In July 2022, we decided to take up another new brand-building and marketing approach. This post will outline everything we learned at Uvest about billboard advertising in Nigeria.

We set up billboards in a couple of strategic spots in Ibadan, West Africa’s largest city and this short post also shares a detailed pricing guide for all steps of the process.

Why did we decide to put billboards up?

This would be the first time Uvest would be putting up billboards in any part of the country and it was a particularly new direction for the brand.

What was the trigger for this decision?

Uvest Metro — our newest and biggest semi-residential project in Moniya town, Ibadan. We launched this project in June 2022 in a bid to take early advantage of the investment opportunities that the ongoing government infrastructure projects in Moniya present.

Promoting Uvest Metro has proved to be more tedious than our other projects especially in Lagos due to one major reason — the smaller agency network.

Our realtors’ network (The Uvest Tribe as we like to call it) has the strongest presence in Lagos, where we have successfully commissioned 7 residential projects. Getting the word out on Uvest Metro has proven to require more than the usual effort.

We decided to consolidate our current digital marketing efforts with something new — an out-of-home advertising campaign — with three goals:

• Consolidate Brand Authority

• Build Brand Awareness in Ibadan

• Garner sales prospects for Uvest Metro

Uvest Metro is one of our most important projects backed by a huge vision backing The goal for this project is to build a Tech Valley in Oyo state and contribute significantly to the growth of the tech ecosystem in the state.

Choosing Billboard Locations

We had a select audience for the billboards put up. Uvest Metro had a vision behind it — that factor alone made the target audience transcend beyond purchasing power.

We had prior identified exactly who we wanted to purchase and how they fit into the vision for Uvest Metro, then further researched locations that housed our target audience and the routes they frequented.

After doing this, we were quite sure of where and where not we wanted our billboards to be placed.

Selecting An Ad Agency

Choosing the ad agency to use was not too much of a hassle. All we had to do was check the agencies that owned billboard slots across the routes we chose.

Luckily, we found vacant billboards along these routes that were a fit for displaying our ads. We reached out to the agency in charge via their contact details displayed, had conversations, and got briefed on the process.

To set things in motion, contracts and terms were exchanged and signed.

We also spoke with a friend, Olaide Ademosu of Four Pulley Media who offered advisory and insightful help.

Cost of Billboards

The total cost of vetting, printing, and installing three billboards was 284,200 only. Here’s a breakdown of the costs::

Billboard Slots — This is a monthly charge remitted to the advertising agency we rented slots from. The slots were priced at N35,000/month for each billboard bringing the total cost for 3 billboards to N105,000.

APCON vetting — APCON is a regulatory body for advertising in Nigeria. It’s compulsory to pay them vetting fees to get your designs approved for public viewing before the ad agency can print and mount them. This cost 30,400 for each design bringing the total cost to 91,200 for three designs. Bear in mind that this is a one-time fee. (More on APCON and their procedures in a later article.)

Printing — Printing the banners (20 feet by 10 feet) cost N26,000. This brings the total cost for all three banners to N78,000.

Mounting — This is the fee for installing the billboards at the locations. This cost N10,000 each, hence N30,000 for the three billboards.

Note: All these fees were one-time except the fee for the Billboard slots which is a monthly subscription. The billboards have performed well so far so we will be paying for 3 of 6 months more in the next few days. We also have plans to erect 2 more gantry billboards in more strategic areas.

Designing The Billboards

Designing the billboards wasn’t exactly the easiest task. Loads of deliberations and iterations went into it before the final product was approved.

As a brand playing in the real estate space where everyone is screaming “buy my land/house” at people, we wanted something a little different from the status quo.

• Educative
• Humorous
• Relatable
• Triggering

These were the 4 things we identified as pillars of the content strategy we wanted to implement and we got to work. By the time we were done writing content ideas, we had almost 70 different copies to choose from.

The best ones were provoking and as much as we’d have loved to trigger ‘vawulence’, we decided to slow down a little with our first set of billboards.

One other interesting decision we made was to leave stock images out of our design completely. We wanted to pass the message across as simply and concisely as possible — short, catchy, and thought-provoking.

Here are a few design ideas we played with as we made modifications:

After a company-wide vote, we eventually settled on the first design. We then replicated it across 2 other copies as shown in the mockups below:

APCON Billboards Vetting

APCON is simply an acronym for the Advertising Practitioners Council of Nigeria. They’re a body that communicates its vision as — “to promote responsible and ethical advertising practice, acting as the conscience of the society and watchdog for the consumers, while managing the needs and interests of the stakeholders in Nigeria’s advertising industry.”

They review every OOH ad before allowing brands to publish and promote them. We were oblivious to this fact until our agency notified us.

Also, note that: Only ad agencies are allowed to submit designs to APCON for vetting so we had our agency do that for us.

We however had to pay N30,400 for each design we submitted. We submitted three designs so we paid N91,200 in total (a one-time fee).

Printing & Mounting the Billboards

The billboards were 20 feet wide by 10 feet long each. Printing this would have been a hassle for us but our OOHA agency took the weight off our shoulders.

All we had to do was pay the printing fees which cost N26,000 for each billboard. We only had to ensure the quality of the printing materials to guarantee longevity.

After printing, we also paid for the billboard mounting which cost N10,000 for the three billboards.

The total cost for this phase cost N36,000, (with minimal stress).

Here are real pictures of the boards after mounting them:

Conclusion

We thoroughly enjoyed the process of designing and mounting our first billboards in Ibadan and we hope this quick run-through comes in handy for you.

We’re open to questions and comments, feel free to reach out to us via support@uvest.homes if you have questions.

Also check out Uvest Metro: our latest project in Moniya, Ibadan where we’re building a semi-commercial gated estate for the tech ecosystem.