The New 'Mobile' Marketing Means Taking Your Brand on Tour

Generally speaking, mattress shopping isn’t a fun experience. It’s a necessity every few years that consumers grin and bear, or maybe just bear. But add a tour of a tiny house, a generous layout of local sweet treats and a “dream jar” filled with irresistible discounts? At that point, you have the seeds of a memorable experience that just happens to include mattresses. Therein lies the success of Allswell’s Tiny Home mobile marketing tour. One of the newer mattress startups, Allswell wanted to introduce people to its product in a disarming and enjoyable way. The tiny house containing their mattresses visited shopping centers, parks and other hotspots in 17 cities over 13 weeks, offering a unique way to point out the benefits of the brand without being intrusive or salesy. Mobile tours like these offer exciting opportunities for marketers to create interactive brand experience for customers. Often driven (both literally and figuratively) by branded vehicles or moving pop-up shops, mobile marketing takes your brand “on tour” to parks, malls, stadiums and anywhere else your audience lives. With interactive elements like samples or prizes, tours create a tangible shared experience between a customer and your brand. The Most Successful Brands of the Next Decade Will Sell Experiences Although mobile marketing tours aren’t exactly new, they’re needed now more than ever. Research from the NPD Group shows that buyers are eager to engage in experiential spending, with Eventbrite additionally finding that 69% of attendees favor events that offer a meaningful, transformative experience. In fact, they’re practically back to pre-pandemic levels when it comes to a preference for in-person versus virtual shopping experiences. But what really makes mobile tours so advantageous? For one, they’re a fresh strategy: Since mobile tours are an amalgamation of technology, connection, social and educational experiences, they naturally feel very personalized and exciting. As a result, they turn what would ordinarily be a buy-and-sell transaction into a chance for relationship building. Instead of just “moving billboards,” mobile tours are a time to celebrate a brand or product. They’re not simple to design, though. To make the most of a mobile tour, you have to spend time planning your approach. The easiest way to do that is by leveraging any data you can get your hands on: feedback surveys, in-person or digital reviews, GPS data, transaction data, social media interaction, user-generated content—the list goes on. Customization comes from data, and mobile tours must have a customized overtone. Yes, you’re handing out the same swag to everyone. Nevertheless, consumers’ experiences must feel unique enough to make the mobile tour stand out. Data shouldn’t just drive the initial concept of the mobile tour, either. It needs to become a major player during the tour itself, being continuously collected and analyzed. The constant influx of prospect and customer information can then be used to refine the tour so it keeps improving with every stop. When it comes to making your mobile tour a success, you’ll be happy to hear that if you front-load your time with some serious planning, once kicked off, it should ride pretty smoothly. As part of your plans, be sure to keep the following tips in mind. Prioritize your audience—and their location If you build it, they will come … well, as long as you did your homework. The first, and arguably most important, step to planning a mobile tour is identifying who your target consumer is and knowing everything about them: who they are, where they live, how they like to spend their free time, their willingness to travel—the list goes on. Use the variety of data opportunities referenced earlier to unlock key insights about your target audience and apply those learnings to find the most appropriate locations for your mobile tour. Start at the top of the funnel with countries, states and cities, then narrow the options down to the most finite of decisions for specific venues, dates and times to ensure your core customer aligns best with each specific stop on the tour. Expect the unexpected Engineering a fabulous mobile tour requires tons of logistics. Mobile tours aren’t static. They have a lot of moving parts, literally. This requires you and your team to think about technical issues like power and internet accessibility, as well as transportation factors such as vehicle maintenance and fuel. Depending upon where you plan to go, you may need to obtain a license or a permit. Plus, if you’re giving away food, you’ll certainly have to follow regulations. Proper brand or product activation planning will help to mitigate any glaring risks or snags. However, you must also put additional effort and time into trying to think of other possible situations and needs. Prepare for as many "what if" scenarios as you can. Otherwise, your mobile tour may not net you the returns you’re seeking. Don't forget to think about staff cancellations, weather conditions and other complications. Use your digital marketing channels Chances are strong that you’re already marketing across multiple channels, so use each medium to showcase your tour and lean into what each platform offers best. For social media, tap into targeted ads, influencer partnerships and engaging visual content for those who can’t make it in person. Considering that 98% of consumers create content for social media at events and experiences, make it easy to create and collect user-generated content by integrating photo opps and giveaway contests to spur social sharing and hashtags for tracking. Nanoinfluencers Give Brands a Better ROI Than Kim Kardashian Putting it all together: Save the Children's 100 Days of Reading mobile tour visited a diverse landscape of rural and urban neighborhoods in 11 major markets, showcasing partnership mash-ups with SC Johnson, T.J. Maxx, Nickelodeon, Penguin Random House and more. All parties tapped into their respective databases and communities to extend the campaign’s reach, and the mobile tour wound up giving away more than 1 million items related to reading to countless participants. With a mobile tour, you can take your message straight to the people you most want to impress. Done effectively, you’ll help them see what you’re offering in a different light. And something as basic as a mattress can turn into a magic opportunity for engagement.