You’ve decided to feature digital ad vans in your next big campaign. Good decision: they’re high impact, lending huge amounts of credibility to your brand, and they have fantastic reach and penetration in terms of catching the eye of passing pedestrians and motorists.
These attention-grabbing vehicles are typically small-to-medium-sized vans, box trucks or flatbed trucks with a screen either sitting on top of a horizontal surface or attached to the side of the vehicle. The screens on AnyPlace Media Group’s hire fleet have a brightness of around ten times a standard modern television so they’re impossible to miss and great for hitting your target audience.
When it comes to digital ad vans, getting your planning right is crucial. Unlike online search and social media advertising, where your creative and targeting can be tweaked at the click of a mouse, mobile outdoor advertising requires lots of forethought. That’s the only way to maximise impact and ensure the best possible outcome for you as an in-house marketing team or as the agency to a high value corporate client.
With that in mind, here are our top five things to think about when planning your digital ad van campaign.
1. What are your objectives?
What do you want to achieve? From this starting point, everything else will follow. Do you want your digital ad vans to simply raise awareness of your brand? Do you have a new product to launch? Do you have a sale to promote? Are you organising an event you want people to attend?
Making these decisions right at the start of the planning process will tell you who you want to reach and lead on to decisions about where you can reach them, which in turn helps you think about the size of vehicle you can use and the kind of content that is most likely to turn their heads.
Setting clear objectives also helps with evaluation. How will you demonstrate success to your finance director or your client post-campaign? How can you show them their investment has paid dividends in terms of ticket sales, social media follows or footfall to the new retail outlet you’re promoting? Think about this at the start and you can build evaluation into your campaign through dedicated discount codes and other calls to action.
2. What is your budget (and how can you increase it)?
Next up for you to consider is how much will you have to spend? A typical digital ad van campaign will cost about £500 per day per vehicle, though AnyPlace Media Group fees begin at £440 and there are economies of scale to be had from booking multiple vehicles or multiple days.
Remember, an ad van campaign isn’t simply about hiring a vehicle. You may need to develop new content, including a high quality video, although you may have this in hand if your ad van campaign is part of a wider marketing push across several different channels. You may also need to factor in costs like ground rent for a city centre site or on other private land which is in the perfect position to reach your target audience.
It’s essential to go into the budget meeting, whether it’s with your own finance chief or your corporate client, armed with data that backs up your arguments. How many people should your campaign reach? How will you measure conversions into sales or visits to a physical location? How does it compare to other forms of advertising? How will you analyse and evidence success afterwards? Going prepared demonstrates that you’ve put thought into all of this and that you can be trusted with the budget you’ve requested – maybe even more!
3. Which locations are you targeting and how accessible are they?
Once you’ve set your goals and confirmed your budget, you’ll know who you want to target with your digital ad van campaign. This will help you to decide where you need to position your ad van and when, which in turn will help you figure out issues like the size of the space available and whether you can squeeze in our double-sided large ad van or you need to go for our single-sided compact ad van.
Roadside locations are generally easier to fit into and access. In most cases it will be a case of pulling up in a lay-by or similar position for the duration of your stay. If you’re locating your digital ad van in a pedestrian area, like a shopping centre or a business district, you may need to arrive early in the morning, both in terms of safely manoeuvring into position and also making sure you’re in place and on display before the crowds arrive.
4. What route will you follow?
The beauty of digital ad vans is that they can go to multiple locations in a single day. Start early morning next to a busy road to capture the commuter traffic, move into the city centre before the lunchtime rush and head to the bars and restaurants quarter ready for the post-work and evening diners and drinkers.
This is another area where good planning will maximise the positive outcomes of your campaign. As highly experienced providers of digital ad van hire, our team at AnyPlace Media Group are happy to support with route planning, suggesting prime spots in busy locations you might not be familiar with and making sure we make optimal use of your investment in terms of hire time and mileage.
5. What will your digital ad van content be?
Our modern ad vans feature excellent resolution LED display which make sure your creative lands with your target audience in a high impact way. Our fleet display video, animation and still graphics on beautifully sharp, stunningly bright LED displays that stand out and demand attention, even on sunny days.
The majority of advertisers in today’s market use video to attract the attention of potential customers. However, animation and still graphics still have an impact, and will help you save money on your creative.
Regardless of your content’s format, one of the best things about digital ad vans is that the content can be scheduled so that everything plays when you want it to, with different creative on display according to the time of day and location. Everything is driven by a web-based content management system that allows you to upload and pre-plan everything remotely. Remember, AnyPlace Media Group can support with this, as well as with the development of the content itself.
Conclusion
Incorporating a digital ad van into your advertising strategy can be a game-changer, offering a mobile and dynamic way to connect with your audience. They can be particularly effective for promoting time-sensitive events, product launches, or raising awareness about a brand in a specific geographic area. By carefully considering the factors above you can ensure an impactful campaign that helps drive your business forward.
If you’d like to know more about AnyPlace Media Group and our ad van hire services, please get in touch by calling 01733 308676 or emailing sales@anyplacemediagroup.co.uk. If you want to keep your campaigns on the road all year round, enquire today about buying one of our digital ad vans.
