Mobile Billboard Truck: Here Is Why You Should Avoid It

Instead of Mobile Billboard Truck, Marketers have been using In-Hand Advertising with Augmented Reality. Contact us to find out more.

A survey conducted by the platform Numerator indicated many industries are shifting their marketing tactics. Mobile billboards trucks start becoming obsolete and less popular due to the lack of targeting, lack of control of the reputation of the drivers and inability to prove how many people are visualizing the ads. Emerging tactics like Advertising with Augmented Reality surged to replace the old school tactics.

The first part of this article describes the emerging advertising tactics. The second part elaborates on the pitfalls to use mobile billboard truck

Advertise with Augmented Reality

After the advent of this immersive technology, businesses have discovered innovative ways to approach clients. Now brands are introducing their business statements using AR advertisements in print media. Augmented reality is the integration of digital elements into our real-world environments. In other words, it is a combination of both real and virtual worlds.

This new wave of AR technology is being used for transforming the advertising industry. In a survey featured on Art Labs done by Snapchat, 73% of people can easily understand AR advertisements whenever and wherever they see them. The same survey says that 75% of the global population will be frequently using AR by 2025.

With the help of AR, marketers can provide informative, engaging, interactive, and personalized content to shoppers to attain better sales and greater customer loyalty. All thanks to scene tracking AR technology and in-store navigation that turn your store into a place where customers want to come over and over.

Reach the audience with an unconventional advertising vehicle

Marketers can use In-Hand Advertising vehicles to place Augmented Reality Ads on QR Code and place them on shopping bags, hotel key cards, pizza boxes, coffee cups and bar coasters.  Catching up the customers with augmented reality QR codes is the new mantra of smart marketers. Little treats like a gift coupon upon QR code scan and featuring personalized offers through QR codes are just the perfect way of connecting with people on a win-win level.

Memorable advertising experience

Good marketing is built out of great consumer experience, and a remarkable consumer experience requires brilliant advertisement. Marketers can put augmented reality QR codes to expand their art beyond boundaries. A neuroscience study conducted by Neuro-Insight in partnership with Mindshare UK and Zappar that AR drives high levels of visual attention in the brain (almost double that of non-AR tasks). What is stored, or encoded into memory is 70% higher for AR experiences

AR provides a unique opportunity to connect with customers in ways that traditional print, radio, and television cannot. Augmented Reality enables advertisers to engage with consumers at a far deeper level than ever before. Instead of passively viewing a static ad or watching a video, people can now interact directly with brands.

One of these concept uses pizza boxes as advertising space. Think of this as small moving billboard that gets delivered at the consumer’s home. Studies demonstrated that this type of ads can evoke an 80% recall rate (8 out of 10 households individuals remember to see an interactive ad on the pizza box) with an average ROI of 150%. This means, for every 1 dollar the advertiser invested in a pizza box advertising campaign, they received at least additional 2.5 dollars of sales. For more details see the article Estimating the ROI of Pizza Box Marketing.

AR and Door Hangers

 This concept guarantees definite impressions of your brands on prospective customers because our approach delivers the brand directly into the hands of your target audience at their homes.

Your advertisement is printed on door hangers and distributed to the households in the zip code or areas that were selected according to the marketing campaign. Adzze technology solutions are used to target demographic profiles such as income, age, ethnicity, marital status, so that we hit your exact target-market ensuring the door hanger delivery. In addition, the segmentation method enables to evaluate annual spend criteria so that you have a better insight into the spend behavior of the target audience.  The consumers will be positively surprised if the door hanger brings them value as coupons or discounts. The advertiser must partner with the capable door hanger distributors to ensure to track the door hanger delivery to the targeted addresses. Typically, the return of the  Door Hanger Advertising investment is 3x, this means for every $1 invested, the advertiser receives $3 back.

Why should you avoid a mobile billboard truck?

The cost of using a mobile billboard truck for ad campaigns is high, while there is no guarantee of achieving the expected return on investments (ROI). It is because such ad campaigns do not enable businesses to pinpoint the exact demographics of the consumers that they would like to reach. As such, the level of brand engagement and direct action that results from the campaign is very low.

Effective media should enable a clear way to track number of impressions.  Traditional OOH advertising as billboards display lack of targeting and tracking possibilities. The fact that many highway drivers cannot focus on the ad message generate a  low engagement with the target audience.  The costs of mobile digital billboards depend on format, circulation, demographics, and impressions. Traditional billboards have high costs, low ROI cost varies $14,000-20,000/month in larger markets.  Some cities imposed a ban of billboards due to visual pollution. Unconventional agencies provide alternatives to the targeting issues with approaches as mobile billboards, digital OOH, ads on trucks and other ads in places people don’t expect to see as flags, backpacks, inflatable objects, gas pump and balloons.

Advertising trucks and the pitfalls

Advertisers have been using alternative to static billboards as vehicle advertising or digital mobile OOH. However, the use of advertising trucks during the ad campaign has risks as impact on reputation. When the truck carries the brand on the road, it plays the role of a brand ambassador. Any potential incident might risk other people on the road. If the truck driver misbehaves, the brand might suffer in terms of reputation. It is because the audience will associate bad behavior with the business. In addition, advertising trucks have several pitfalls as low return on the ad investment, difficult to track the outcomes and low brand recall. Advertising on trucks cannot pinpoint the exact audience that a business would like to reach. As such, the ad campaign might generate thousands of impressions per day, but only a handful of them will lead to direct action. Find out more about the different types of digital mobile billboard advertisements available today.

Using a mobile billboard truck enables your ad campaign to reach deeper into the target audience. If you decide to use delivery trucks, they can allow you to reach customers at the point of purchase. As such, you have a unique opportunity to drive brand engagement that could result in direct action.

Nevertheless, the ad campaign faces a risk that many businesses little anticipate. Whenever the truck emblazoned with your brand is on the road, it plays the role of a brand ambassador. Therefore, all that happens during the ad campaign is construed as representing your business. It includes nasty incidences that might irk other people on the road. If the truck driver misbehaves, your business will suffer in terms of reputation. It is because the audience will associate bad behavior with the business.

Also, the mobile digital billboard ad campaign projects a bad image if the billboard is old and tattered. A dilapidated billboard or a cracked digital board speaks to the business’ inattention to small things that matter. Customers use such incidences to form a solid opinion about the business, which affects the likelihood of them engaging with the brand. Use our tips to maximize your success when creating your first digital mobile billboard advertisement.