As a business owner promoting your brand’s goods and services, you can make your advertising efforts more effective by targeting them to a specific audience of consumers. Who’s likely to buy your products? Who’s likely to make repeat purchases if they already buy your products? In other words, who is your target audience? Having awareness of your target audience is crucial to implementing a successful marketing campaign because trying to reach everyone simultaneously is impossible and costly.
Identifying your target audience, where they live, their income and purchasing habits, and other demographic information allows you to engage in hyperlocal advertising and spread targeted messages that attract and resonate with local consumers. Business owners in Chicago, where not one, not two, but 77 community areas have unique identities and cultures, can make the most of the city’s diversity.
You know your business, and our advertising experts at View Chicago know the neighborhoods. Our out-of-home advertising campaigns at View Chicago help business owners position themselves as experts in the communities where their target audiences live, work, and play. How much a billboard costs and how large it is aren’t the only aspects of an ad campaign that matter—location does, too. We specialize in picking premier, highly visible spaces and choosing strategic placements for clients’ ads in various out-of-home advertising formats, from billboards to street furniture to transit shelter advertising.
Determine the demographic you want to reach
The Windy City is truly the city of neighborhoods. Residents, commuters, and visitors here have different cultural backgrounds, ages, incomes, and more. They live, work, go to school, and hang out in various spaces across the city. Keep in mind that folks living and working in the city have a different Chicagoan experience from those living in the suburbs, too.
What kind of goods and services do you offer, and for whom? Who do you want to see your out-of-home advertising most frequently and easily? In a city as diverse as Chicago, your target audience could be
Young and seasoned professionals alike working in River North
High-level executives commuting from the affluent Gold Coast to The Loop
Students and millennials taking the bus from the Pilsen neighborhood to university classes
Working parents and stay-at-home parents who hustle and bustle through the city and suburbs to get their children to school, get to work, complete their errands, and balance it all
Blue-collar workers in the suburbs commuting throughout the suburbs and city according to the labor and industrial services they provide
Retirees and older adults living in affluent neighborhoods and suburbs and making the most of the city’s community centers and entertainment and leisure activities
When you know who you’re targeting, where in the city and suburbs they live, how they experience their environment, the places they frequent, and the routes they most commonly take, our experts will be able to use demographic data to help you position creative, attractive out-of-home advertisements in all the right places. The high visibility of these strategic placements will make your campaigns worth the street furniture, transit shelter advertising, and billboard costs.
Hyperlocal advertising and geotargeting can help you target your audience where they are
Our clients get to leverage robust out-of-home advertising campaigns built on hyperlocal targeting and geotargeting. Geotargeting means strategically choosing a location your target consumers frequently walk, drive, or ride by so they can easily and repeatedly see your billboards, street furniture, and transit shelter advertising. Geotargeting and hyperlocal advertising deliver the right message to them at the right time.
We help clients utilize a focused approach. When deciding to do an out-of-home advertising campaign, you may assume a giant billboard costs a lot to put up, but still, go for it because you want many people—even those who aren’t in your target audience—to see it. However, our experts know that being strategic can help you get the most out of how much your billboard costs. Instead of giving you the largest spaces possible for billboards, we can help you implement more neighborhood-focused and smaller-scale billboard formats like Wild Postings and HotSpots. These formats allow you to be more strategic and meet and greet your target audience at the center of their activities.
We give clients space to be versatile in presenting and promoting their messages to the public. At View Chicago, billboards aren’t the only way to capture your audience’s attention. Street furniture and transit shelter advertising can catch the eyes of even the busiest suburban commuters, from high-level executives rushing to make it to meetings on time to parents balancing their responsibilities with getting their children to and from where they need to be to college students commuting to classes. With street furniture, you can get the attention of retirees and older adults in the suburbs, capturing their attention while they experience the suburbs at their own pace.
The strengths of out-of-home advertising via street furniture
Research shows that out-of-home advertising campaigns generally produce higher recall rates than other advertising media forms, such as radio, podcasts, print, and live and streaming television. With more people saying they are taking more significant notice of their surroundings more often—49% of adult consumers notice OOH ads more now compared to one year ago—out-of-home advertising continues to prove to be an effective means of engaging potential customers.
Utilizing street furniture in your out-of-home advertising campaigns boosts their effectiveness because these ads serve as a reminder of your brand’s goods and services that can prevent consumers’ recall from falling. Consider that bus riders have to wait minutes before their buses arrive. Having street furniture at their stop gives them chances to have moments of impactful engagement with your brand, where they can use their phone to look up your brand.
That can translate to them still learning about your products and browsing your website while they wait and even once the bus ride begins, ultimately increasing web traffic to your site. You can take this up a notch and add a weblink, social media icon, or QR code to your street furniture. Passersby or commuters waiting at the bus stop can scan the QR codes with their smartphones and get quick access to your site and what you have to offer.
Customize street furniture to be more relevant to residents
On the subject of attracting suburban residents’ attention through street furniture, it’s essential to be just as strategic with street furniture as they are with HotSpots, Wild Postings, and Wallscapes. Street furniture can capture attention for extended periods compared to billboards, and they can keep attention depending on how well they resonate with residents and commuters.
A significant component of hyperlocal advertising is maintaining maximum impact. Not only should you place street furniture close to transit stops and waiting areas, parks, community centers, and shopping districts to make sure your targeted messages reach your audience at the right time, but you can also benefit from
Blending urban and suburban aesthetics into your street furniture and transit shelter advertising. The design of your street furniture and transit shelter advertising formats can complement the surrounding suburban landscape. When street furniture and transit shelter advertising messages seamlessly blend in with the aesthetics and atmosphere unique to the parts of Chicago they’re positioned in, it creates a visually appealing and non-intrusive way to connect with the audience.
Customizing your advertising messages to align with the suburbs’ real-time interests. Craft content that resonates with the specific interests, culture, and values of each suburb, but also with current events to align with the community’s identity to enhance the likelihood of building a genuine connection with the audience. Implement seasonal out-of-home advertising campaigns aligned with local events, festivals, and seasonal changes. This approach ensures that your brand remains relevant and attuned to the neighborhood and feels stable and consistent amid an ever-changing local landscape.
Spread the word on the street in the suburbs with street furniture
Consider that when older adults and retired individuals commute, they can embrace and experience The Windy City at their own pace. If they’re taking their time on long commutes or strolls in their suburban communities, they’ll have more time to take notice of their environment. Strategically placing street furniture ads in eye-level spaces near popular commercial areas and highly traveled suburban roads where commuters will frequently walk, drive, take public transit, or stop and rest gives members of your target audience extended periods spent with your ads multiple times each day.
Unlike online ads that people can skip over and are gone in the blink of an eye, street furniture is a lasting 24-hour reminder to your consumers who commute or are suburban residents of your brand’s goods and services.
Compared to billboard costs and some of the other forms of out-of-home advertising, street furniture ads are some of the lowest-cost forms because they’re outside city limits. These ads allow you to reach traveling suburban resident populations in a budget-friendly way that differs from ads you’d place in the city. Clients can leverage the eye-level visibility of our standard 4-foot by 6-foot bus stop ads, which allows Chicagoans to see them up close, across intersections, waiting at red lights, or walking along sidewalks.
Leverage the landscape of out-of-home advertising to connect the suburbs and the city
The prolonged viewing times that street furniture and bus stop ads give your audiences are perfect for the suburbs. Take the Lincolnwood suburb, for instance. Lincolnwood is a favorite place for retirees and others across the metro area. A small suburb of just 12,000 residents, Lincolnwood is a charming, lively area of affluent older adults with an average household income of $124,000, demonstrating residents’ ultimate buying power. Residents in this suburb might start their day with a stroll in their community. Then, they may spend time at their regular country club before shopping in their free time. You can utilize street furniture in these spaces of leisure and comfort, allowing you to capture the attention of these retired and older individuals affordably while expanding your coverage to new target audience members.
Retirees and older adults living in Lincolnwood may commute to the Lakeview neighborhood for city activities. As they travel, they encounter vibrant communities and commercial areas. Going from Lincolnwood to Lakeview, these adults drive through the tree-lined streets of Lincoln Avenue and pass by charming residential neighborhoods, local parks, and community centers. When suburban Chicago residents and visitors come to Lakeview, they experience its casual, welcoming atmosphere, explore its attractions, and enjoy its amenities.
With this knowledge of these habits of members of your target audience and our understanding of the neighborhoods, we can create an efficient, hyperlocal out-of-home advertising campaign that implements street furniture and transit shelter advertising within Lincolnwood and HotSpots and Wild Postings the closer people get to Lakeview. You’ll be able to own the neighborhoods and appeal to consumers who aren’t bound by a work schedule anymore and can take their time enjoying the entertainment the area offers to all ages and soaking up the scenic views of the gorgeous shorelines and greenery.
Navigating the diverse landscape of Chicago suburbs requires a nuanced understanding of the demographics and a strategic advertising approach. Street furniture formats and transit shelter advertising provide canvases for businesses to create hyperlocal advertising campaigns that resonate with their target audience. By leveraging the benefits of these advertising channels, you can establish a strong presence in the hearts and minds of suburban communities, fostering lasting connections that go beyond traditional marketing boundaries.
Our out-of-home advertising experts at View Chicago can help you find placements across Chicago and its suburbs that will make your message resonate with your target audience. We’ll craft a hyperlocal advertising plan specifically tailored to the image you want for your brand, relatable and targeted in ways that suit your audience and motivate them to take action. Reach out to us to get started with developing an out-of-home advertising campaign that utilizes targeted approaches according to your advertising goals and financial needs. We’ll provide a custom quote with exact numbers based on your campaign objectives.