OOH Insider - Episode 004 - Moden Day Word-of-Mouth [ON STEROIDS]

Oh right. There we go. So, uh, I'm going to start off the show with some notes that I wrote. Is it a bit of a flow state coming out of my little workout in my meditation, a little reading session and a. Had the inspiration for this episode on the way to work today, but then it really came to a point of clarity after I got done doing all that stuff, as you can imagine, sometimes things do.

So this is what I wrote. I think it's going to set the stage real well, read to you now. We're returning to a place where world, where word of mouth matters, it's scalable and it's an opportunity to disrupt any market while staying on budget spokespeople have always been effective. The Snapple lady, the sprint slash Verizon.

Flo from progressive and while they're effective, because they're memorable, they're not scalable. And they still feel a little impersonal because, well, they're characters on them. 32nd commercial. So in a world where word of mouth amplified as affordable, how can you leverage the approach of the big guys?

Well, it appears we have arrived at the intersection. Of influencers. What the heck does an influencer have to do with that at home? Well, that's what we're here to talk about. Welcome to the out-of-home insider show. I'm Tim Rowe. We're bringing you tips, tricks and insider insights. How to make out-of-home work for your company.

Got a bunch of stats are going to blow your mind today, but we're going to talk about a big concept first and foremost, those thoughts there were, uh, were to set the stage word of mouth. Spokespeople scalability. We've got access to things today that allow us to play a really heads up smart type of advertising scheme, if you will.

So I'm going to take you through some statistics and thoughts there. I want to start with a story. This weekend. I was asked to speak on a panel to some really awesome college students who are part of an organization called . And you all are familiar with an axis that do a bunch of great work. Um, for the students in the program, it's specifically geared towards more of a business-minded student.

And the entire premise of the program is to take entrepreneurial action and act. Um, to help the communities in a social capacity. So I was there, it's a program I've been involved with since I was in college. And I was talking to one of the girls on the team from, uh, from my own monitor. And we started talking about a client of mine, very indirectly.

And, and I said, oh, Hey, have you been there yet? And it was, um, the restaurant food hall place. So, have you been there yet? She goes, no, I haven't been, I've been dying to go. I said, well, how'd you hear about, do you know someone that's been her answer and I wish I could have had it damn tape recorder right there.

She goes. Now I see it in the bill. I see it on the billboard. I'm away to class every day. So here's this 21 year old, uh, college student. Very proactive and, uh, and she's shouting out, out at home, but here's why all that matters. Here's why the premise, the setup matters. Here's why that story matters. Uh, American millennials, and we're sort of using a little bit of a generality.

Um, millennials typically born 81 to 84, and then you've got like gen Z gen Y right behind it. So I'm going to use millennials a little bit liberally here to talk about anyone born between 1981 and 1997. So let's cover that with millennials work with me here, but that age range represents $200 billion in annual buying power.

Uh, millennials. Again, that all encompassing, um, that makes up almost half of the consumer, uh, of the consumption. And they're the most influential consumers got a lot of sway. Right? They've got a lot of influence. We hear about all the time as social media and the news. Looking for very socially proactive companies and grants to align themselves with half of millennials, half of millennials actively block ads online.

Just this year, over 33% of television, consumers will have canceled traditional paid TV. And now over 90% of the U S population listens to streaming radio in some capacity. So how do you reach an incredibly important part of the market in terms of buying power and population? How do you reach the. When they're actively saying, I want to block your ads and I will pay money to get out of the way of them on traditional television and traditional radio.

So how do you reach somebody who doesn't want to be reached, but has what you want, which is their buying power? Well, good place to start is right. Inspire them, 71% of those people expect brands to inspire them. Well, what the hell does that look like? How do I make widgets? How do I inspire people? We'll talk about that.

We'll get there in a second. 65% of those people expect brands to support a life ambition. So wait a second. You're supposed to offer a brand that inspires them and also support a life ambition. Uh, and 78% of brands expect to bring some sort of social change. That sounds like a big daunting thing. The fact of the matter is you've probably already doing all of those things in a way.

It's just a matter of shaping and telling the story. And that's where influencers come into play. What's an influencer. An influencer is anybody that has access to an audience that you would like to get in front of. They have the trust of that audience and that audience could be anything. Um, you know what, let's just take a live example here.

Let's see. Um, let's look for. Uh, brewery in Charlotte. So I'm going to be bringing a couple of things up on my screen here. Brewers is Charlotte, the old Mecklenburg brewery in Charlotte. That looks like a good one to start off with. So all I'm doing, if I was the old Mecklenburg brewery or whoever you are, whatever business you're with, there's lots of tools out there.

There's a few platforms that you can just simply pay a subscription to or pay on a, on a. Per influencer basis, bunch of different models out there, but there's entire platforms that manage this whole thing for you. Um, but what I'm looking for real quick is just if there's going to be a link to their social, social media, there's not, so I'm not going to go crazy, but it's just the old fashioned old fashioned way, the old fashioned way go right to Instagram and start looking for some of the hashtags that, that have to do with your business.

So in this case, I'm going to look for a craft brewery. Hashtag craft brewery. And now that's just pretend that I'm a brewery and I'm looking for a, I'm looking for somebody to promote my beer. I know that if I can get it in front of these people that really love IPA's. I could sell a whole bunch of them.

So I'm going to go through the Instagram page for that hashtag, and I'm going to start looking at posts and who has, who has posts with really high engagement and are they individual people? Are they brands? Who are they? So let me look at hashtags that are relevant to my business. Let me try to find that person local to me who has the influence with that.

Um, when I was still strictly automotive focused, one of the ideas that I had had, and presented a couple of dealers with looking for one to jump, just looking for one to bite at it. Um, let's say, let's say you are a Toyota. And you know, that the Highlander does really well with women 35 to 44 who have a household income over a hundred thousand, you sort of have a broad picture and there's obviously tons of more data and we can get super granular about that.

But, you know, generally that that's about who my audience is. It's that it's that a more accurate. Um, super active mom within my community. Well, just start looking for super active moms and your community on social media. Could you, could you for 400, 500 bucks a month, could you put that, that, uh, that local yoga super fit mom who has a full-time career and is raising three kids with an awesome family?

Um, could you approach that person and say, Hey, I'd like to give you a Toyota Highlander, um, that you don't have to pay. It's going to cost you Mr. Dealer four or 500 bucks or however, all that stuff works. But, um, I'm going to give you a Toyota Highlander. And all I'm asking you to do is three times a week.

I just want you to post some sort of picture throughout the course of your day, whether it's getting groceries, whether it's something other than the kids at soccer practice, take a picture. And, uh, if you could just, you know, use these hashtags, make sure that, uh, disclaimed as a, as paid post. How much influence could you buy?

She's got 10,000 people and 3,500 of them that follower are super loyal. And 1700 of them all live within 20 miles. And you know, that 2% of the market's ever in the market for a car. And you start to back into this on a cost per car basis and going, holy crap, I'm giving away a Toyota Highlander for four or 500 bucks a month in exchange for some influence with this really key audience for.

And I'm selling 2, 3, 4, 5 cars, and I've got something cool to talk about. I've got something that uniquely makes me different. And then maybe you find that influenced for each vehicle or each. You know, the particular verticals in whatever space that you're in. Find those core key influencers in the markets that truly drive the change for your business.

And there's all sorts of different ways that you can work with an influencer and, and all sorts of different financial arrangements that you can work out. It. We all have different needs and wants and whatever the really cool part is at the local level. There's a lot of people that don't even realize they're influencers or they haven't found a way to monetize their local influence, which presents a huge opportunity for you as the local businesses.

Where you can give somebody an opportunity to turn what they're doing into something that helps you grow your business and ultimately affords them some additional financial freedom. So how do you take all that? What the hell does it have to do without at home? This is what it has to do without a home.

There's no bigger list than we can place ads on these things. No matter if. The prototypical cracked iPhone screen here, thing going on. Um, but we pay 10, 12, $20 cost for thousands for an ad that makes up this much of this space here. Um, I could put you up on a billboard and make you 14 foot tall on 48 foot wide.

And all of a sudden you are larger than life. You want the fastest way to legitimize any person product offering. Influencer, you want to win a quick way to legitimize them, put them up on a big old billboard. So that's the idea here? What type of business are you in? Who are the people that have influence with the core audiences that you would directly like to impact?

The core audiences that I told you earlier are looking for you to drive that social impact, give them something to be excited and inspired about and be given back to, to the, you know, it's a social change. Uh, if you will, if you can do that, if you can identify who those people are that have the influence with the audience that you want.

Again, this is an audience with a ton, $200 billion worth of buying power that doesn't want to be advertised to. They don't want to be marketed to that's super tough. So how can we do it? It's with influencers. What would I do if I had an influencer in my stable, in my campaign, I would be putting that up on all my digital networks.

So I would say take a. Take that path go. The influencer path find a package of something that makes, makes sense for you. I think you'd find it's going to be more affordable than you probably thought it would. And then create a ton of excitement around it. Put them up on that 14 by 48 digital network all over your area, but don't just do it on any old random unit that, uh, that your local outdoor operator says you should do.

Make sure that they are partnered with a premium world-class super top notch data partner. There's some really great companies out there. And they are using this stuff, mobile device ID data to tell us which outdoor locations index the highest against our target audience. How powerful is that? So again, I'm a local brewery and I'm trying to reach people that are interested in a particular type of beer.

Well, I can go in and I can look for people that are interested in a particular type of beer. And then I can say, this is the network. Best designed to get in front of those types of people. And here's, by how much this unit gets a hundred thousand impressions a week and 32% of those impressions are on target with people interested in the types of beer that you have to offer.

You've got your influencer up there and you're using digital the right way. So what is the right. Well, let's talk about attention spans. There's often a lot of criticism or conversation around how long should a rotation in a digital, out of home display be. And they vary by operator. Um, for the most part bout eight seconds is the standard, what we call flip, um, and there's anywhere from six to eight advertisers in a rotation.

That means throughout the course of the day, Hundreds, if not thousands of spots or little commercials throughout the day. And it's perfect. It's absolutely perfect because that same millennial , that's all folks stigma. Me that same millennial audience has a super short time span. Attention, time, time span.

Sort of the good thing that's working to our advantage. Also the downfall of, of the small screen, um, uh, consumption of media and the way that we interact with the world. But the average millennial attention span, depending on who you ask it's between eight and 12 seconds, which just happens to coincide with the flip of a digital bill.

It all consumers spend more than 70% of the, of their time out of the home, which means out of home continues to explode, especially as things like ad fraud, especially as things like more people blocking ads and moving to more paid services out-of-home is becoming a more and more important part. It's a great way to leverage a traditional.

Influencer program or getting around some of the firewall firewalls of digital advertising and taking a really larger than life. Look at being able to do a campaign like that. So how are some of the ways to best use a digital out-of-home campaign? Um, some things like I got some notes here. Dayparting, dayparting maybe one of the most underutilized aspects of digital out-of-home.

You could have a breakfast message. If you are a coffee shop. Um, you could have a dinner message if you're a local diner and it's 6:00 PM and you're trying to get truck drivers to take a ride at the next exit and come to your establishment. There's all sorts of different ways that you could use that day party day to day, scheduling within day schedule.

Unplanned scheduling. So, uh, you've got, uh, I just throw up some texts. Um, maybe I'm just trying to think of I'm planning. Scheduling could be something like maybe just a. I'm drawing a blank here. Somebody fill in the blank, you probably stare at the screen or listen to this gun. Oh duh, this Tim, we could do that.

So whatever that thing is that you're thinking of right now, you could do that too. So countdowns countdowns are a lot of fun. That's a super engaging, a way to use the platform, whether it's days, hours, minutes, um, it could be to a new product launch. It could be to the unveil of your company with maybe some teaser messaging going on.

Social media is a large part of this conversation is bad, but about social media influencers. So how can you use social media on your digital? Out-of-home what we could come up with. Maybe it's a, maybe it's a frame that's got your influencer with some sort of pose or some sort of wacky pose. And then it ties in their pictures from the day.

Um, or maybe some content from other people that like follower engage with your infant. Giveaways giveaways are a cool opportunity. Uh, show the winter up there of your different giveaways car dealerships. Take pictures of your customers when you're delivering cars on a Saturday. Live streaming all day.

Here's all the customers that we've helped today. Get new cars, score, display. Super. I think this is a great opportunity to sponsor a local sports team, collegiate team professional team, and just display the display score. So it was people are driving around. They're wondering what the active score is.

Hey, today's score is brought to you by Tim's story. Traffic love this one traffic updates, as much as we don't like traffic. And as much as we try to avoid traffic, sometimes we're stuck in it in one run. We're wondering how long it's going to be. The department of transportation does a great job of letting us know things like that, but it's a great advertising opportunity.

You see it on TV, you see it on radio all the time. Sponsoring the traffic, uh, traffic update. Some weather related triggers. So there's weather triggers could be a weather type update thing, or it could be, Hey, it's getting really hot and I'm an HPAC. Uh, I'm an HVHC you a service company just drawn a blank.

It's late. It's like nine 30 or something like that. But a weather trigger. I'm HPAC. It's getting hot. You want to check your AC? It's getting cold. You want me to check your. It's somewhere in between, you should be getting maintenance. You can have all sorts of different weather triggers. Um, it's got a hail.

So here's our roofing company, ton of different ways, depending where you are in the country. You're going to know what those weather triggers are, what the things are that people are looking for, uh, along the way. All of that. You can do all of that with your influencer, pick out that influencer that gets you into the vertical that you've been trying to get into.

Again, a ton of platforms out there. If you've got any questions on this stuff, I guess I'm just trying to bring the information out to yo I'll make sure to put as much in the show notes as I can, terms of reference material, uh, site, some of the articles, studies and whatnot. Um, talked about here. If you got any questions, reach out, shoot me a, shoot me a message on the Facebooks and the YouTubes.

Wherever the heck you are consuming. This super appreciate you tuning in this is the out-of-home insider show, bringing tips, tricks, and insider insights. If you have an awesome out-of-home story, we'd love to hear it. So drop me a line. Love to have you on the show or just hear, hear your feedback on what you getting out of this a couple of years.

Put it down. A couple of you have asked, um, offline what books I'm reading. I'm always between books, but reading Ray Dalio's principles. And, uh, that is it's really been an awesome book. Ray Dalio, the founder of Bridgewater, um, investments. And it's his really life work. It's really like a, how to manual of how to run a billion dollar investment fund.