What goes into an OOH budget?

In some respects, the OOH planning process drives your campaign budget. Ultimately, though, your media plan is limited by whatever budget is available. David Kang, Director of Campaign and Media Strategy at OneScreen.ai, describes planning and buying OOH as “a balance of art, heart and science.”

He explains the basic steps of planning an OOH campaign this way:

Determine your market strategy

The goals you want to achieve and what OOH’s role will be in attaining them. OOH is especially valuable because it fits with any part of the marketing funnel.

Determine your target audience

Not only who, but where you want to connect with them and when. OOH offers vast inventory and location choices, so targeting can be precise but it must be carefully considered.

Create content that speaks to customer pain points

But do it in a way that is memorable. If it is contextually relevant, even better. David Kang says 75% of ad effectiveness is determined by the creative.

Plan your buy

Pinpoint specific locations and OOH media formats within your market target area. Then reach out to suppliers with RFPs (requests for proposals based on their inventory and pricing). Evaluate the RFPs to confirm you’re getting exactly what you need.

Measure, analyze and optimize

Traditional and digital OOH now offer many ways to measure performance, based on metrics that reflect your campaign or overall strategic goals.

With all that, you’re ready to roll, right?

Well, maybe not. The OOH planning and budgeting process is more complex than other channels.

• You have to know who the players are (or how find them).
• You have to understand the full range of OOH media types and the pros and cons of using each one.
• You have to know how and when to negotiate pricing.
• And you have to know what data you can collect as you monitor your campaigns to evaluate and improve results.
• With so many variables and so many entities involved, it’s nearly impossible to handle the load without support from technology.

Marketers are feeling the pressure.

Budgeting for growth

OOH has become essential for companies that hope to compete successfully. Digital OOH alone is projected to average 11.9% annual growth worldwide through 2028.

But many marketers feel unprepared. And that’s affecting their budgets.

In a recent survey, 78% of marketers told us they intend to increase OOH investment. However, they are so concerned about being under-prepared, they are re-directing budget dollars to ramp up their in-house OOH capabilities.

Most plan to shift allocations within their marketing budget and/or take money from other departmental budgets.

99% plan to hire more marketing and creative staff

In just the last six months, LinkedIn has seen a 63% jump in marketing job listings, with more than 380,000 jobs posted in the last year.

This is good news for marketing job-seekers, but not so much for employers. In an already-tight job market, companies can expect tough competition for skilled OOH experts and creatives, further increasing staffing costs.

Meanwhile, targeting and analyzing OOH ad campaigns is deeply data-driven, but the sheer volume of data can be overwhelming. The process requires advanced technology that uses automation and AI to streamline and speed up the work.

Therefore many marketers also plan to invest more in tech tools to support their staff.

One tool can do it all, and it’s free: OneScreen.ai

The OneScreen.ai platform approaches OOH strategy and budgeting differently, with single-source simplicity and efficiency. It serves as an across-the-board resource that enables marketers to plan and manage all aspects of their OOH campaigns quickly and flexibly.

Among other benefits, the platform facilitates vendor sourcing and communication and provides real-time visibility into inventory availability that effectively eliminates the need for RFPs.

Using OneScreen.ai, advertisers can feel confident about making sound, cost-efficient decisions. Staff can handle growing OOH needs comfortably and still have time to focus on achieving other marketing goals. Plus, simplicity and streamlining save time and help conserve budget dollars.

And the platform itself is free to use.

Find your pot of gold at the end of the OOH rainbow

With only so much budget to fund marketing, managers will have to prioritize and balance ad placements versus back-end personnel and technology needs. What if there simply isn’t enough money to adequately address all the needs?

One-third of marketers told us they aren’t worried about funding increased investment in OOH. What’s their secret? OOH itself — they’re funding new OOH ads using revenue earned as increased profit from their OOH advertising over the past year.

With the right tools and planning, your OOH budget could be self-funding, too.