Newbie (sorry). Advertise on taxi? starter help needed.

[chris007]

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Hi

Newbie here. I would firstly like to congratulate the users of this board for the huge amount of information supplied for the likes myself who need help on this new venture.

My question is.... I have a Hackney taxi vehicle and would appreciate your views on advertising. I can advertise my web site on the sides on my vehicle and also on the rear of the taxi. If the name of my web site is "catchy" and the artwork good enough, would this form of advertising work? The cost to get this complete would be around £100.

My vehicle is used as a personal car along with being used as a taxi at night. I also work in the city centre, therefore the vehicle could stand out to quite a few (potential) customers. I would estimate the vehicle would be on the road for around 40 hours per week.

I have used affiliate marketing before. I ran a horse racing tipster service (sorry to anyone who joined! ) and when members joined a betting service which was linked to my site, I received around £10 for all new subscribers. This totalled around £150 and was "money for nothing" - just a little advertising.

I am looking to earn around £50 per week. Does this sound extremely likely or would this amount take quite a lot of man hours to make?

Having now completed around 7-8 web sites, I now have the knowledge to set up a good quality web site; information, lay out etc, but I am basically starting from square one when affiliate marketing is concerned. Can someone point me in the right direction to some good threads please. I have read through quite a lot of posts on this forum but if someone has a "starter" post/thread which I can read, that too would be appreciated.

To finish - do the vast majority of people on here who run affiliate web sites have a site which is full of links to other web sites? Is that it? Can you supply me with one or two good quality affiliate sites to point me in the right direction.

Many thanks for your time and I appreciate any feedback.

Chris

[Ecco]

Is it just me or where there about 40 questions in there?

regarding the taxi advertising, if the web site has a memorable url and appeals to your audience it's probably worth it. an example of this might be something like: chelseachips.com if you spend all day driving around chelsea and have chips to sell.

A bad idea might be driving around Highbury all day with the side of your cab proclaiming: members.bt.thingy.3249.com for top quality manchester united scarves

I'm sure there was a serious point in there somewhere, and welcome to the boards chris.

[Flightmapping]

I can't imagine that advertising on its own would be that effective - taxis tend to have adverts for well known brands looking for a wide range of channels to get their message across.

However, a combination of ad + casually bringing up in conversation might be more interesting - although obviously not all punters would want a sales pitch.

[drivetowin]

Welcome to the forum

I suppose it depends on how much could you sell the ad space on your taxi to other people for - is it more than you expect to get from your website?

If it is - advertise other people - if not - advertise your website - either way 100 quid is not a lot to gamble and any method of getting traffic to your site helps.

Is it possible to make 50 quid a week?

Yes its possible, definitely - you just need web sites, content and traffic

[amcd78]

Just picking up on a couple of points that Flightmapping and Ecco made. If you are in the process of brainstorming the topic, content, and domain name for your site, use the fact that you are a taxi dirver to your advantage.

For instance, what kind of people use your taxi and what routes do you normally take? Is it students on a their way home from the pub, or is it business travellers on their way to the airport? Any advertising must appeal to those people for it to be effective.

The second benefit (in terms of affiliate marketing) for being a taxi driver, is that you are in a brilliant position of having a captive audience for those few minutes. Perfect opportunity for a sales pitch.

A wise man once told me a story about a marketing campaign which he recommended to his physiotherapist. Every week, he found himself going for a sauna at the gym, as it helped with his bad back. He noticed that in the sauna, everybody always talked about their aches and pains - without fail.... I guess its the awkward small talk you make with strangers while half-naked (??). Everytime this conversation arose, he would always recommend his physiotherapist, saying that she works wonders on his back and is the best around... bla bla bla. A personal recommendation is always going to go a long way, even if from a stranger (or a friendly taxi driver). He them tried to convince the physiotherapist, that she should periodically employ someone to go round the local gyms, have saunas, and casually spread the word about her practice. It would quickly drum up business during quite spells.

Whatever you decide to do...make it appeal to people you are most frequently in contact with, and also use the knowledge you pick up from being a taxi driver.

Good luck,
Alastair

[Graham@Buyagift]

IMHO it will work for nothing other than branding which some people will be happy with. Tiny Computers spent a fortune advertising on about 30 something taxis a few years ago, and I think they got about 10 phone calls in all from the advertising.

Graham

[chris007]

Hi

Many many thanks for your very quick replies.

I'm quite excited about the post from Alastair - extremely interesting. I had thought about "captive audience", and I went down the route of advertising to taxi drivers. ie taxi insurance, vehicle repair centre, in-car entertainment etc but with only around 800 hackney vehicles and some 3000+ private hire taxis on the road there is little scope to expand.

Having said that I understand there are around 30,000 students in my area!

This is MY captive audience. Many taxi drivers dislike students but I am one of the few who go out there way to pick them up. Those £4 - £5 jobs soon add up! I probably do around 20+ jobs per night when I focus on picking up students only.
Therefore I really believe this idea could now work if it is focused mainly on students.

Now the question is.......what are students wanting to spend there "hard earned" cash on?

Mobile phones ?
Mobile phone downloads ?
Loans ?
Credit cards ?
Cheaper international phone calls ?
Cheap DVD, Cd's ?
Dating ?
Gambling ?
Cheap travel ?

Any thoughts?

Deals could also be done with local bars and clubs to advertise on the site too - promoting their offers. Flyers could also be given out in the taxi.

(I forgot to mention I have an in-car entertainment system in my car. I play music DVD's continuously and could easily add a scrolling advert at the bottom of the videos with web address, offers etc)

A student forum could also work to keep them coming back.

I think I'm now on the right lines, but would still appreciate your help. Please inform me what students are wanting or may want from a web site.

Thanks again
Chris

[morleymouse]

Graham, I can see why Tiny's efforts were wasted. Most people that get in taxi's are drunk... well I always am when I get one and the last thing im wanting to do is ring for a computer

Chris: if your going to target students you want a freebie bit. cheap CD's and dvd's yep. mobile phones mmm yep. loans and credit cards... not really, after student loan chances are they wouldnt get another loan. you want a discount/cheap computer and laptop bit.

few longshots, insurance? & car insurance etc

needs to be really memorable site name though. anyway, best of luck!

[Azam.net]

We advertise on cars and, to be perfectly honest, I would say it would help you more in terms on branding than bringing significant numbers of visitors to your site. With offline advertising, you need a serious campaign to get the punters to come to your site - that's why generally the multinationals dominate taxi advertising.

As has been mentioned, demographics of areas your cab drives in are important. We actually pay different rates based on different locations: three times as much for someone driving around most of the time in, say, the West End of London or Hampstead, as certain other places.

Might be worth giving it a go anyhow. £100 is nothing to get your artwork done and URL pasted on your cab. Generally costs a lot more than that.

[ianpurton]

Have you thought about having a leaflets in the back of the taxi, gives your customers something to look at during their journey. They may be more likely to visit your site as they'll have a reminder of the URL to take away.

Ian Purton