How to Track Your Billboard Leads with Digital Tools

For businesses investing in billboard advertising, tracking the performance of these campaigns can feel challenging.

Unlike digital ads, which offer detailed analytics at your fingertips, billboards may seem more complicated to quantify. However, with the right digital tools, you can measure the effectiveness of your billboard campaigns and understand their impact on your business. This blog post explores the top strategies for tracking billboard leads, including leveraging call tracking, QR codes, and UTM parameters.

Why Tracking Billboard Leads is Important

Billboards are a powerful tool for building brand awareness and driving traffic, but without proper tracking, you may never know their true impact. Tracking billboard leads allows you to:

• Measure ROI: Understand how much revenue your billboard campaign generates compared to its cost.
• Optimize Campaigns: Identify what works and refine future billboard messaging, designs, and placements.
• Prove Value: Show stakeholders or clients the tangible results of their investment in billboard advertising.

You can transform a traditionally offline medium into a measurable marketing channel by incorporating digital tracking tools into your billboard strategy.

1. Call Tracking: Measure Inbound Leads from Billboard Ads

Phone calls remain one of the most direct and effective ways for customers to contact businesses after seeing an ad. To measure how many calls your billboard generates, call tracking is a must.

How Call Tracking Works

Call tracking assigns unique phone numbers to each billboard or campaign. When a customer dials that number, the call is routed to your business while the system collects valuable data, including:

• Caller location
• Call duration
• Time and date of the call
• The specific billboard or campaign that generated the call

Whistler Billboards and Call Tracking with Convirza

Whistler Billboards partners with Convirza, a leading call-tracking provider, to help businesses gain deeper insights into their billboard campaigns. Through this partnership, Whistler offers:

• Call Analytics: Understand call patterns and peak times, get call recordings, and customer demographics.
• Phone Training: Convirza’s tools help businesses enhance phone handling skills, increasing the chances of converting leads into customers.

This combination of tracking and training ensures that not only are calls coming in, but those calls also lead to meaningful business outcomes.

2. QR Codes: Bridging the Offline-Online Gap

QR codes have made a strong comeback in recent years thanks to their convenience and versatility. Adding a QR code to your billboard allows potential customers to take immediate action by scanning the code with their smartphones.

Benefits of Using QR Codes on Billboards

• Trackable Data: QR codes can be tied to specific URLs, providing insight into how many people scanned the code and visited your website.
• Ease of Use: A simple scan eliminates customers needing to remember a phone number or web address.
• Engagement Opportunities: QR codes can lead to landing pages, special offers, or contact forms tailored to your campaign.

Best Practices for QR Codes on Billboards

• Make It Big: Ensure the QR code is large enough to be scanned from a distance.
• Add Context: Include a call-to-action (CTA) like “Scan for a Discount” to entice engagement.
• Use UTM Parameters: Combine QR codes with UTM tracking to capture campaign-specific data.

3. UTM Parameters: Track Website Traffic from Billboards

If your billboard directs people to visit your website, UTM parameters are essential for tracking traffic and conversions.

What Are UTM Parameters?

UTM (Urchin Tracking Module) parameters add tags to a URL that allow you to track the source, medium, and campaign in tools like Google Analytics. For example, a URL might look like this:

Benefits of UTM Parameters

• Granular Insights: See how many people visited your site from a specific billboard or campaign.
• Performance Comparison: Compare the effectiveness of different billboard designs, locations, or messages.
• Easy Integration: UTM parameters work seamlessly with analytics platforms.

How to Implement UTM Tracking

1. Use a URL builder tool (like Google’s Campaign URL Builder) to create UTM-tagged links.
2. Add the UTM-tagged URL to your billboard’s QR code or vanity URL.
3. Monitor the data in Google Analytics to assess performance.

4. Vanity URLs: Simplify and Track Website Visits

Vanity URLs are custom, easy-to-remember web addresses that direct traffic to a specific landing page. For example, instead of using a long, complicated URL, you might display:

www.YourBusinessBillboard.com

Why Vanity URLs Work

• Memorability: A simple and catchy URL is easier for customers to remember after passing your billboard.
• Trackability: Redirect the vanity URL to a UTM-tagged landing page to track performance.

Tips for Effective Vanity URLs

• Keep it short and relevant to your campaign.
• Match the messaging of your billboard.
• Use unique URLs for each billboard or location.

5. Geotargeting with Mobile Data

Geotargeting takes tracking to the next level by using location-based data to understand how your billboard influences nearby audiences.

How It Works

• Mobile Geofencing: Create a virtual boundary around your billboard location to track mobile devices that enter the area.
• Post-Impression Engagement: Analyze whether users within the geofenced area visit your website, app, or store after exposure to your billboard.

Benefits of Geotargeting

• Detailed Audience Insights: Understand the demographics and behaviors of people exposed to your billboard.
• Real-Time Analytics: Get immediate feedback on campaign performance.
• Retargeting Opportunities: Using geotargeting data to retarget users with digital ads creates a cohesive marketing strategy.

Combining Tools for Maximum Impact

Each tool—call tracking, QR codes, UTM parameters, vanity URLs, and geotargeting—provides unique insights into your billboard campaign’s performance. However, their real power lies in combining them for a comprehensive tracking strategy.

For example:

1. Use call tracking to measure inbound leads.
2. Add QR codes to your billboard to drive traffic to a UTM-tagged landing page.
3. Incorporate geotargeting to analyze audience behaviors in the area.

By layering these tools, you can create a multi-dimensional view of your campaign’s effectiveness and make data-driven decisions for future efforts.

Wrapping Up

Tracking billboard leads is no longer a guessing game. With tools like call tracking, QR codes, and UTM parameters, businesses can measure the real impact of their outdoor advertising campaigns. In partnership with Convirza, Whistler Billboards takes this a step further by offering advanced call tracking and phone training services to ensure that your leads are measured and converted effectively.

Combining traditional billboard advertising with modern digital tools allows you to maximize your ROI, optimize your campaigns, and make informed marketing decisions. The key is to embrace technology and leverage it to bridge the gap between offline and online channels.