Do Offline Ads Work?

0:00All 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. And this tweet here says, I'm going to share it on my screen actually. So 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.

0:45I'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 acquired 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. Yeah. I mean, look, 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.

1:22Actually, when I went to Turkey recently, Neil, there's a crypto exchange that has all the gates branded. Literally, it's inscribed into the gate and like they took over everything, right? So yeah, I think it's just what I say. I did start look, I actually, I did go to their website afterwards and I started looking them up. So I actually took an action there. Yeah, they're effective. You know, just because offline advertising isn't digital anymore, some of it's starting to emerge 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.

1:59But 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 want to call 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 and 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?

2:35So there's a lot of variables that can 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 one-on-one at the end of the day is just finding where the attention is and where your audience is hanging out. And so, So for example, Microsoft Clarity Dreamhost, they sponsor this podcast and we're very grateful for them, Shopify too. And while they want to reach Clarity, for example, it's a heat mapping product, right?

3:10And it helps you increase conversion rates. So marketers probably want to use it. And so it would make sense to target a marketing school podcast. Now, let's say I'm like an entertainment brand and maybe I want to target a bunch of music festival goers. Maybe I might run one of those drone ads, right? You have the drones moving around and stuff at a music festival. So it just depends. Why is it when you're driving on the freeway, you see a lot of these personal injury lawyers and all this different stuff? Or like, go buy weed from this store over here. It's like because people are stuck in traffic and then you're getting a lot of that real estate.

3:46So it just depends. And to Neil's point, 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 the ex-eBay CEO? Was it Meg Whitman? That was one of the old ex-eBay. 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. I think it was like one of the ticket companies. I forgot exactly which one it was. Really effective strategy.

4:22They 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, 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. The IT marketers are, 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, 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.

4:59And 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.

5:41But 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 women'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 striped 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. Man, that was a complicated analogy, but it works.

6:16All right. That is it for today. Please don't forget to rate, review, subscribe, five stars, and we'll see you tomorrow.