Software on a billboard; maybe not so crazy

Traditionally, software companies have refrained from conventional offline advertising strategies, such as billboards and bus stop ads. They have instead focused on digital marketing with online campaigns.

There is a logical connection between selling a digital product in the digital ecosystem. You want to prompt immediate action, typically by directing potential customers to visit a website with just a click.

However, due to the increased saturation of companies offering similar products (especially in areas like CRMs, data warehousing, and marketing tools), the competition has shifted from immediate action to building attention. The strategy is to persistently engage prospects until they respond, with a brief website visit being considered a win.

This traditional marketing approach is referred to as “Top of Mind”. The idea is to create brand recall, so when consumers consider a product in your industry, your brand comes to mind as an option. This approach becomes especially powerful when taking the second place with a much lower-cost alternative.

An exemplary company that has successfully employed this strategy is Canva. While Canva brands itself as a design tool, its strength lies in providing a huge library of templates, so you can quickly create assets like presentations and social media posts.

Ten years ago, online templates were of low quality and difficult to find and download.

I had to search for individual authors who offered their Photoshop files for free. And what looked good might be a nightmare to use, because everyone had their own different ways of formatting files.

While tools like Photoshop were first for the advanced user, a new audience eventually emerged, primarily using its basic features such as text, crop, content-aware replace, and simple image adjustments.

These individuals (like myself) weren’t professional designers or creatives but products of the digital culture, where they could create impressive content by combining existing elements (akin to copy and paste programmers). This audience became the main target market for template suppliers.

By branding itself as a tool for creatives, Canva effectively competes with companies like Adobe. Sacrificing advanced features for speed and ease of use worked; the amount of time it takes to go from no skill to a good design is minutes in Canva as opposed to hours and hours of training in Adobe.

Now with AI generation expanding into graphic design (ie. custom templates on-demand), it seems that Adobe will permanently lose a big customer segment.

Canva initially piqued my interest when I learned about their offline advertising efforts; billboards in the Philippines (2019) and Australia (2021). In Western Europe, I can’t recall ever seeing a billboard advertisement for software that wasn’t fintech. San Francisco seems to be the only place with a regular occurrence of them.

Though I can’t assess the effectiveness of Canva’s offline advertising without access to data, I can attest to its impact on brand recognition and recall. Canva’s advertisements use vibrant colors and focus on a single message:

"What will you design?"

This resonates with the vast market of people who find designing appealing but see the barriers of skill and tools as obstacles.

Just as Photoshop influenced an entire generation, Canva is poised to do the same for another.

By introducing Canva in physical form, they changed the way people perceive design from being intimidating and technical to being accessible for everyone.

In the customer's mind, the company wouldn't advertise offline to the general public if it weren't so.

I’m eager to witness more experiments from software companies with offline advertising. When customer acquisition costs can soar to tens of thousands of dollars for enterprise contracts, traditional advertising methods may prove an edge.

The most significant customer acquisition cost for any company is getting their most desired customers’ foot in the door.

Placing a billboard along an executive’s daily route to the supermarket could capture their attention. But would it be too creepy?

"Sam, I'm spending $200,000 on a marketing team. Can you please just call me?"