Why OOH is an exciting addition to B2B marketing

H2: Boost offline visibility with OOH

Competition for the attention of B2B decision-makers in the digital environment has become significantly more intense in recent years. This can be an opportunity for companies that consciously use other channels to gain visibility among their target group. One such opportunity is physical, real-world touchpoints. In a digital space overloaded with stimuli, offline advertising and out-of-home (OOH) can be the way forward for B2B marketing.

B2C shows the way: It doesn’t always have to be online

Run clubs, pop-up stores, community events – B2C brands have understood that real encounters are worth their weight in gold in our digitally saturated world. The recipe for success is simple: create authentic values, bring people together, and organically bring the brand to life. Offline often has an impact and radiates into the digital space. Offline is fascinating because it offers creative freedom that display ads don’t have. Offline also has a lot to offer the B2B sector.

Out-of-home: The unexpected visibility lever

While B2C brands are getting creative, B2B often still limits itself to traditional measures. Yet out-of-home (OOH) marketing is a good tool for targeted B2B communication—if done right.

Strategic placement instead of scattergun approach

Effective out-of-home advertising in B2B requires precise planning and contextual understanding – not blanket coverage. The decisive factor is where and when a message is most relevant to the desired target group. It’s not about visibility at any price, but about targeted perception at the right moment.

Well-thought-out media planning analyzes the movement patterns, times of day, professional routines, and contextual environments of the relevant decision-makers. This allows locations, time slots, and content to be precisely coordinated.

Micro-level personalization

This means that advertisers don’t just target any location—they use it strategically to connect with the right people in their professional reality. This creates greater awareness and stronger emotional engagement. This turns outdoor advertising into an intelligent catalyst in the communication mix – precise, relevant, and embedded in the customer journey instead of generic and overlooked.

Programmatic OOH for B2B

Programmatic Out-of-Home (pOOH) enables the automated, data-based display of digital outdoor advertising in real time. Advertising space is booked dynamically via digital platforms and controlled based on factors such as location, weather, or target group movement. For B2B marketers, this opens up new opportunities to place brand messages in public spaces in a flexible, targeted, and scalable manner.

For example, the American company The Trade Desk ran a digital out-of-home campaign in New York, Toronto, San Francisco, and Chicago for its media buying platform to reach agency employees on their commute. With morefire, we did something similar for DMEXCO. We programmatically booked OOH media at major train stations around the trade fair via The Trade Desk. At the K5 Future Retail Conference, several industry representatives, such as Scayle, occupied the billboard space on the way from the S-Bahn to the conference location.

OOH inevitably involves wastage. However, this is offset when high-quality target individuals are addressed.

OOH as account-based marketing

Out-of-home as an account-based marketing measure enables B2B marketers to target individual companies through physical presence in public spaces – whether via digital or traditional outdoor advertising. Strategically placed messages near company locations, on commuter routes, or in industry-specific environments create high visibility exactly where decision-makers see them.

The two SaaS companies Mutiny and Ramp are leading the way: they have made a real mark for the target account Snowflake. They turned a LinkedIn post by a decision-maker into a billboard in Times Square in New York, thereby earning Snowflake’s attention.

The path to a B2B offline strategy

The first step is a change of perspective: Where do your target customers spend their time offline? And where can you reach them with as little wastage as possible? The budget needs to be rethought. While many companies spend 90% of their marketing budget on digital, a 70/30 or even 50/50 split between digital and offline could unlock new potential. Offline marketing is often more expensive per contact, but the quality of the leads is usually significantly higher.New skills are in demand: event management, local partnerships, community building. The marketing team needs people who can not only place ads, but also orchestrate real experiences.

Measurability remains a challenge, but not an insurmountable one. QR codes, individual landing pages, promo codes, and good old-fashioned surveys help track the ROI of offline activities. And sometimes the most important KPI is not immediate conversion, but long-term customer loyalty and referrals.

Digital meets OOH: Our future is hybrid. What do you think?

B2B marketing faces the challenge of attracting genuine attention in a digitally saturated world. Online advertising is often no longer enough to achieve this. This is where OOH offers previously underestimated potential: strategically placed, contextually relevant outdoor advertising can reach key decision-makers, evoke emotions, and meaningfully complement the digital space.

For the future, the following applies: anyone who wants to increase visibility and relevance in B2B should no longer view offline marketing as an accessory, but as an integral part of the customer journey that is close to the real-life world of the target group.

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