Reed McGinley-Stempel is the co-founder of Stytch. Every two years, Stytch runs a pretty big outdoor advertising campaign that covers the streets of San Francisco. Division of Labor is the ad agency for startups and has had the pleasure of working with Reed and his Co-Founder Julianna Lamb and the rest of their team to create and launch amazing campaigns.

Naturally, Reed is often asked if running billboards is worth the ROI? You can read his short answer from LinkedIn.  

In a longer piece, Reed answered the question in more detail and he asked seven other Series B startups about their experience with outdoor campaigns. Each has the data to prove success and a positive ROI and their insights are invaluable. 

Two of the eight Series B startup advertising campaigns referenced in Reed’s article were created by Division of Labor. So we wanted to share a few of Reed’s perspectives.

START AT THE TOP OF THE FUNNEL

Reed starts by saying, 

“It may seem counterintuitive to advertise modern software on a medium as old-school as a bus ad. But we’ve found the real world to be one of the most effective channels to grow and establish our brand.” 

Hearing this from a startup founder who has the experience is invaluable. Startups are often looking for a single, new killer app or product to revolutionize an industry. And sometimes this thinking clouds their judgment when looking at advertising. Yes, it does seem counterintuitive to use something as basic as a billboard or the side of a bus but outdoor and awareness-building advertising at the top of the funnel makes advertising down the funnel (digital, social, PPC, performance marketing) more effective. 

Reed says it best when he states:“An OOH campaign aims to make your audience feel something now so that they remember your brand in the future.”

IS IT MEASURABLE?

If we’re going to be the ad agency for startups, we have to understand the startup culture; collaboration, proof of concept, move fast and learn. However, the proliferation of digital media can make advertisers lazy. One mistake is to only look at clicks to measure success and therefore only use media that can measure them. But broad media like outdoor, increases the digital clicks. 

Reed’s take: “During the campaign, we saw a more than 25% uplift in branded search traffic and an over 70% increase in branded search clicks globally (social media is powerful!). We also sustained a 10% to 15% uplift after the billboards came down.  Further down the funnel, more than 10% of our sales opportunities created since the campaign have explicitly cited billboards or bus ads as a factor in exploring Stytch.”

Ad agencies for startups like Division of Labor demand a measurement plan and always start with how they will all be judged. It’s important to measure awareness pre-campaign and post, track website traffic, plot conversions, and digitally market around what you’re doing in the real world so you can measure that engagement.

B2B SaaS

A lot of Division of Labor’s startup clients are B2B brands. The Bay Area has a large concentration of Saas startups. Reed points out that when you have a high concentration of ideal customer profile buyers in an area AND your average contract value is mid-five to six figures or more, then just a couple of conversions prove ROI on the campaign.

Reed spoke with Elizabeth George, VP of marketing at Statsig who said, “While we could attribute a couple enterprise contracts to the campaign, the more meaningful impact we saw was a big spike in web traffic. And after the campaign, we sustained a moderate traffic bump.”

Robert Fenstermacher, Head of Marketing at Stytch added,  “We saw a big spike in qualified product sign-ups during and after our campaign. My personal favorite said ‘CEO saw a billboard in SF and knew we were on our last nerve with Auth0.”

MAKE SURE IT’S MEMORABLE

Reed's last point is where we help the most. As the Ad Agency for Startups, Division of Labor has helped plan and create a ton of outdoor and full-funnel campaigns to build awareness, drive website traffic and increase conversions for startups and established brands. When Reed spoke with Kara Klass from Notion, she offered a great framework for how to think about what makes OOH advertising memorable: “Effective OOH is about frequency (how often it’s seen) and resonance (‘this feels relevant to me’), both of which help with recall.” In other words, you need either a lot of placements, a killer message, or a mix of both.”

We advise our startup clients that if you only have one billboard, you should intrigue someone, not sell someone. And that’s a difficult prospect because talk-value and press are amazing, but clients want and should aim for that big awareness hit AND the steady growth of traffic and conversions. When you have a larger campaign, you have an opportunity to make some messages polarizing, controversial, and talk-worthy, while others can be more focused and benefit-driven. You don’t need matching luggage.

Reed explained Stych’s thinking in more detail: 

“And so a more immersive campaign, where users might have two to seven impressions in a city on a given day, is more likely to leave a lasting impact.  In practice, what that means for us at Stytch is that we:

1. Pick ad copy that will resonate with our core demographic (software engineers)

2. Aim for high frequency within a relevant time and space (San Francisco, during peak developer conference season)

3. Buy a mix of different ads—billboards, bus ads, bus shelters, newsstands—to maximize impressions

4. Make OOH into a broader marketing moment, with amplification efforts that span physical and digital, organic and paid

HOW TO GET IT DONE

In the end, Reed talks about how to get it done.

“For out-of-home, it’s not enough to know who your ideal buyer is; you have to understand their physical habits—where they live, where they work, and how they move back and forth. At Stytch, we were fortunate to learn from the best in Kasper Koczab, who leads OOH at Brex. Here’s his advice:

1. Mix different types of ads to maximize both resonance and frequency.

“When entering a new market, we aim to have a good balance of high-profile units (usually units that people literally have to look up to see), along with a format that offers a wider footprint (street furniture or transit, for example) in order to deliver frequency. While folks might only recall the big unit on the sales call, the smaller formats that deliver frequency play a crucial role in driving recall.”

2. Every placement is different. Consider the viewer experience for each ad.

“Market rides with an ethnographic eye are central to designing a campaign that stands out. Is the highway littered with billboards one after the other to the point where no one is paying attention, not to mention remembering what they saw? Are the newsstands facing the street targeting the drivers, or are they better suited for the pedestrians who are two to four lanes on the other side of the street from the poster box? If the latter, then are my font, contrast, and graphics appropriate for easy legibility from the viewing distance?”

Kasper and Brex work with a lot of startups on their outdoor campaigns and as the ad agency for startups in San Francisco, Division of Labor has worked with Kasper on some of our favorite campaigns. There’s a lot more to making an outdoor campaign work and one key point is that if you collaborate with the right ad agency and partners, the process is much smoother.

Reed’s parting words of wisdom: “There are also lots of agencies and partners out there that can make this easier. At Stytch, we worked with Division of Labor on creative and with Kasper from Brex Rewards to help pick out our ad placements. Their expertise has helped us maximize the impact of our spend and avoid potential pitfalls.

Huge thank you to Reed and everyone at Stytch.

Here’s Reed’s full article.  It was written on the blog of Lenny Rachitsky, software engineer, and product developer, who started a newsletter and related podcast that have made him beloved online for his advice and perspective.

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The Small Agency Blog is produced by Division of Labor; the ad agency for startups, based in San Francisco, twice named Small Agency of the Year by Ad Age. The award-winning creative shop services a variety of clients and specializes in startups that have obtained Series B financing or higher. They also offer freelance services. Click here for a free consultation.