Do Offline Ads Work?

(upbeat music)
- All right, so we're going to talk about
if offline ads actually work.
So Neil, I came up with this topic
because I was looking at a tweet.
It says, why B2B companies buy airport ads.
So vast majority of IT buyers travel.
And according to Nielsen, 80% notice airport ads,
42% take action after seeing an airport ad,
36% visit a website associated with an airport ad.
And so then it also says 900 million flyers
will board a plane via an HSBC branded gate this year.
- Have you seen the HSBC branded gates?
A lot of times when you board a terminal, it says HSBC.
I've seen that for so many years.
It's great branding.
- Yep.
But do you use HSBC?
- Actually I do, but I use them before that.
Back in the day we were banking with the bank
it got acquired, that bank got a card by another bank
and that bank eventually got acquired by HSBC.
So that's how I ended up there.
Not because I signed up with HSBC,
it was more so a bank account that I had
when I was like eight years old with my dad.
- I remember when the crypto stuff was really hot.
It was a bull market, right?
And all the Miami airport ads were like BlockFi.
It was like this exchange, that exchange.
Actually when I went to Turkey recently, Neil,
there's a crypto exchange that has all the gates branded
literally, like it's like inscribed into the gate
and like they took over everything, right?
I did go to their website afterwards
and I started looking them up.
So I actually took an action there, so.
- They're effective, you know
just because offline advertising isn't digital anymore
some of it's starting to merge into digital
and they're adjusting it
such as making these offline, you know,
billboards all digital and you can buy them through the web.
But the thing is, is people wouldn't be doing them
if it didn't work.
So the question is, is how can you end up leveraging ads
whether they're offline or they're digital or online
whatever you end up calling it.
The real question is, is does it convert?
And which channels?
And just like normal online ads that you guys are buying,
the offline ones we see some work, we see some don't.
You can't just go buy offline ads
and expect them all to work extremely well.
You got to think about where are your
target customers and audience?
How do you get in front of them?
And more importantly
what's a creative that you use to grab their attention
so that they're willing to take action?
So there's a lot of variables that could make an ad work
or not work.
It's more so if it's not about, if it's online or offline
it's more so can you do all the other elements well
and can you get it at a reasonable price?
Because if you're overpaying for it
it's going to make it that much harder for it to work.
- Yeah, marketing 101 at the end of the day
it's just finding where the attention is
and where your audience is hanging out.
Why is it when you're driving on the freeway
you see a lot of these personal injury lawyers
and like all this different stuff.
Or like, go buy weed from this store over here,
because people are stuck in traffic
and then you're getting a lot of that real estate.
So it just depends.
And it is important to look at where you can not only find
where your target audience is hanging out
but where the attention is underpriced.
- Yes.
Do you remember that story?
What was the company that sold to eBay?
The guy, who was eBay CEO?
Was it Meg Whitman?
That was it.
- Meg Whitman, yeah.
- And what they would do is they had billboard ads
targeting her drive to work and home
and they kept showing their company
and they ended up getting acquired.
Really effective strategy.
They got purchased by eBay.
So it can work.
You just got to get creative with it.
And I think that's a problem that most people struggle with
not just with offline ads
but also their online is how do you get super creative
and do something unique so that way it not just stands out,
but it grabs people's attention.
- You know, the IT buyers are, sorry the IT marketers
they typically aren't that creative.
And so when you go to an airport
you just like the best servers or whatever
so you like see like these or whatever
like who gives a crap, right?
- You're so right.
They're like best servers, 99.9999% reliability.
Like it's just like, okay,
they're not getting creative at all with them.
And just because your buyers are IT buyers doesn't mean
that they don't want to be entertained.
Yes, they're in IT, but they're humans just like you and I.
So try to be a little bit more creative
with your advertising.
- Yeah, you got to evoke emotion, right?
So I believe with AWS what they do is like
build on AWS, and what they do is
there's kind of a story behind, it's like this big company,
Airbnb builds on AWS, right?
And I don't know if they actually do, but that's an example.
It's like, oh, well Airbnb does it
maybe we should take a look at AWS, right?
That evokes emotion and that's what good marketing is.
- Yeah.
And the funny part is, is right now everyone's like
AI this and AI that
and how it's going to really change everything.
But the thing about AI is if you are doing the same thing
as everyone else, it's going to create more me-too campaigns.
And when we say me-too, we're not talking about gender
or that woman's movement of harassment.
We're talking about me-too like where's Waldo, right?
With where's Waldo
everyone's in that you have to find Waldo
where he's in that white and red stripe shirt
and now everyone's looking like, where's Waldo?
In which, you know, everything's blending in
because everyone's using the same tools
to create the same type of campaigns.
- [Eric] Now if you have any questions,
leave a comment below.
I'm here to answer them and help you out.
If you enjoy the video, like it, share it,
tell people about it.
Thank you very much.