How to maximise your promotional vehicle campaign ROI

Promotional vehicle campaigns are a fantastic way to connect with customers to drive up engagement with your brand. But just how effective are they?

It’s very difficult to predict the success of any one campaign, as every campaign differs and much of your success relies on the strength of your initial ideas, but a strong focus on 6 ROI factors will help to alleviate any mission creep that might occur.

In this article you will learn how to use goals, location, design, interaction, ease of engagement and the length of your campaign to maximise your promotional vehicle campaign return on investment.

Goal

Are you prepared for a promotional vehicle campaign? What is your campaign goal?

What will the activity be, and what will you regard as a successful outcome? Is that connecting with X amount of influencers? Is it to hand out X amount of samples? 20k more subscribers? Drive social media engagement? Newsletter signups? Footfall? RFID data?

Whatever your goal is, you need to stick to it. Whatever you decide to implement in terms of the below five factors, always come back to your goal; how will changing X affect Y? Will it be a positive or negative? Is it an effective use of your time?

If you are still unsure, bounce your ideas off your promotional vehicle supplier, they will be able to offer you advice from a practical standpoint, particularly if your question relates to vehicle design.

Vehicle design

Your design is one of your best weapons in the promotional vehicle game, so make every pixel count! Formulating an on brand design takes time, so be prepared to plan accordingly; look for relevant inspirational imagery and examine previous designs sported by other companies.

Keep your goals in mind, if you are aiming to engage with customers via a bar setup for example, which vehicle could best help you do that? Yes, you will want your vehicle to be eye catching on its own merit, but think practically too.

If you are going for a barista setup for example you might need fridges, sinks, coffee machines etc. A good blend of aesthetics and functionality will balance your ability to attract and engage with customers, thus maximising their experience and maximising your potential ROI.

Make sure you consider all your vehicle options before committing to anything.

When you have a rough idea you can hash out the details with your vehicle supplier rep and let them bring your creation to life. They will wrap the vehicle in your design of choice, build out any external props and build in any campaign specific functionalities.

One of your greatest ROI assets is the wrap itself - the cheapest and most effective form of advertising. It’s 100 times cheaper than Google advertising and 1000 times cheaper than TV advertising at the CPM level.

The average cost of a vehicle wrap is in fact only about 2 pence per 1000 impressions! A wrapped vehicle on the road driving an intercity route can generate as much as 70,000 impressions a day according to ARD Ventures, a major reason why location is also important.

Location

Getting the right location is essential. The busier the location the higher the impressions and the greater your potential rate of engagement.

Finding the right location takes a bit of forethought, so think about your product, your current customer hotspots and the areas you would like to target.

It’s a good idea to get a balance of both, but sometimes knowing an area isn’t enough, you need to know where specifically will give you your best chances of engaging with the most people.

This is something you can ask your promotional vehicle supplier, they will have worked with enough clients over the years to know all the best spots and will be happy to source high footfall relevant venues frequented by your target market.

Once you have the perfect location, it’s time to plan your interaction strategy for productive engagement.

Interaction

How you interact with customers is key to the success of any campaign, with word of mouth (WOM) still the most important trust metric in business today.

This is particularly true for offline campaigns where 93% of WOM brand impressions occur. In fact offline WOM conversations are 10% more likely to be positive than negative, 10% more credible, and 7% more likely to lead to purchase intent.

This is why you need to do everything you can to maximise your ability to engage effectively with customers – you have to get those conversations going and help them spread.

Of course to start them in the first place you need the help of approachable individuals with a natural persuasive charm.

The best way you can do this is by hiring engagement professionals to help demonstrate your product and connect with customers at your chosen venues.

Hiring extra promotional staff increases your ability to interact with customers, thus raising your level of engagement and improving your campaign ROI.

Ease of engagement

Another important ROI metric, is your ease of engagement. How user friendly is your promotional vehicle design for example? Can a potential customer see and understand what your campaign is all about without ever speaking to you?

This might sound counterproductive after we just advised you to speak to as many people as possible, but the reality is you may be too busy to be able to speak to everyone, and some customers may not wish to verbally engage or have the time to.

You mitigate this scenario with a clear design and brand message that easily enables clients to understand and engage with your campaign.

For example, you might incorporate a clear call to action on the side of your promotional vehicle, with a largescale QR code. This enables phones to scan from a distance, and be redirected to your landing page of choice.

This simple passive addition to your design can massively drive up your rate of engagement and add to the success of your campaign.

Length of campaign

The length of your campaign is something to consider when talking about ROI. If you have the budget it will pay dividends down the road to not only spend more time in one location, but to visit as many relevant locations as you can.

The further you can spread the buzz, the better your chance of spreading brand awareness, something that is easier to do when you do it for a longer period of time.

A good example is recent client Hush, who found investing several weeks into their campaign really paid off.

What are my next steps?

Ok so we’ve talked a lot about your return, but just how much is your investment? If you would like to learn more about the full cost of a promotional vehicle campaign, we invite you to check out our costs and services explained article, as well as our budget calculator.

Together these will give you a fairly accurate idea of your headline expenses, allowing you to judge whether a campaign is a good investment for you.