How to organize a promotional tour : 5 key elements

“Be where our target is” is one of marketing’s golden rules and promotional tour falls into those main marketing activities to create empathy and relationships with possible customers. Promotional tour in operative marketing takes a central role as it allows a brand to move close audience, make it live an experience, make test products and create a background of trust and share of values of the same brand in order to strengthen its “ identity” to consequently improve brand’s reputation.

Looking from this point of view, a promotional tour, or roadshow, is  an itinerant event aiming to attract people’s attention towards a range of activities. Final aims are always the same and are unavoidable : to move close as many people as possible in target, collect contacts, make test products and services, create virality on social media ( which are essential for a promotional tour’s good outcome ) before, during and after the event.

How is it important to take to the streets and come in contact with one’s target? Very much today, in the ocean of commercial offers and brands, be distinguished is more and more difficult, but a promotional tour can really make the difference and intercept interest of an audience more and more got used to incentives of traditional marketing.

Which are essential elements to organize a promotional tour ?

Targets : without knowing what must be reached and how to evaluate success ( or failure) of a marketing activity it is not possible to start a promotional operation. Upstream all this it is essential to plan in detail your promotional tour : to identify messages to be communicated, to deal with authorizations for flyering or occupation of public land on all municipalities visited during tour, to identify places where our target mostly focuses and all types of approach through studied and detailed promotional and communication format. Only thanks to a specialized agency in field marketing activities it is possible to plan an efficient and, above all, evaluable  promotional tour. And, if a creative agency will prepare communication project, offline marketing agency like Hostess & Promoter will work on its fulfilment.

Team leader : A professional figure for coordination and connection of all the operation, what we call Brand Ambassador is who represents it in tour and in place under all points of view. It must have skills and marketable know- how in the activity which will be carried out during tour : training, control and coordination of staff, of  material’s visibility, of setting up and of sampling distributed / to be distributed, management of movable means and of daily allowance for team. Its task will be to report the whole event, step by step and to act as mediator between company and final customer.

Staff: All the operation’s core. Staff must be trained on all activities to be carried out, but also and above all spirit for brand and for features of products/ services advertised during tour. Considering that in activities like promotional tour, communication messages are filtered by same staff, to provide briefings and a suitable training are key factors for the initiative’ success.

Branded material : It can seem hindsight but it’s not so. To prepare communication material for a street promotional activity, but which is the most suitable one? Flyers, mobile billiboards, posters, branded vans? Before tour, we  advise to  make produce branded outfits to draw attention and give a clear and cleansed image of company in tour. No more old and formal tailleurs, but original and fashioned outfits  with visible logos. Choice on material of communication is important and we advise you to always be original to draw people’s attention and give them material they can bring to their own. To get target closely in the right way and with the right approach and with the right experience is basic in field marketing. In places and networks where a product can not be immediately purchased, sampling offers a Call to Action which helps the idea to have investments returns following activity.

StaffPromotional mechanics of brand engagement : following to a clear and detailed brand provided by market department of company or of its communication agency, Hostess & Promoter provides for teaching all the staff involved in the promotional tour activity thanks to an operational division which builds and plans tests on the base of briefings received by customer. Not only having a perfect kind of training and education of staff makes difference, but allows same existance of the activity of brief marketing. And so ? Hostess & Promoter exactly boasts more than 10 years of experience in performing below- the- line activities and in staff’s training in order to carry out a perfect execution.

At the conclusion, we can say that promotional tour is among the most efficient activities of operative marketing which allows to reach audience in a detailed way and with same format to test and study also reactions on different parts of Italy, talk with persons and make test products and services , besides loyalizing existing customers. Employ of brand ambassador, move online after having planned offline strategies and having identified targets of communication thanks to support of sector professionals are basic sides, but all these best practices must have a sole aim : make feel a brand close to persons.