Your sharing platform is up and running, the final details have been sorted out and the vehicles are waiting for the first drivers? It's time for the official launch of your shared mobility offering. You can use it to pat yourself on the back for all the work you've done over the past few months. But you also want to use it to generate the greatest possible response at the start and convince early adopters.
Get the Vehicles Rolling
The wish of every sharing provider is that the vehicles do not just spend the launch day parked, but are moved as soon as possible. To achieve this, you need your first customers - who may not have heard of your offer yet.
One effective way to encourage usage is through discount promotions. For example, give away discount codes for a trial ride. You can distribute these through all communication channels: online in social media, ads in the daily newspaper, or flyers that you distribute around town.
Whether you offer an entire trip for free, or just the booking start or a free time interval (e.g. 30 minutes) is up to you. In the beginning, it doesn't have to be about every ride covering its costs. Instead, you can use your marketing budget to fund the cost of the discount campaign and hope that as many of the test riders as possible will book with you again in the future.
Artificial scarcity has also proven itself in terms of discount promotions. Many people react to scarcity and don't want to miss out on good deals. You can take advantage of this by limiting the number of vouchers you issue and, for example, only offering a discount to the first 10 or 100 users.
Build a Community
In order to build a community of potential drivers, it is advisable to share your launch on social media.
In the world of online advertising today, it's not necessarily just how many people follow you that counts, but whether the right people are following you. Loyal communities are worth more than five-digit follower numbers - because you place content there in a more targeted way and experience less wastage.
So you should start building up the community at the latest with the launch of your offer. Post photos and videos of the launch on your chosen networks to arouse the curiosity of your target group. Later, you can regularly report on news about your offer and your vehicles to retain followers.
By also calling for user-generated content, you extend your reach. For example, you can hold a contest and give away discount codes among all users who share a post or story about their first ride in one of your vehicles and tag you in it.
Involve the Press
In addition, let the local (or, depending on the offering, interregional) press know that a new shared mobility offering is on the streets. In the best case, the media coverage of a press release will reach your clientele, who will be encouraged to test the offer.
But you benefit not only from the reach of a press release, but also from the trust it inspires. In most cases, customers give more credibility to news from the press than to news from social media - especially among older target groups.
In addition to your actual target group, a press release also reaches other stakeholders, such as representatives of local companies, municipal institutions, public transport and the general public. This could lead to future collaborations and partnerships. In any case, offers that are well integrated and accepted locally are often more successful.
A Good Reason to Celebrate
The day of your launch is a very special one. Therefore: If you feel like celebrating - celebrate! You have earned it. Invite partners, investors, employees, the neighborhood, and depending on the type of service, members of an association or residents of a residential complex, or even the general public, and toast the latest mobility service in your region.
How you design your kick-off event is up to you. The provider LeasePlan Tripp didn't want to skip its launch event altogether, even at the height of the Corona pandemic, but simply let it take place digitally. It invited the residents of the housing complex in Amsterdam, for whom the sharing offer was set up, to take part in an interactive virtual pub quiz. In this way, they became aware of the offer in a playful way and were probably grateful to the provider for the change in the lockdown days.
You see: There are no limits to your creativity.
