Sometimes, you need to go big to get results in marketing. Whether you’re a new publisher or looking to grow your reach to a broader audience, utilizing above the line (ATL) marketing can help you make a significant business impact.
While below the line (BTL) marketing is typically more personalized, ATL marketing allows you to have mass appeal, especially if you face general targeting challenges when executing campaigns. However, to be successful, your ATL marketing needs to be unique, engaging, and memorable to attract the masses and intercept their customer journey.
Ready to discover the top ATL marketing ideas to help you grow? Let’s dive in!
Quick key takeaways:
- ATL marketing helps you reach a large, general audience to improve brand awareness
- Ensure you establish tracking within the ATL campaigns to monitor budget and ROI
- Common ATL channels include tv, radio, print, and out of home advertising
What is ATL Marketing?
ATL marketing strategies focus on direct communication towards a large mass audience. Typically untargeted and more general, ATL marketing helps businesses build brand credibility and awareness by informing potential customers about your products or services. For example, many brands utilize national TV commercials to target people of all demographics instead of only prospective customers with lower-funnel activities.
A few benefits of ATL marketing include:
- Reaching a wide audience to influence online or in-person conversions
- Building your brand recognition beyond your industry
- Getting large masses of attention through impactful creative
With targeted digital advertising predicted to reach $460 billion by 2024, BTL marketing includes personalized marketing strategies through social media, events, email, and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising channels. Compared to ATL, BTL marketing helps you establish a deeper relationship with your targets by building an emotional connection throughout their entire customer journey.
The Challenges of ATL Marketing
While ATL marketing helps you build brand awareness, there are a few challenges that you’ll need to overcome before executing your strategy, such as:
- Budget: Since ATL is typically more expensive than BTL and has limited testing capabilities, you need to choose your channels carefully, so you don’t run up your budget. TV advertising roughly costs $5.2 million for a 30-second national spot!
- Replaceable: As buyer preferences change, it’s essential to stay abreast of customer trends to reach the most people. For example, online magazines have now overtaken mediums like traditional newspapers.
- Return on investment: Historically, ATL is difficult to measure overall effectiveness, and you need to have a higher ad frequency to promote brand recall. Consider adding tracking mechanisms to measure elements like reach and rating points wherever you can to prove ROI.
4 ATL Marketing Ideas to Reach Your Target Audience
If you’re looking to build brand recognition on a national or global level, ATL marketing can help you reach a larger audience compared to BTL channels. To get started, here are the top four ATL marketing ideas to boost your awareness:
Television
With more streaming service providers available to consumers than ever before, TV advertising presents more opportunities for brands to reach mass audiences. While 55% of viewers admit they ignore ads due to multitasking, most people think the amount of ads is reasonable and not disruptive.
Since TV advertising is one of the most expensive mediums, it’s essential not to cut corners and create a quality commercial that captures the audience’s attention. Here are a few best practices to keep in mind:
- Represent your brand with verbal and non-verbal cues with elements like product placements, logos, and more
- Develop a storyline that multiple audiences can connect to and doesn’t simply ‘sell’ your brand
- Create a signature theme or character to use in other mediums or future commercials to increase longevity
Radio
Coupled with popular streaming services like Spotify and Pandora, radio advertising allows you to reach 92% of adults – more than any other platform. For publishers looking to reach a broad audience, you can utilize radio to target people throughout their entire day, whether commuting home from work or winding down with a podcast.
While you will still reach a large general audience, it’s still important to place your ad on radio stations or streaming services that target your ideal customer demographics. For example, if your customers are typically over 50 years old, you don’t want to play your ad on a streaming service that plays the top hits.
Print Media
The truth is that print advertising is far from dead and can positively impact your brand awareness, especially when paired with other channels. Additionally, print media such as magazines, newspapers, or directories often give you access to both physical and digital features to maximize your results.
A few advantages of print media includes:
- Relationship and reputation building
- Cost-effectiveness
- High engagement
- Production flexibility
- Longevity and strong brand recall
When developing your print ads, it’s essential to consider the number of ‘touches’ it may take for a ready to take action. To improve the customer journey, you may need to increase the frequency over time and combine it with other ATL or BTL tactics.
Out of Home Advertising
Instead of channels like PPC or social media, out-of-home advertising (OOH) is a type of marketing that reaches people outside their homes. Used as a great alternative to typical digital marketing tactics, OOH not only allows you to develop creative campaigns that evoke emotion, but you can also use it for location-driven strategies and purchase in real-time as you scale.
Examples of OOH include:
- Billboards
- Bulletins
- Wall murals or wallscapes
- Posters
- Busses
- Mobile trucks
- Subway or metro systems
- Airports
- Elevators
- Shopping malls
- Taxis
- Street furniture like benches, trash bins, and more
Engage with More Prospects with ATL Marketing
If you need to reach a large number of people and drive brand awareness, ATL marketing can help you expand recognition and improve your recall. However, it’s crucial to weigh your company’s objectives with any marketing strategy to determine your tactics, continue to test after implementation, and consider the customer experience. To be successful, you may want to consider using a healthy mix of both BTL and ATL marketing to improve conversions over time.
Ready to reach a larger audience with ATL marketing? Contact Boom Communications Group for more information.