All brands, no matter their size, desire an authentic relationship with consumers, one that fosters genuine connections, increased awareness, and positive brand promotion. Marketing strategies that are scalable, memorable, and shareable are host to impressionable results, thus creating an army of loyal brand ambassadors; and the bigger the army, the more a brand spreads across the Interwebs and beyond.
Found beneath the gargantuan umbrella of experiential marketing is a naturally influential branding vehicle: Mobile Tours.
You’ve probably heard of them. Heck, you’ve probably seen one in action at least once in your life, maybe at a city square, park, or festival. In short, mobile tours allow brands to travel from one hyper-targeted market to the next, engaging with consumers who are most receptive to the brand message, and positioning itself as an authentic, trustworthy partner.
Let’s dive a bit further into a mobile tour’s anatomy, and dissect the many reasons they’re becoming more and more effective in today’s experience-saturated landscape.
Targeted Locations
Like all experiential marketing efforts, location plays a critical role in the overall impact an event has on its audience. To cultivate meaningful relationships with their ideal demographic, brands need to go where their consumers are partaking in their passions. Music festivals, for example, are beneficial venues for brands hoping to attract millennials, as nearly 14.7 million millennials attend at least one music festival every year. Basically, music festivals are gold mines for interacting with hip intellectuals who crave authentic experiences. And when a mobile tour takes a brand to multiple festivals over the span of a few months, well, that brand is winning. That brand is winning hard.
Optimum Branding Opportunities
Vehicles are the cornerstones of any mobile tour. Obviously, a brand needs some sort of vessel to go from A to B. But fashioning the vehicle into a full-branded, customized platform becomes a strategy in and of itself. The surface of the vehicle, whether it be a van, truck, RV, bus, or whatever, is prime real estate for branding opportunities and social media callouts. That whole “don’t judge a book by its cover” thing kinda gets thrown out the window with a mobile tour. An attractive, fully-branded vehicle driving across the country will naturally turn heads and create thousands of impressions across multiple footprints.
Personalized Brand Messaging
No matter the industry, mobile tours are a great way to show off a brand’s unique personality. From the design of the vehicle to the overall atmosphere, from the consumer engagements to the carefully selected brand ambassadors, every part of a mobile tour is an opportunity to personalize a brand and create organic content for future experiential campaigns.
Product Distribution & Sampling
Product sampling is an experiential activation on its own, but when it’s married to a mobile tour, it becomes the ultimate branding experience. Handing out samples in and around a mobile tour footprint is a smart way to get products in the hands of consumers and spread brand awareness like wildfire.
Face-to-Face Interactions
At its core, a mobile tour is an opportunity to put people behind a brand and activate those people in front of hyper-targeted audiences. There’s not much more a brand can ask for in a marketing strategy if their objectives include increased awareness, lifted sales, and authentic consumer relationships. So all brands, is what we’re saying. Recent research shows that 75% of consumers only advocate brands they have meaningful, personal experiences with. An ambassador passing out free samples of _____ is more than a talking robot; they’re real people, with real knowledge of and passion for a brand’s message, and they pass that knowledge and passion on to everyone they engage with.
In summary, today’s consumers seek experience; they’re on the hunt for something share worthy, something that enhances their lives (and their social media feeds) and makes a lasting impression. A mobile tour is an all-encompassing experience, one that hits multiple goals simultaneously, engages with hyper-targeted demographics, and spreads awareness across a medley of consumer-focused venues.
Currently, we’re introducing Chicago to a new line of premium paper products – Panda bath tissues and Plenty paper towels – with a 5-week mobile tour featuring luxury bathroom facilities, sampling opportunities, games galore, and more! Like us on Facebook to receive updates from Chicago.
And if a mobile tour sounds like the right marketing match for your brand, give us a call. We’ll make it happen.