Expanding Exposure
There is a group called Cruise America which has a vehicle wraps surrounding its RV fleet. Each RV has an advertisement for the home company. As the RV is rented by customers, their use of it advertises for the organization providing the service. The more customers that are acquired, the more marketing is done, increasing exposure. Since travel in a recreational vehicle like a motorhome usually involves going to exotic places outside an individual's regular realm of exposure, RV America is truly interstate, and their customers can be seen across the country.
Your business may not be one which lends itself to the same kind of national influence; but using the same logic locally has been shown to have a positive impact. Consider wraps for cars being used on the company vehicles that are employed by your organization.
Crunching The Numbers
In a given day, how much do you drive your company vehicle around? What's the monthly mileage budget for employee driving—does your company allow employees to be remunerated per mile? If you're already paying your people to drive, maximize the impact that has. But just a letterhead on the side won't be nearly so eye-catching as a professionally done wrap. In any event, if you've got four employees with a company car, who each put in about fifty miles a week, that's 800 miles a month between the lot of them. How many passerby will they pass in a mile? Ten would be a conservative estimate. So would a hundred.
In many cities, a thousand individual motorists could easily be seen in a mile; not to mention the foot traffic who could potentially notice a vehicle with a wrap that makes it stand out. So if the number 500 is used as an estimate of notices per mile, it's safe to say that number is within the realm of reason. That means 400,000 views will take place a month. You know, that's probably more than some billboards get. A billboard is static, and can't move; so it only gets views in one location. A car wrap goes where you or your employees go. If 400,000 views is a conservative estimate, then a .005 percent return should also be pretty realistic, shouldn't it? That comes out to 2,000. Of course, these things all depend on the size of the city in which you live. A town of twenty thousand with a daily influx of three thousand (from the interstate; travelers of some kind or another) will only have 110,000 people coming through in an average month.
Your advertisement will appeal to the barest minority of non-locals—but it still might bring in some business; you never know. What you can know for sure is that avoiding such an upgrade in an increasingly competitive market where more and more wraps are being employed to draw in clients is something that will very likely end up costing you money in the long run. As it stands, wraps are becoming more and more cost-effective to produce and employ. They're quickly becoming a standardized approach to large and small business models alike, because the motoring ways of America are definitely conducive to motorized advertising.
Community Outreach
If you've got drivers in a wrapped vehicle, it becomes essential that their driving habits be modified to express your company accordingly. You don't want any hot-rods frightening old ladies in the company car. But by driving carefully on the clock, this will increase the safety of your community, and your public perception within it—another consolidated positive. In the end, going the car wrap route saves money and increases visibility, ultimately proving a recommendable component of successful expansion.
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Author’s Bio
Wendy Dessler
Title: Super-Connector at OutreachMama
Wendy is a super-connector with OutreachMama and Youth Noise NJ who helps businesses find their audience online through outreach, partnerships, and networking. She frequently writes about the latest advancements in digital marketing and focuses her efforts on developing customized blogger outreach plans depending on the industry and competition. You can contact her on Twitter.
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