How can food trucks help you win customers over from other businesses?

What is the sweetest dream of a marketer? For years, they have only dreamt of coming up with a way of making their target audiences choose their brands over others. While we all know that loyalty is the factor that keeps the same customer coming back for more, what we do not always understand is which factors drive loyalty? Research shows that allegiance depends a lot on customer experience. This has driven several brands towards a “show-don’t-tell” strategy. That entails exclusive experiences, product testing and live events that command the participation of the audience. During these events, the customers can decide what they like and dislike about a new business or product. There is not only the opportunity to add tangibility to the brand properties but also the chance to explore real-time feedback from the target audience.

Experiential marketing is a powerful tool that can transform the way an individual perceives a company. It can be an ice cream company, a bakery or an exclusive gourmet chocolate outlet that caters to specific audiences only. It can integrate the powers of social media, digital marketing, and live marketing to create a platform for the brand, where it can interact with its customers directly. One of the most cost-effective, yet the most rewarding experiential marketing tactics involves food trucks. These are mobile tour trucks with the complete amenities of a tiny kitchen. The inclusion of the latest kitchen appliances along with the provision of highly skilled service persons makes the dessert food trucks perfect for live event activations.

Here are a few reasons a dessert food truck can become the salvation of your bakery, ice cream, chocolate or confectionery business –

1. They are convenient

Well, these trucks aren’t just convenient for you to find and hire, they are easy for the customers to find. You need to locate where your target customers frequent and set up “shop” near there. It can be near the office locality, opposite a college campus, at the mall or right next to a Mexican food truck popular among the teens. Customers love to try new products, and over 73% of them are likely to invest in it after sampling it. As long as you can reach these target customers in their comfort zones, you should be able to lure them in with your free samples and exciting offers.

1. Provide incentives to prospective customers

Customers who like new products they try are likely to tell their friends and family about it. Word-of-mouth marketing is always a bonus of mobile tours. Over 84% of the people rely on online reviews and feedbacks as much as they rely on personal recommendations. As soon as people start talking about your new products online, you can expect to hear buzzes from new user groups. Kick-starting the process is, of course, an option for you. Launch contests, games, and quizzes alongside your engagement marketing campaigns. People love gifts, especially when they are lucrative. It is quite easy to attract new audience groups with the help of rewards than with everyday advertisements.

• Integration of SMM

Social media marketing is everywhere. People are always online on one social platform or another. Even today, Instagram and Facebook are among the two top performing applications. If you can manage to launch photo sharing contests or live video sharing trends among the participants, you will hit the visibility jackpot. You will, of course, need the aid of trending hashtags and branded filters for the process. That makes the role of metrics tracking tools and social media listening tools imperative for all engagement marketing teams. Nonetheless, it costs considerably lesser than other contemporary forms of marketing, and the use of branded hashtags eliminates the competition significantly. Moreover, it works as positive feedback for the customers, who depend on reviews for testing a brand and its products.

1. Rewarding data collection

You will always find yourself collecting more data than you ever have while you interact with the new audience. Look for innovative ways for participation data. Customers should hand over their contact information personally. It can be via voluntary registration or a part of the game setup. If you manage to match each customer’s name with their experience and purchase rate, you will be able to measure the ROI of your marketing effort. Tracking individual customer data can be challenging, but there is nothing that can replace it during a real-time event. Following the same people on social media can also give you an understanding of their response to the interaction and the success of your products.

Branding and marketing are never cheap. It commands deliberation, especially while choosing the methods of marketing. Something as personal and customizable as food truck tours opens the doors to numerous possibilities. Experiential marketing gives the brands a new way to reach and interact with their audience. That is something no other methods of marketing can offer to date.