So can you rent billboards in Atlanta, Georgia? The quickest answer to this question is yes. Atlanta, with its busy downtown and congested highways, is one of the best cities to rent a billboard. You’re guaranteed a high volume of exposure in almost any location. The trick is finding the right billboard that has high visibility in the right area to help you meet the strategic goals you’ve aligned to your outdoor advertising campaign.

There are more parts to the process of renting a billboard in Atlanta than you may think. It’s important to watch out for the pitfalls, know how to find the best billboard and be aware of the best design practices to ensure a high return on your billboard investment.

1. Location

The first step is finding the right area of town for your billboard. This can be based on a number of factors from traffic levels to the general population. Do you want to target commuters or people who simply live in the area? Narrowing down the best location means doing some research. Find out which stretch of highway has the highest commuter volume on average. If it aligns with the area of town you want to advertise in, those stretches of road will yield the highest exposure. If you’re trying to target a certain demographic, research the cities and counties immediately around the downtown area but also a few miles out. You’ll be able to find pockets of your target audience to help make advertising more impactful. 

2. Billboard selection

After you narrow down the right parts of town for your outdoor advertising campaign, the next step is to weed out available billboards to find the best one. What constitutes the best is not always the billboard that’s offered at the cheapest price. Visibility is the single most important element for a good billboard. The best deal may cost you a little more, but give your audience the best view.

Ideally, finding the billboard with the best clarity means going to visit in person, each available billboard up for rent. The reason for this is photographs of billboards can be misleading. Taken from the right angle, a billboard could look like it’s in an amazing location. When you see it in person, you may find a huge tree blocks half the billboard from being seen from the road. To avoid hiccups like this, which greatly impact exposure, you need to see a billboard with your own eyes, but that’s a time-consuming process. Better than running around town yourself, you can partner with an outdoor advertising company who knows the area well enough to properly advise you on which billboards are really the best value.

3. Proper design techniques

Finalizing your location and the specific billboard you want to rent, the next step is designing your ad. Billboards are unlike any other advertising medium. While your audience can’t click away from your ad, they also have only a limited amount of time to see it. Even if they’re stuck in traffic and not whizzing by on the highway, they can only take their eyes off the road for a short time, and you want them to absorb your message completely. 

Having realistic expectations of what can and can’t fit on a billboard, even though the space is huge, is important in order to create an effective message. Some general design guidelines include:

• Show don’t tell — use a picture to “say” all the things about your brand that you can’t write up on the billboard. If you’re a restaurant, show a tantalizing picture of your food. If you’re an exterminator, don’t be afraid to put up a picture of a big, dead bug.
• Provide a call to action — you don’t have a lot of space, but you want to encourage your audience to take the next step in reaching you. Is there an address to make an in-person visit or an email or social media account they should look at? Is your logo enough to encourage people to swing in? This element is particularly important in helping people continue to think about your brand long after they’ve past your billboard.
• Grab attention with color — high-contrast images and backgrounds composed of vibrant, attention-grabbing colors can make all the difference in holding someone’s attention long enough to really see your ad.
• Keep the copy short — the likelihood that your audience gets the message on your billboard drops significantly after you put up more than seven words. That’s really all there is time for when you’re driving past. Creating a concise message that clearly conveys your point can take a few tries, but it’s possible if you take a close look at what the goals are for your advertising piece.

These proven practices, when used together, help ensure you create an effective billboard that can produce a high return on your investment. 

How to make the process as easy as possible

You may feel overwhelmed by all the factors that go into locating and creating an effective billboard. It’s definitely a lot to do on your own, especially if you’ve never rented a billboard before. The thing is — you don’t have to do this alone. Partnering with an outdoor advertising company like Effortless Outdoor Media takes all the pressure off you. We do the billboard research for you, aligning location suggestions with your advertising goals. Then, we go visit each billboard location to make sure there’s nothing there to obstruct your message. We consult on design and offer you support through the whole process. There’s no better company for a full-service experience in outdoor advertising in Atlanta.
For the best billboard and outdoor advertisement prices, placement and service contact us now at info@effortlessoutdoormedia.com and we will respond within 24 hours or less. We are the best billboard company in Atlanta.