good internet connection. To minimize the friction, the user needs the exact URL for the app listing on the app store
Subscription: Paying for a subscription is even higher level of friction, taking out card, entering it, entering OTP, hoping the payment gateway doesn’t die on you
Given the high level of friction, it seems almost improbable for a non-digital ad to drive customer acquisition as the ‘Time To Value’ (Time difference between receiving a stimulus to realising the benefit proposed by the stimulus) is just too high. Print ads tend to use QR codes to reduce TTV but the inherent friction between moving from non-digital media to digital product is way too high. Outdoor ads will struggle with QR codes, for obvious reasons!
On the other hand, an outdoor ad can drive the objective of ‘increasing the frequency of use’ if executed well
The friction is minimized as the app exists on the phone or subscription exists on the servers
Outdoor is great for building salience for the app int he following manners:
Reminds the audience about the use case for the app that they may have forgotten to use
Reminds them about the content that is already part of their subscription and they can start consuming it
Simply build top of the mind awareness of the app in user’s mind
In any of the above 3 cases, the end result is an increase in frequency of use and not new customers (at least not directly)
Here are some interesting examples:
Spotify’s year-end ‘wrapped’ campaign —> Link. The creative route clearly aims to build new use case for using Spotify (user can review their year on Spotify) and also works on building top of the mind awareness for Spotify in a very cluttered market
Lyft’s discounted rides on election day —> Link. Lyft offered 50% discounted/free rides to voters to their polling stations on the day of US elections. This reminds the user that they have this app (overlap with Uber is very high for cab-hailing app users) and builds top of mind awareness with incentive to use the app
Google Maps campaign in India —> Link. India is an Android nation and Maps is available by default on all smartphones. Thus, Google wanted to tell people about the use cases for using Maps. The remark by Google rep in this link is telling: “Our goal was to reach consumers at moments that matter and educate them about how Maps can enable them to reach on time.”
What are your views on the use of outdoor media or for that matter non-digital media for driving customer acquisition? Do you know of any successful campaigns for it?