Engaging High-Value Decision Makers with In-Office Advertising

With the right strategy, an advertiser can turn an ordinary elevator ride to the office into a promising spark of brand recognition. As workers continue to return to the office and settle into a new normal, office buildings have again become invaluable opportunities to reach elusive high-value decision makers. In the race to motivate prospective customers, messaging that integrates into the workday flow can create positive experiences and facilitate customer action.

Unlike the digital realm, offices are also a rare place to find captive viewers who have spare moments built into their day. By knowing their clientele and crafting efficient ads, brands can ultimately have an outsized impact with minimal screen time. Here’s a breakdown of how digital signage in the office setting can be an ideal way to tailor ads to the intended customers.  

Well-Placed, Personalized Ads Can Help Find the Right Targets

With the intense saturation of branding content, marketers need to find new ways to generate excitement and cement connections with customers. While more traditional marketing approaches still focus on bulk appeal, strategies that prioritize personalized ad content have a better chance of reaching their intended customer base. From a McKinsey report, 71% of consumers now expect personalized ad content and 76% are actually disappointed when the content they see is impersonal.

This highlights two main points: customers will quickly discard impersonal ads, and they are intrigued by brands that succeed in that elusive avenue of personalization. But locating the right spot for personalized ad content is also just as important as the content itself. Here are five reasons to use in-office advertising channels to help brands reach the most ideal audience.  

1) A Captive Audience is Difficult to Find

In the office setting, workers tend to travel through the same spaces over and over again. Elevators, common areas, and hallways are built-in advertising outlets in today’s world of interconnected digital screens. Although marketing emails can easily be routed to the spam folder, short video pitches in highly frequented areas naturally draw the eye and provide an opening. In the time it takes to pour a cup of coffee in a common area, the right ad content can reach a valuable target who can then follow up on their own time.

2) Reaching the Desired Customer Base

While billboards take the often-called “spray and pray” method, digital screens in an office are a much more refined approach built for the modern consumer. Brand marketers utilizing digital signage in offices are able to tailor ad content to the expected viewers in ways that are often unavailable via other methods.

Busy professionals can also be one of the most difficult-to-reach demographics because of their limited availability during traditional business hours. With the right messaging and signage placement, however, brands have rare opportunities to appeal to customers with the income to support product purchasing. Because advertisers now have a general sense of who will be seeing the content, personalization becomes much more feasible than in most other scenarios.

3) Offices are Staging a Comeback

As the rate of permanent remote workers continues to decline, offices are reemerging as critical meeting grounds for a complex workforce. Although hybrid work is here to stay, we’re seeing that employers are having success insisting on at least some in-office work. Overall, about three in four workers are expected to regularly visit their company’s office moving forward, a trend that illuminates a new normal filled with marketing opportunities.

We’re also seeing a decrease in the number of permanent work-from-home employees. Even if we never go back to the type of work model we had in 2019, we’re seeing that the office setting will remain an integral part of life for the foreseeable future.  

4) The In-Office Approach is Ideal for Omnichannel Marketing

With an overwhelming majority of workers back in the office at least part-time, marketers need to take advantage of the ongoing trend toward diversification. Because potential customers regularly tap different marketing channels when making buying decisions, playing into that trend can mean the difference between success and failure for advertisers.

Related: Guide to Digital Signage: Your Questions Answered

As workers continue to balance the digital world with the physical one, common-area screens are excellent arenas for reinforcing brand recognition. Customers utilizing more than one channel are not only more reliable but more valuable in the long term. A Harvard Business Review study showed that omnichannel shoppers spent more and were more likely to return for repeat shopping down the road.

5) Integrating Ad Content with Desirable Social Content is a Win

With the right digital marketing media partner, ads can be set alongside value-rich content and become an important part of the audience’s routine in the available, in-between moments of their day. Individuals become accustomed to looking to these displays to check the news, information about their commute, sports scores, and much more. As they engage with the display content, they also engage with the ad content – when both are curated to match the demographic and preferences of the viewers. 

Quality Ad Content is Now More Important Than Overall Reach

There is a reason why marketers are moving away from the numbers game. While keeping a high number of eyeballs on ad content remains important, the quality of the content has proven to be the linchpin of a brand’s value. In many cases, projecting low-quality material to large audiences can even have an inverse effect.

Some of the ways poor ad content negatively reflects on the company include:

• Making potential customers feel disconnected from the brand
• Creating similar customer reactions as junk mail
• Losing opportunities to create a sense of uniqueness in potential customers
• Overexposure

When ad content is bland, irrelevant, or untimely, viewers tend to either immediately tune it out or begin to develop a negative correlation with the brand. Meanwhile, an ecosystem where engaging ads play alongside quality supplemental content (e.g., uplifting news briefs and commute info) can create a lasting and positive impression. In a world where consumers are constantly inundated with marketing pitches, broad and impersonal ad content is an expensive way to miss the mark.

What High-Value Decision-Makers Expect from Ad Content

While the wrong type of ad content is easily dismissed, marketers can create a lasting impression if they understand their likely viewers. Instead of a forgettable, overly generic pitch, potential customers can walk away thinking about the quality or importance of the message – providing an incentive to turn interest into action. Many successful approaches focus on the following:

Relevancy to a Customer is Paramount

The right message in the right place can demonstrate that a company understands a viewer’s motivations. Quality in-office ads get to the point and prioritize relevancy to the viewers’ lives. If a message is perceived as directly useful, a viewer will feel the personal connection and will be more likely to mention it to someone else as well. In an office, word-of-mouth can be a terrific way to extend the footprint of advertising content.  

Achieving this takes effort but can be relatively straightforward. One of the main ways to craft a relevant message is to keep as up-to-date as possible with the target audience. Creating advertisements that pass the relevancy test requires vigilance and adaptability, which can be tools for holding a viewer’s attention over the longer term.

Placing Ads Within the Right Overall Display Media System

The best ad content can easily be degraded if the surrounding content or platform doesn’t project the same quality. Customers typically want to see creativity and uplifting ads in order to consider taking action. Even if an ad successfully reaches a decision-maker, it can be quickly forgotten if other content on the device is overly negative.

This is why DOOH marketing often balances brand advertisements with succinct news briefs and practical life tips. Because it’s easier than ever to find negative news, potential customers gravitate toward digital screens that project positive and/or inspiring news stories. Researchers have even found evidence that optimistic news can help counter the effects of bad news and leave a lasting impression.

Advertisements that are paired with upbeat, entertaining content can leave a viewer with a positive impression that can enhance the connection to a brand. While office workers deal with the stresses of the job and surrounding life, in-office advertisements paired with great content – when done effectively – can be an oasis of positivity.

Maximize the Advantage of the Mobile Viewer

Although a prospective customer on social media can be difficult to activate, viewers can find DOOH advertising easier to engage with. Walls and elevators become ideal places to organically work in advertisements that fit the regular activity of the office space. While someone using their own devices might quickly move on from ad content, a viewer who resonates with an in-office digital message can be motivated to follow up as they return to their desk.

The Continued Growth of DOOH Advertising

DOOH advertising has made an enormous impact in a short period of time. Although this trend is already highly visible, industry projections paint an even rosier picture for digital advertisers moving forward. A $7.3 billion industry in the U.S. in 2021, DOOH is expected to grow to $13 billion by 2028 as traditional billboards and older tactics fade in relevancy.

This means that DOOH is sure to become a fixture in many offices around the world, as advertisers look to connect elusive customer bases to personalized ad content. Because in-office DOOH messaging works well alongside other ad channels, offices are already in a position to become critical advertisement battlegrounds. As we move further into a new normal of work life, with most employees working both at home and in an office, multi-channel approaches catered to the customer have enormous potential.

Simple and Effective In-Office Ads Can Cut Through the Noise

While many companies continue to push their brands with broad approaches for generic audiences, targeted ads aimed at captive viewers can offer a valuable boost of engagement. Appealing to workers within the natural movements of an office can generate brand appeal that can be difficult to create in other settings. As customers expect higher-quality ad content that seamlessly fits their lifestyles, the rejuvenated office setting is ideal for maintaining a customer foothold.For more on how to reach the right audience with high-quality displays in key office settings, contact Captivate to get started.