Brands looking for a way to increase brand awareness and grab consumers’ attention have many advertising media to choose from, and in recent years, the media of choice have been primarily digital. By peppering consumers with ads on their smartphones and computer screens, the thinking goes, a brand can build recognition through repetition across multiple channels.
But consumers are used to ads popping up across their digital experiences. Grabbing their attention takes a truly multi-channel approach — one that draws their attention when they’re looking off screen, too. Many brands are turning to an offline medium to build awareness: mobile advertising trucks.
Sometimes called “mobile marketing trucks,” “mobile billboard trucks” or “mobile billboards,” mobile advertising trucks are one of the most effective, lowest-cost, and most flexible advertising media available. As a means of delivering a single, impactful message, they’re hard to beat.
Studies show that 91–98% of car passengers and drivers notice mobile billboard trucks, and the recall rate for specific ads is around 80%. In the U.S., one truck can generate 30,000 to 70,000 impressions per day. In Europe, studies reveal that truck advertising boosts name recognition 15 times more than traditional advertising. And compared to other advertising media, mobile advertising trucks cost less per impression because they get so much attention. For this reason, many small and mid-sized brands are choosing trucks over traditional out-of-home (OOH) media like static, non-mobile billboards.
Could mobile advertising trucks be the right choice for your brand? Depending on your target audience and location, billboard trucks could be an excellent channel to add to your marketing mix.
What Are Mobile Advertising Trucks?
A mobile advertising truck is a truck, van, or bus displaying an ad, or several, on its sides, back, and sometimes roof. Some brands use their own delivery trucks for this purpose, but often the ads are unrelated to the truck’s contents. The trucks themselves could be delivery vans, pickups, or larger vehicles such as semi-trailers.
The ads are typically billboard-style, with eye-catching imagery and brief text. More traditional billboard-style ads may be printed on vinyl “wraps” applied directly to the vehicle or mounted on classic billboards affixed to a truck bed or side, or installed on specially designed trucks whose sole purpose is carrying billboards. Recently, digital billboard trucks have emerged as an even more eye-catching presentation, with dynamic or static graphics and messaging displayed on large LED screens. “These versatile trucks can cycle through multiple messages, images, or videos,” says billboardexpress.com. They’re also highly visible at night, and can be updated or edited on the fly.
Why Use Mobile Advertising Trucks?
Mobile advertising vehicles have some advantages over other forms of out-of-home (OOH) advertising.
Compared with traditional, smaller ads placed on taxis and buses, mobile advertising trucks offer a huge canvas — plenty of room to make a massive visual impact. “The surface of trucks is much bigger than any other form of mobile billboards,” notes moviamedia.com. Mobile advertising trucks “make a big impression, ensuring your ad dominates the visual field,” says sigsnandleds.com.
Compared with fixed-location media like billboards and bus stop signs, marketing vehicles like mobile billboard trucks offer immense flexibility. “These mobile billboards travel through high-traffic areas, allowing your brand to engage with potential customers in urban centers, events, and neighborhoods,” says allovermedia.com. This means that your ads can move with your audience throughout the day, flowing with them through traffic, turning up at events where they’ll congregate, parking outside brick-and-mortar locations or events like store openings. This increases the size and diversity of the audience reached, making mobile billboards a cost-effective way to get the most from your advertising budget.
Because digital billboards are relatively easy to change, it’s easier for brands to keep the content fresh and exciting. QR codes, website URLs, and social media handles create tie-ins to other marketing media, increasing the impact of your multichannel marketing efforts. And the creative investment in mobile billboard design can extend beyond the road. “Put something clever or eye-catching on that mobile billboard, and watch people whip out their phones to snap a picture and share it online,” says billboardexpress.com.
Mobile Advertising Trucks: Success Tips
As with any advertising medium, success depends on both planning and execution. The most brilliant mobile billboard won’t achieve maximum impact without a plan that drives decision making for design and deployment.
Establish Your Target Audience
“Isolate your target demographic,” says trueimpactmedia.com. Even with a mobile advertising medium, variables like location, timing, and messaging should be determined with the target audience in mind.
Decide on Your Message(s)
This is different from the actual design of the billboard, where the decision making is around language, color, graphics, fonts, etc. That comes later in the process. In the beginning, determine what the message or messages you’ll want to deliver, and consider how that will impact your campaign: Will you run one message over a long period of time and many locations, or do you want to communicate multiple messages you’ll change for different times or locations? These choices will affect which format (static or digital) will make the best use of your resources.
Choose Static or Digital
Static displays are traditional ads mounted on a truck. Cost-effective and relatively simple to implement, these are great for long-running campaigns with a single, clear message.
Digital displays allow for dynamic content, which opens up a lot of eye-catching creative possibilities: multiple ads played in rotation, different messaging for locations or times (of day, week, season, etc.), animation, video. If your campaign will need updates or you plan to communicate multiple messages, digital is probably the right choice.
Design for Quick, Powerful Impact
Keep the design simple and focused; your audience has only a few seconds at most to get the message. “Use large fonts and high-contrast colors to guarantee your text is readable from a distance and at high speeds,” says creativecoachsolutions.com. Choose simple images your audience will understand immediately, and “avoid cluttering the design with too much information.” If you want to tell more of your brand’s story or showcase multiple products for a “mobile showroom” effect, spread them out across multiple digital ads instead of overstuffing a single billboard with more information than your audience can process at a glance.
Drive Awareness and Engagement
Always make sure your branding is clearly visible and unambiguous, to reinforce brand recognition and build awareness. Include a call to action that’s direct and simple — remember, you have at most a few seconds to deliver your message — and include “instructions” for the call to action in the form of a QR code, website URL, hashtag, or social media handle to give your audience a way to engage.
Plan Your Routes
Where are some high-traffic locations where your audience is likely to be? And at what times of the day is that traffic the thickest? Armed with this information, choose routes that will reach the highest number of potential customers. Change routes periodically to increase reach and build awareness, and as you observe how your audience moves throughout the day.
Measure Performance
Use GPS tracking data to evaluate your routes in real time (and reroute as needed to maximize exposure). A unique QR code or hashtag can not only help measure engagement but also create opportunities for social sharing and online buzz — “synergy between digital and physical advertising” that boosts brand awareness and supports your advertising across multiple media. That’s multi-channel marketing at its best and most effective.
