Marketing Option Assessment - Billboards

Billboards are an option not often used by restaurants. It may be because of the perceived high cost. A few calls to the billboard companies made me realize that you can actually get a prime location bill-board for a month for less than a lakh of rupees. Better still, if you are willing to commit immediately, the guys seem flexible with the pricing. An empty bill-broad is simply cost for the owner – so if you can commit quickly, you can get some great value.

If you want to use this medium, go for the best possible location and do it during launch or once you are ready for a large number of customers. Just find an empty billboard (typically these will be bill-boards where the owner has their name/company name and contact info displayed). Ammis Biryani in Bangalore used this medium, quite successfully, I would say.

There are 3 cost components involved with a billboard:

1) The rental - this will range from 30K to 2 lakhs for a month depending on the location of the billboard.
2) The actual material to be used on the billboard - this is the large printed material, typically referred to as a banner. Give the size of these billboards, you will probably need to hire a professional designer to create a high resolution graphic with text, and then print it in a reasonable quality material (referred to as Flex), so it looks good when mounted on the billboard. If you plan to use photos, you will need to hire a professional photographer - point & shoot/personal use digicam pics won't work for the size of a billboard. You should budget between 10K-20K for all of this.
3) Mounting & Dismounting charges - The bill board owner will mount your banner and dismount it for a fee - typically about Rs. 2,500 for each. So budget about 5K for this. You should try to negotiate and include this in the rental, or use this as a means to bring the rental amount down.