Podcast Interview with Axel Tillmann CEO of Alpha Consult

[00:00:00] Lisa: Alright, Laura, so I'm a marketing director and I need to prove to my boss why billboards are worth it.

[00:00:05] Laura: So I should put a trackable phone number on it or, and then anyone who calls that phone number

[00:00:10] Laura: No, no, thank you. Thank you for clarifying. 'cause I don't know, I don't know if QR codes work on billboards yet. I think it depends on the billboard. I do not think 800 numbers work at all. Who does that? Who is driving and is gonna put in a 10 digit number when they're driving?

[00:00:31] Lisa: Yeah.

[00:00:32] Laura: Nope. dude.

[00:00:33] Laura: Don't think that's the way to track it. If you're gonna track it, do it the way that everybody is trying to track it, which is through cell phones We know that this many have driven by it, and so we're gonna extrapolate that. That did that because one in five people a measurable smartphone or whatever.

[00:00:51] Lisa: Yeah, I've definitely been swayed by a billboard before what did my customer journey look like?

[00:00:57] Laura: I think it's just awareness.

[00:00:59] Laura: It's, Hey, there's a circus coming to town or, you know, it's great for a big event, or even when you're branding a hospital or something, it's, you might have the tagline there, but it's, a big brand or a big awareness campaign.

[00:01:13] Lisa: Yeah, so, actually, I just went to the Hidden Worlds exhibit at MoPOP, which I saw, I don't remember if it was a billboard or transit, but sort of similar. I was in a car driving past something, and I saw that the Leica movie studio had an exhibit at MoPOP. So as soon as I got to my destination, I Googled it.

[00:01:32] Laura: Exactly.

[00:01:33] Laura: That's it.

[00:01:34] Lisa: billboards are amazing, especially when paired with Paid

[00:01:36] Lisa: search. or, or amazing s e o, but that's harder to game.

[00:01:40] Laura: Yeah. No, totally. I mean, if you know the name, you know the name,

[00:01:44] Laura: and it's something obvious, like a movie coming out.

[00:01:46] Laura: the Barbie movie.

[00:01:49] Lisa: Did they ask billboards? I didn't see any.

[00:01:50] Laura: I guess they

[00:01:51] Lisa: I saw them all over the internet.

[00:01:53] Laura: all over the

[00:01:54] Laura: internet and I listen to N P r

[00:01:56] Laura: Boy, did they talk about that a lot?

[00:01:58] Lisa: another thing that got me off of a billboard was Rainier started making hard seltzer. And of course I prefer hard seltzer to beer, not Of course. Now, you know, anyone who knows me knows that. that was a, brand I already knew releasing a new product. So the next time I was, getting drinks for a party or something, I was like, let's look for Rainier.

[00:02:19] Lisa: Hard seltzer.

[00:02:19] Laura: You're right. I think in that case, the only way to measure it is brand lift,

[00:02:23] Laura: sales over

[00:02:25] Lisa: Mm-hmm.

[00:02:26] Laura: I mean, when we do that for example for Washington 8 1 1, when we did that, transit, we just have to include it with everything else and understand that it's not super trackable, but people are seeing it.

[00:02:37] Lisa: Yeah.

[00:02:37] Laura: It's not, does this billboard work or not billboards work If you don't try to cram a bunch of stuff on 'em,

[00:02:43] Lisa: Right.

[00:02:43] Laura: really simple should be three things, like big picture, short message, and if there's a call to action like tickets, Or dates for an event.

[00:02:53] Lisa: I don't think I would ever define a billboard as a bottom of the funnel tactic.

[00:02:57] Laura: no.

[00:02:58] Lisa: I don't expect someone to. Take action immediately after seeing a billboard, even with the MoPOP

[00:03:04] Lisa: exhibit. Yeah, I Googled it, found out that it was a thing that was happening during these months, and then I didn't buy a ticket until like eight weeks later.

[00:03:13] Laura: Mm-hmm. That's a lot of time between them for

[00:03:15] Laura: the customer journey. Yeah. Because you had a bunch more messages since then.

[00:03:19] Lisa: Mm-hmm. Well, and then I'd been to the website and so I got retargeted the hill out of.

[00:03:23] Lisa: It started me into that funnel. After I saw the billboard, I Googled it and then,

[00:03:28] Lisa: I was grabbed. They knew me, they knew I was interested after that.

[00:03:32] Laura: That's cool.

[00:03:33] Laura: Yeah. There's some good retargeting going on. that's the secret of billboards. do 'em, they're expensive. And the other thing about them is we do 'em for events, but I mean, I recommend doing it two months out. If you can, lemme start two months out for an event.

[00:03:47] Lisa: Yeah.

[00:03:47] Laura: And for constant branding, like let's say for an attorney, you can have it up all the time, just change your message regularly, but it's pricey. I mean, you can pay 20,000, $30,000 for one billboard a month

[00:03:59] Lisa: When you say change your message, do you mean actually change? The message or just what the billboard looks like so that it's eye-catching again,

[00:04:07] Lisa: I can help you with your problem. Isn't that always the message?

[00:04:10] Laura: yeah, I, suppose so. I was thinking creative, but Yeah,

[00:04:13] Laura: it depends. What are

[00:04:14] Laura: you trying to communicate? Like,Hey, we're personal injury attorneys. Oh, hey, we'll help you with immigration law. it could be, but at the end of the day, it's probably, you're right, the picture,

[00:04:22] Lisa: You just want it to be visually different enough

[00:04:24] Lisa: that someone goes, oh,

[00:04:25] Laura: Just so you know, we can talk on this a little bit. Kathy is gonna do the interview too. So we're gonna be having the marketing director on she's actually the

[00:04:33] Laura: outreach director of all outreach. So not just advertising, but PR and outreach for the Port of Seattle and s e a airport, Kathy on the show, in a week or so.

[00:04:45] Lisa: Well, it'll be fun to see what she thinks is billboards.

[00:04:47] Laura: She like wants to do 'em. And, which reminds me, I need to put that into the plan.

[00:04:50] Laura: ' cause we wanted to talk to people about, Upgrading all the things going on at the airport. Now, do we know if this works or not? Like I said, we know people are driving by it. We know it gets impressions, but I. Off an eight number unless, I'm talking to like an 80 year old for a, hearing aid or something.

[00:05:09] Lisa: Even then, I feel like. Billboards are not the right out of home for that. We've done some digital out of home in places like office buildings, retail locations, malls, and there, you know, when you're walking by, not driving by

[00:05:23] Lisa: and you can stop and you know, take a picture with your phone or something. That seems like a much more reasonable action to expect people to take.

[00:05:31] Laura: Yeah, I've said if we were talking about TV and

[00:05:33] Laura: billboards, just TV would be like the one place I could put an 800 number for older folk

[00:05:39] Laura: ' cause they think that way a little bit more.

[00:05:41] Lisa: I've seen unique URLs on TV like website.com/specific word,

[00:05:47] Lisa: kind of track it that way, but even then, I would still end up probably searching for the brand name, not going to a specific U R L.

[00:05:55] Laura: Mm-hmm. You're right. It's all about Google being there.

[00:05:58] Lisa: There has been some software pitch to us that measures website traffic compared to, I think specifically it was radio, but I'm sure they can do it for TV too. They take the actual spot times

[00:06:12] Lisa: of whatever your broadcast is, and then see if you have a lift in website traffic within however much time.

[00:06:19] Lisa: But you have to have such a huge campaign to get any statistically relevant information. Like that doesn't work for any reasonably sized.

[00:06:29] Laura: No, it's true. well, our local TV stations here do, do that.

[00:06:32] Lisa: Weren't

[00:06:33] Lisa: the minimums pretty high though?

[00:06:34] Laura: financially? No, that was for, the national stuff, which to me is more relevant,

[00:06:39] Laura: but they were doing it for a leaf gutter place or something, you know what I mean?

[00:06:43] Lisa: not, spend minimums, but impression minimums. You had to deliver a certain amount of impressions in order to actually, I. Out it.

[00:06:51] Laura: if you ran a TV app

[00:06:52] Laura: and then the TV ran and this one particular market at 10:00 PM and after 10:00 PM you got a bunch of calls for the, gutter guys or whatever.

[00:07:01] Lisa: Well

[00:07:01] Lisa: I was remembering the

[00:07:03] Laura: oh, web Vi. That's what I mean. Yeah. Web visits at that moment,

[00:07:06] Lisa: yeah, so few people are going to do it immediately after that. You need so many people to have seen it that if only 10% of them go after that

[00:07:15] Laura: Good point.

[00:07:16] Lisa: enough to see a bump.

[00:07:17] Laura: That's a good point.

[00:07:18] Lisa: That's what I remember. because if, yeah, 10 people do it, that's not enough to actually tell if they were from the commercial or not.

[00:07:24] Laura: that's a good point. I'm thinking about that from like an event standpoint.

[00:07:28] Laura: if we ran an ad for a festival and. Buy tickets now, online discount

[00:07:34] Laura: tickets online. I mean, you'd have to almost do a old fashioned call to action and be like, call In the

[00:07:40] Laura: next five. Yeah, and you'll get blah din two knives.

[00:07:44] Lisa: What I do think is cool that, we can do now more with streaming television is we can do household retargeting to a household that has gotten an ad on their streaming tv. Then send that house a banner ad afterwards.

[00:07:59] Laura: Ah,

[00:08:00] Laura: on their mobile

[00:08:01] Lisa: any device in the house? Yeah. well, any device that has been identified as being in the house, which is not a perfect science, but it's pretty dang close,

[00:08:08] Laura: No, it's pretty good. Yeah, I agree.

[00:08:10] Laura: That's

[00:08:11] Laura: what we got.

[00:08:12] Lisa: because it turns out I log into the same accounts on everything.

[00:08:16] Lisa: It's not that hard to put the pieces together.

[00:08:19] Laura: Not anymore.

[00:08:20] Laura: Now everything has an app on your phone, so

[00:08:22] Laura: it's,

[00:08:23] Lisa: But yeah, I think having a, specific streaming television retargeting tactic and then tracking, okay, how many of those impressions do you deliver? How many people click on those, I think is probably a, better way to follow up.

[00:08:36] Lisa: And I

[00:08:36] Lisa: think there are

[00:08:37] Lisa: ways to do that

[00:08:38] Lisa: with g p s and billboards as well.

[00:08:40] Laura: Yeah.

[00:08:40] Laura: we were talking about that,

[00:08:41] Laura: like how many people drive by

[00:08:43] Laura: and then you can kind of extrapolate how many actual people did

[00:08:47] Lisa: Well that, but also I think

[00:08:49] Lisa: we can identify the devices that have seen

[00:08:52] Laura: right. And retarget those devices.

[00:08:54] Laura: wasn't that called, billboard? Retargeted

[00:08:56] Lisa: Yeah, I think so.

[00:08:57] Laura: Video retargeting

[00:08:58] Lisa: Yeah,

[00:08:59] Lisa: and those I think are probably the two best ways if you have to measure beyond just reach and impressions, probably retargeting banner ads, and then

[00:09:07] Laura: Mm-hmm.

[00:09:08] Lisa: how many people respond to those.

[00:09:09] Laura: Yeah. Thank you for talking through that with me.

[00:09:12] Lisa: My pleasure.