So you've run a conference OOH campaign, now what?

Since we published our OneScreen.ai playbook describing how to use OOH to dominate your next conference, it has been a tremendous hit. Customers keep coming to us asking for help in mastering their own “conference domination” OOH play. It’s a smart, timely approach to get maximum exposure for B2B your brand, now that conferences are back on everyone’s schedule.

But then what happens? The conference ends, and their OOH play ends with it. Their big, buzzworthy moment fades away. Talk about lost momentum!

Don’t you want to dominate beyond the conference?

Doing something just once almost never produces results. One trip to the gym? No muscles. One ingredient? Hardly a full meal. One tennis lesson? No Wimbledon in your future. One TV commercial? Forgotten in seconds – or maybe you’ll get an extra 15 minutes of fame if it was a stand-out Super Bowl ad.

But you get the idea. “One and done” has never been a successful marketing approach.

So why leave your brilliant conference domination play to wither away? Especially when OOH can help your brand dominate the scene – any scene outside the home – all the time?

Make OOH an integral part of your total marketing strategy

In the post-pandemic marketplace, B2B customers are more like B2C consumers than ever before. While some of your targets may be returning to work, at least some of the time, many never will. The only way to make an impression is to reach them where they are now, and that’s out of home, as they go about their daily lives.

Like all consumers, business people are feeling overwhelmed by screen time. They’re deliberately seeking less of that – and, in the process, they’re missing or avoiding your online advertising. Meanwhile, they are deliberately noticing their physical surroundings out in the real world.

So, reaching your targets at a conference makes perfect sense. But it’s not meant to be an end game. Instead, make it an integral part of a fresh and more relevant ongoing marketing strategy.

It’s easy to be relevant with OOH, thanks to location-based targeting

You can research movement patterns to and from key points of interest (POIs) – places your target audience frequents – to learn not only where they go but when.

You can also plot trends, comparing pre-pandemic and post-pandemic data to see if your audience is back to the office or working from home. This informs potential OOH placements along travel paths as well as static locations.

And consider this. When you promote your brand at a conference, you’re reaching attendees who have come to that location from a broad regional area or from all over the country. Then they disperse back home – but to where?

By researching their movement you can design an account based attack plan for those markets, giving your conference OOH play a winning one-two punch.

Hey . . . didn't I just see them at the XYZ conference?

OOH speaks to prospects from top to bottom of your funnel

Clever conference domination incorporates a variety of OOH media and placements to create a comprehensive presence. In the larger out-of-home world, you can configure both OOH and digital OOH media, locations and content in virtually unlimited ways, depending on your promotional goals.

Get noticed

OOH builds brand and product awareness to spark interest at the top of the sales funnel. Ads can be broadly targeted to reach a wide audience, often. This is invaluable if you’re launching something new – a startup enterprise, a new product or service, a new store location or you’re entering a new market.

OOH ads can also be more tightly targeted using demographics and geographic criteria to reach specific audiences. High-value accounts, for example. Here’s just one ABM example that will make an OOH believer out of you.

OOH is also a medium that breeds trust. That’s critical for new businesses looking to build a following.

• 58% of consumers say OOH ads are more trustworthy and more relevant than any other platform
• 77% of those who see a brand’s OOH ads say they trust that brand — that’s 10% higher than those not exposed to the company’s OOH ads

And there are even more reasons to introduce your brand by activating a post-conference OOH play. A new nationwide consumer survey reveals:

• 77% of consumers frequently learn about new brands or products via OOH ads
• 80% have made a purchase after seeing an OOH ad
• 86% can recall brands and products they saw in OOH ads

OOH helps B2B marketers get noticed and build trust because it offers a positive presence. It’s informative and entertaining but never annoying or intrusive. Even better, it is brand specific and controlled by you so it is reliably brand safe.

Motivate those in the middle

OOH ads do more than speak your name. They can tantalize your audience with content that fuels the desire to engage, starting conversations about your brand and motivating mid-funnel targets to search online or visit your website to learn more. A QR code or short URL makes it easy to connect.

But why not put your best conference moves into play in other locales? Your exhibit booth isn’t the only place to show a short video or host a hands-on product demo. Place-based digital OOH can display that same video, and a mobile LED truck or fleet of wrapped vehicles can stop for a pop-up experience anywhere, at any time.

Adding OOH to your marketing mix can help shorten your sales cycle by serving up warmer leads for your sales team. Targets have noticed your ads and they’re already intrigued, primed to take your call. That makes outreach easier for the sales team, and it can make closing sales more likely.

May we suggest a good read?

If you’re an account-based marketer, you’ll want to know more about how you can integrate OOH to accelerate your own ABM efforts. Check out our free playbook. For that matter, this guide can help any B2B marketer turn conference domination into marketplace domination.