This past summer in partnership with Slow Roll Buffalo, GoBike Buffalo, and Reddy Bikeshare, the Shared Mobility Team launched a multi-faceted marketing campaign focused on encouraging bicycling tourism in Western, New York. A grant for $150,000 provided by Empire State Development was used to bring people to the city of Buffalo and help spur economic impact for local businesses. The BuffaloByBike campaign focused on these advertising mediums in order to encourage bike riding and spending money locally:
- Billboard Advertising
- Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter
- Tabling and in-person events
- Radio
- Video
- Physical collateral
These mediums were used to focus people to come into the city and experience BuffaloByBike. We focused advertising on these aspects:
- Popular summer events to ride to
- Safe and easy trails to explore for novice bike riders
- Organized group rides (such as the weekly Slow Roll, and the popular SkyRide event)
- Self guided tours to try yourself
Throughout the 2017 and 2018 summers, the project produced over 6 million impressions mixing all forms of marketing. Below are some of the marketing designs we used during the campaign:
The above video was promoted heavily on social media and correlated with an event to promote biking in the region.
Below are the estimated economic impacts of the project that resulted from $150,000 of funding:
2016 2017 (funding) 2018 (funding) SkyRide 700 700 763 Other Various Events (5 events)* 275 260 315 Slow Roll (30 events) 16500 17000 20000 Reddy Bikeshare 510 1682 2460 Total People From outside the City 17985 35950 25358 Estimated Economic Impact $1.34 Million $1.48 Million $1.78 Million
With an $150,000 investment in this project, it was estimated to spur over $400,000 of economic impact.
Quick lessons learned from the campaign included:
- Billboards were expensive, and seemed to be less impactful than other forms
- Social Media was affordable, and yielded a lot of results
- Being at events and promoting with already existing established organizations was very successful
- Creating content that can be reused should always be done.
- Radio was not as impactful.
- If working with a small budget, diversifying advertising mediums is needed, but try not stretch yourself too thin.
If you have any questions regarding this campaign, please email info@sharedmobility.org.
