Vehicle Wraps and Mobile Billboards

How many heads can your business promotions turn? How about the number of people you drive by every day.  With a vehicle wrap, nearly every person passing you will see your advertising message. Large companies are even paying others to drive around to advertise their products.

With such an impact, it seems like advertising on a vehicle with a vinyl wrap would be more common. You have probably seen large trucks dedicated to hauling a sign around, but advertising on a personal vehicle can be just as effective and less expensive. On average, a wrap costs about $3,000.

Vehicle wraps are a distinct type of mobile billboard or mobile outdoor advertising. The billboard style is usually flat, like on the side of a commercial trailer, while a vehicle wrap can cover the entire vehicle - except for the front windows - as if it were painted. The wrap material is made out of vinyl - it is essentially a large removable decal. Of course, it should be thought of more as semi-permanent (4-5 years) than removable because it does require skill to attach it to a vehicle. Although,  a small sign that fits on the vehicle door could be removed and attached at will without too much fuss. Keep in mind that the larger it is the more attention it will get.

Mobile billboards, especially vehicle wraps, are still a unique vehicle (pun intended) to get your message out to the local community. And because it is unique, it has a higher impact than other forms of advertising. Think about how often you notice when a moving billboard drives by you, and how much more unique it is to see an entire vehicle as the message. Depending how much you drive, hundreds of thousands of people will see your message every month, and millions yearly, which averages out to a low cost per impression- especially over the course of several years. Wrapped automobiles parked in front of their businesses also attract more attention than a stationary sign alone. 

And it is not limited to cars. Large Format Graphic Wraps enable you to get your boat wrapped. You could even get your house wrapped. With Large Format Graphics, you can send your message out on just about anything that could be wrapped with colorful plastic. Pedicabs, rickshaws and bicycle taxis are also popular vehicles to employ wrap advertising.

If you are interested in this form of advertising, keep some things in mind:

Look for a company that has a successful track record, offers complete service and employs professionals in graphic design, production technicians and experts who can install the wrap on the vehicle or other target object. Finally, make sure their warranty backs up and covers any quality issues, whether it is from a faulty product or poor installation. 

Other things to consider:

Insurance: Talk to your agent to ensure it will not affect coverage.

Maintenance: keep your car in top shape and make sure it is always sparkling clean. Find out from the manufacturing company or installer how to care for the vinyl.

Legal: find out about local and state laws

Driving: All eyes are on you - play it safe.

Parking: Great in front of your business. Not so great in a strip club parking lot (unless that is your market, of course).

Don't own a business or want to promote yourself, but want to get paid to turn your car into an advertisement? Companies are willing to listen to why they should pay you to drive around and advertise for them. Many are always on the lookout for drivers and vehicles that fit their needs and meet their requirments. If you like attention, check into getting paid to have a vehicle wrap put on your daily transportation - it could even cover your monthly costs. 

Cause-related Marketing

Cause-related Marketing

This includes supporting and sponsoring educational, artistic, festival and other events and charitable causes. Your business may donate part of its sales or other resources to these efforts, which provide an opportunity for positive publicity and a chance to meet customers on an informal level.

Sophisticated and mature markets care about social and environmental problems. These consumers will react favorably to and value organizations that integrate cause-related marketing into their company culture.

Community Expectations

Community Expectations

Do good deeds and don’t be shy about professing them to the consumer. Responsible organizations are champions for social good and adhere to an ethical business philosophy.

The community expects your organization to fit into the community’s appearance and value structure. You can contribute to the community by providing a valuable product or service and enhancing the community image. For example, a good business will maintain its property, minimize resource waste, prevent pollution, stand up for the community and support positive initiatives by participating in neighborhood board meetings and other functions that shape the community’s future. When you live up to community standards, your promotional efforts will be positively noticed and effective.

Your business may also lead positive initiatives and take action to minimize the negative impacts of products and services on both the community and global environments.

Consumer Opinion

Consumer Opinion

Promotion works to change or support consumer opinions.

Consumers are emotionally selective, with consumption patterns driven by dynamic opinions. Opinions are an expression of attitudes. Attitudes are shaped by lifestyle aspects such as culture, religion, education, family and other important values.

Attitudes are generally either positive or negative regarding controversial subjects such as abortion and war. However, they are generally neutral toward most products and services. Neutral attitudes are most easily influenced and can be turned positive if your company affirms a consumer’s lifestyle values. The customer’s opinions will stay positive as long as you continue to meet their expectations. The result: loyal customers who place your business in their top ten list of preferred companies to support. You can continue to meet customers’ values by staying in contact and asking for feedback.

Maslow’s hierarchy offers points to consider in motivating attitude change. Ordered most important to least important:

Self-actualization

Esteem

Love

Safety

Physiological needs

Personal Treatment

Personal Treatment

Consumers want to be appreciated, recognized and liked—especially when it applies to quality of their lifestyle or empowers them to make a decision. For example, surveys indicate that 69% of consumers prefer highly personalized direct mail. Understanding your customers and their main objections to your message will build credibility and overcome their concerns.

Plan how the customer should be serviced, and when services should be offered and what products/services will have the most value to the customer. With every communication, your business should improve customer satisfaction, and up-sell and cross-sell when appropriate.

Customer Satisfaction

Customer Satisfaction

Bridge the gap between the sale and customer satisfaction with a follow up that may:

Thank the customer

Invite them back for special events

Let them know you care about their shopping experience

These minimum efforts produce maximum results to maintain your valuable customer base.

With more expensive items, some customers may feel guilty, unhappy or unsure about their purchase. A simple call or letter within the next few days to say something like the following will not only reduce the chances they will return the item, but may make them feel good about their decision:

“Thank you for purchasing product X. You made a great choice, did you know that it has more X features than any other brand and will continue to make your life easier for many years with its strong warranty? Did you have any questions about how to get the most benefits from this product? Thanks again, would you like us to let you know about any special offers, events or presentations that concern your product?”

Customer Problems

Customer Problems

Consumers demand accountability, along with high standards of ethical conduct from a business.

Each problem and complaint is a lump of coal waiting to be turned into a diamond. Ultimately, you can use the experience to improve your business. Most customers don’t complain—they just quietly take their business elsewhere. Complaints and criticism should be welcome because they give you a chance to resolve problems others don’t tell you about.

Kind words and unexpected gestures are gold nuggets to a customer. If there’s a problem, offer these before the customer demands them. They can help mend a poor customer experience.

Customer relationships

Customer relationships

Organizations should have a relationship with their customers beyond selling a product or service. While the price, location, and quality of products and services are important, consumers are more often looking to their retailer for brand preference. In general, customers rate and return to companies based on service.

According to Purdue University research, the percentages of customers who abandon a business do so because of:

Poor Service 68%

Product 17%

Price 10%.

A poor, unaccommodating service experience, along with rude employees and slow response times all contribute to customer loss. Of course, you don’t want this to happen in your business. It is difficult and nearly 10 times more expensive to find new customers than to keep existing customers.

Although promotional communications send a message, your relationship with your customer provides credibility to the message. With credibility, your messages are believable and more effective. The customer experience must match the brand perception. In other words: the business must live up to the branding message it communicates to customers and prospects. And when the customer walks away happy, they become a walking advertisement more valuable than money can buy.

Relationship building is especially critical in a competitive business environment. When you know your market and have a good relationship with your customers, you can recognize opportunities and mitigate problems.

"To know what people really think, pay regard to what they do, rather than what they say." 

--Rene Descartes

Promote your business

Promote your business

Your business vision should determine the ethos of all your promotional activities. Your promotional plan should anticipate opportunities and vulnerabilities in emerging trends and issues. Thus, the market will determine your course and action plan

Public relations, advertising and marketing activities are mechanisms to promote your business in an integrated marketing technique. Public relations, or the marketing of the organization, are especially important. A small business must make effective use of its limited resources and can greatly benefit from professionally designed promotions.

Advertising

Promotional outlets that rely on excellent writing include: websites, brochures, newsletters, news releases, slogans, and advertising.

Advertising promotes your business and tries to grab consumers through numerous media outlets. Commercial advertising is generally controlled by the company, paid for and often disseminated via the local media. Because most businesses use commercial advertising, consumers are now bombarded every hour of every day with advertisements—most of which are relevant to only a small portion of the receiving audience. As a result, advertising can be very effective and worthwhile, or a money pit.

You should be able to measure how many customers your advertising dollars grab, otherwise it may be just as effective (and more fun) to throw money into the street. Your advertising message can occupy several channels, including:

Newspaper/magazine

Direct mail

Billboard

Flyers

Point of Sale display

E-mail

Blog (web log)

Rss

nearly unlimited online channels

Today’s market requires an integrated communications approach that combines marketing, advertising and public relations. Every successful company will focus on building strong, lasting relationships with its customers.

Integrating multiple communications media into your business will ensure consumers can find you and learn more about you, and then offer their feedback about how you can better serve them. A successful business should use every communications effort to maintain customer satisfaction, and to gain more customers and up-sell/cross-sell when appropriate.

Get the most out of this dynamic exchange by focusing on a consistent image and synchronizing efforts. To ensure success and best serve customers, every business should have a website, brochure, newsletter, slogan and logo.

Your website, newsletter and brochure should build profile copywriting into their messages.

Branding and slogans

Promotional outlets that rely on excellent writing include: websites, brochures, newsletters, news releases, slogans, and advertising.

Branding imprints your business image in a customer’s mind. The Logo and slogan are a primary means to brand your business. They reveal your image and give your business an identity in a customer’s mind. Branding the business from a promotional view is like a tattoo - it’s visually only skin deep but symbolizes deep-seated values at the heart of your business.

A logo and slogan offer a simple visual statement that triggers previous memories and experiences of the customer. Thus, from the consumer’s viewpoint, business identity is dynamic and determined by how a company responds to the consumer’s demands and desires. In this sense, it is also an analogy for Pavlovian conditioning through association, and can result in loyal customers if you continue to serve them well.

Your unique business identity should determine the copywrite and design elements of every communication. And every communication should include your logo and slogan.

You may choose something simple or integrate many symbolic elements that represent your business. Your logo and slogan are your opportunity to be creative and get attention. Consider your business values and how you want to represent them to customers.

News Release, Press Release

Promotional outlets that rely on excellent writing include: websites, brochures, newsletters, news releases, slogans, and advertising.

The News Release is disseminated to local and online press and information outlets to inform the public of important information. It is also used as a persuasive mechanism to get positive publicity through favorable press coverage, which generally has a high promotional value because it is objective and not paid for. The most valuable news releases address community impacts.

The news release can be the basis of a newsletter and included on your business website. Writing your release in a journalistic style appreciated by reporters may increase your chances that a news release will be successful in the local media.

Every business should use the news release when appropriate to promote itself. 

Brochures

Promotional outlets that rely on excellent writing include: websites, brochures, newsletters, news releases, slogans, and advertising.

The Brochure summarizes your business and benefits to the customer. It reveals characteristic differences that set your business apart from others. Brochures should anticipate customer questions and provide answers to the most common.

The brochure is often your first communications opportunity to provide an image of your company and offer in-depth information. As a result, it should be carefully written and designed to spark interest in your business. A valuable brochure will be kept for future reference, not ironically recycled into paper that may be used for a competitor’s brochure.

Some organizations may also prepare fact sheets, Q & A sheets, and several other communications materials. Your written communication is limited only by your imagination.

Newsletters

Promotional outlets that rely on excellent writing include: websites, brochures, newsletters, news releases, slogans, and advertising.

The Newsletter is an informative communication tool. Newsletters are offered to everyone that you want to have regular contact with, including stakeholders, customers and employees. The newsletter can present company-related news in an interesting and fun manner. A professional writer can help turn dull, staff-written news copy into an interesting storyline. Some elements, such as a syndicated cartoon, may be adroitly used to give the otherwise serious newsletter a lighter side.

In addition to news, the company culture – philosophies, policies and programs – can be interpreted and communicated through the newsletter.

Newsletters can offer employees a chance to gain ownership of their position and obtain favorable recognition within and beyond the business by writing articles about what they do.

Newsletters can be printed and mailed out and/or published online as an E-zine. Most newsletters proliferate online due to lower costs and faster delivery. Email addresses collected at your business and online via your website should be added to your E-zine list after requesting customer permission.

Whether you serve 10 customers or 10 million, every business should print some form of a newsletter at least yearly. 

Websites

Promotional outlets that rely on excellent writing include: websites, brochures, newsletters, news releases, slogans, and advertising.

The Website can be the promotional focus and baseline of every business. Whether simple or detailed, a website offers the most in-depth and cost effective promotional and communications tool available.

Ultimately, the consumer controls their relationship with your business. Your website offers the consumer a convenient tool to help guide them in a positive direction. A website supports and transcends classic customer relations. It can take you closer and more intimately to your customers, allowing you to communicate more detailed information and offer real-time updates when necessary. It also gives customers an immediate opportunity to voice opinions about your business and be heard through email contact. Few consumers would bother with the effort, time and cost of sending feedback via regular mail.

Because it is on their terms and time schedule, customers are most receptive to learning about your business when they initiate contact. This type of pull marketing is about offering the consumer products/services that they want, when they want. Focus your promotional efforts on this communication stage. A website can serve multiple inquiries and is “OPEN” for business 24/7. You can present a well thought out message that doesn't change based on moods and emotions. This message is generally more effective than a phone inquiry because it stimulates the customer’s senses with graphics, sound, and text that can be scrutinized and re-read. Thus, you recognize the consumer’s individual lifestyle and allow them freedom to choose when and what aspects of your information they are interested in.

An informed consumer also saves you time and money when it comes to personal contact. With a website, you can educate consumers about how they can use your products and services for maximum benefit.

You are knowledgeable and feel passionate about your business, but time constraints often prevent consumers from the same deep and meaningful exploration of your product or service. Communicate what you know. Anything that saves a customer time will gain attention. A food business may offer recipes, ingredients, healthful qualities, history, fun facts and explain other uses. A “unique item of the month club” similar to beer and wine clubs can work with anything that has variety.

More than half of the United States population actively uses online communications to enhance their lives, and online use posts high double digit growth each year. Yet, reports cite that half or more small businesses have yet to establish websites, leaving room for those who embrace the communication medium earlier at some advantage.

College students and teenagers form brand preferences at a young age and influence adult purchase decisions, and they consider the online community an important aspect to their lifestyles. In addition, most internet users are well-educated and have higher disposable incomes.

Consider the following from a Washington Post News release:

“When looking to make time during the day for their personal needs, most working women would not stop using the Web. Seventy percent say they are unlikely to remove the Internet or Radio from their daily routine, while over half say they would remove television, newspapers or magazines. Their dedication to the Web may be linked to the value it brings to their lives. Working women say nearly every major category of transaction and research is made simpler online. For example, 87 percent agree that product research is made easier online, while 66 percent say they are better able to keep current on news events using the Web.”

Online directories and localized search engines from Google, Yahoo, MSN and others are continuing to make finding your business online easy. 

copywrite tools

Here are some important tips for writing effective communication messages for your customers, using promotional products for your business, and understanding business-customer relationships. 

To gain attention and interest, your informational and promotional messages should use effective copywrite that addresses lifestyle solutions through familiar language. Potential customers are busy and often tune out the advertising “noise” bombarding them - especially messages of little perceived value. Try thinking of the messages that you want to convey this way: They are presents that should invoke intrigue. Copywrite and visual design are the greeting card and gift wrap of your business. 

Your message tells a story about some aspect of your business. Although you may be giving your message to several thousand people, pay attention to that special touch that says "I Care!" How would you give a present to a stranger on the street?

The minimum standard in copywrite is based on grammar and vocabulary. Writing is simple, solid and succinct. However, messages are more effective when they lean toward creative writing, adding positive, unique and emotional elements. They are coloful, informative, and even entertaining. Each word, sentence and paragraph should add value to the message. 

Some copywrite tools include:

Effect                 Example

Simile             Copywrite reads like a dream

Personification Copywrite smiles

Oxymoron Copywrite silently sings

Antithesis Copywrite promises silence and delivers music

Metaphor Copywrite carves your message into the fabric of history