High School Posters: Out-of-Home (OOH) Ads That Work

- 3 min read -

Advertising to Gen Zs? Make Your OOH Ads Work

When drawing Gen Z students’ attention to your post-secondary institution, the non-digital world of out-of-home (OOH) ads offers a lot of opportunities to complement social media campaigns and digital ads.

When planning and executing effective OOH advertisements, you'll have to keep the marketing funnel top of mind: Awareness is the first stage in cultivating student applicants. Though it might seem obvious, your OOH ads’ success ride on first making your audience aware of your school and the academic solutions it can provide. To do this, you’ll need to place your message where students are likely to see them in everyday life – at their high schools.

For More Effective OOH Ads: Location and Communication

Focusing on high schools for your post-secondary institution’s OOH advertisements provides maximum “real world” exposure, as you can reasonably expect a large, relevant audience to notice your ads (though your content will also need to be well-made to make a lasting impression).

With an OOH ad like a wall poster, you won’t have digital tracking that can tell you exactly how many people saw it. It’s not like being able to see in real time how many people read your blog post, opened your email, or watched and commented on your micro-influencer's online video. Instead, using wall posters will be a bit like flying blind, as far as tracking effectiveness goes.

Fortunately, a high school poster campaign offers some creative problem solving to increase effectiveness. To use the flight analogy, your plane might not have all the highest-tech instruments, but your targeted approach gives you clear sightlines and smooths out the weather conditions. You’ll just need to communicate with the flight tower (the individual high schools) to know where to place your posters for maximum effect. Luckily our team at Glacier takes care of these communications for you!

What Generation Z Says

Success comes from more than just talking with high school representatives to figure out what works. To get firsthand accounts of what makes effective OOH ads, Glacier held a roundtable discussion with six Gen Z micro-influencers. These high school students said they recognized and remembered the ads they saw posted in their schools.

Of note, one student mentioned the following:

“Having the poster placed near my biology class was like having a constant source of encouragement to study and do well.”

The ad’s physical proximity to the class was a good, steady reminder of why she was working so hard to get marks: to go to university.

What’s more, these posters can build an association not only with setting a goal towards attending post-secondary school. The ads can also guide students toward your school in particular. If there are certain programs your institution is known for, be sure to highlight them in your OOH content. Your institution might not be able to target each individual student with custom content, but a focused message will be more relevant to certain audience members and better stoke their curiosity.

Showing these glimmers of what students can learn – and what careers they can find themselves in – work as gateways for personal discovery.

“When OOH is added to a media plan, it can increase reach by 18% for TV and up to 316% for mobile advertising.”  - Outdoor Advertising Association of America

Lay out the most intriguing elements of your post-secondary school to a receptive audience and drive them to learn more. They might eventually find themselves at the end of their search.

Contact Glacier so you can create the most effective out-of-home marketing campaign for your post-secondary institution. 

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