Supporting small businesses: Tractor offers free outdoor advertising to SMEs

Tractor Outdoor is calling on all entrepreneurs and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to give their businesses a boost this year by leveraging the visibility of out of home (OOH) and digital OOH advertising – for free!

What’s the catch? None, Tractor promises. In the media owner’s ongoing quest to support small businesses and bolster the South African economy, 2024 intakes are now open for its SME Launchpad – a platform that allows advertisers to benefit from widespread marketing exposure across Tractor’s roadside digital billboard and Digilite networks in the country’s main metros: Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban.

Explains Mali Motsumi-Garrido, sales director at Tractor Outdoor: “As one of South Africa’s largest independent outdoor media owners, we’re looking for promising companies and passionate people who we can help to take their business to the next level.”

Motsumi-Garrido explains that Tractor’s drive to support small businesses first started in 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic took hold across the world and small businesses – in particular – were hard hit. “We knew that if we wanted our business to survive and thrive, we needed our community to do the same. There was an incredible sense of standing with our fellow South African, and using our resources to help others where we could.”

Motsumi-Garrido adds that outdoor can be particularly powerful for SMEs, as it provides them with extremely high visibility, allowing them to broaden their audiences and increase brand recognition and top of mind awareness – with far more impact than social media or traditional digital media alone might do.

“DOOH complements digital marketing – research shows that consumers who are exposed to outdoor advertising are more likely to go and find the product/business online,” she says. The Sightline Global Digital Out of Home survey conducted by research specialist Kantar, which surveyed 11,000 respondents in 11 major global markets, found that two-thirds of respondents said that DOOH ads had encouraged them to search for more information online. Moreover, the 2023 Kantar Media Reactions Report revealed that out of home ads were one of the top three highest-ranking channels for capturing the attention of global consumers.

“For digital businesses such as tech and e-commerce start-ups, OOH is a great way to get people to go online and find your business. It can even reduce your digital marketing spend; when someone types your company website URL into their browser after being exposed to your business via a billboard, you don’t pay for that click conversion as you would if they had found you via a search engine.”

According to Motsumi-Garrido, applying to have your ad flighted on Tractor’s network is simple. “If you’re a small business owner, visit our website and create a profile. You’ll be directed to a dashboard where you can upload your creative according to the provided specs and select where you would like the campaign to flight.”

Once approved, the advertisement is slotted into Tractor’s flighting schedule, subject to availability. “At the end of the campaign, business owners receive a report that gives them an overview of where their creative flighted, the number of ad serves, and the campaign’s estimated impressions (or reach)."

Concludes Motsumi-Garrido: “We encourage those looking to grow their businesses this year to take advantage of our free platform, and realise the power of outdoor media in exposing you to new, broader audiences.”

Visit https://smelaunchpad.tractoroutdoor.com.