It’s a sure bet that you have some sort of message you’d like to share with the world. Whether it’s your business or your opinion . . . you have something to say, and you likely take as many opportunities as you can find to say it.
But have you considered using your car as one of your best advertising vehicles? Literally? Think about having a car magnet made to share your message with the world. You probably drive on a regular basis. Your automobile is an extension of you in many ways. We leave our personal items in our car—glasses, brushes, keys, CDs, and who-knows-what-else—and most of us get in and out of our car no less than once a day and often many more times than that.
Whether we only drive around town or regularly drive around the country, what better way to share our personal message with others than with car magnets? Car magnets are fast becoming an often-used way to get a point across. If enough people see our car, with our car magnet attached to either side, that message—just as with any advertising effort—becomes engrained in the subconscious of those who see us as we pass. If those folks see us day in and day out, say, as we drive our kids to school or go to the grocery store and park our car with the attached car magnet, in the store parking lot, they cannot help but become curious about what it is we are sharing with them via our car magnets.
Car magnets are impossible to ignore. How many cars a day do you pass? How many of them might you pass more than once in one week . . . but you don’t know this, or notice them as repetitive, because of the sheer volume of traffic on the road? Yet when you pass cars with car magnets, and you pass those cars more than once, you will remember them. More importantly, you will remember the messages on the car magnets. This is Marketing 101—the more times a message is viewed, the more impact it makes.
Take this one step farther. Say you’re in the market for a new home. You have tried a real estate agent referred to you by the checker at your grocery store but in this difficult market, it appears that this agent just isn’t the one for you. You are on your way to the store one early evening to pick up something for dinner, and you see a car in the store’s parking lot . . . you can’t miss it since it has a big car magnet on the back driver’s side. What’s the message on that car magnet?
“Debra Smith, top-selling agent with XYZ Realty. I’ll sell your home in 60 days. Guaranteed.”
Debra’s car magnet gives her office and her pager number—obviously she wants to be contacted. You figure there’s little you can lose at this point, so you use your cell phone to dial her number right there in the parking lot, as you sit next to her vehicle with the car magnet emblazoned on it. It seems to challenge you as you leave a message on her pager. You go into the store, pick up a delicious salad for dinner, and happen to run into Debra as you’re getting back into your car to go home.
How do you know it’s Debra? You’ve never met her before, never seen what she looks like. Well, she’s getting into the car with the car magnet attached. And she’s on her cell phone. And your cell is ringing. It doesn’t take but a few moments to realize you’re talking to the lady in the car next to you, nor does it take her much longer to realize she’s having a conversation with the woman in the vehicle next to hers, and that you—that woman—found out about her because of her car magnet. Sixty days later, you’re packing up your things . . . Debra sold your home, as she promised she would via her car magnet. Mission accomplished, all thanks to some gentle but no-less powerful in-your-face promotion.
Maybe you have a cause which you support, dear to your heart. You’re a survivor of breast cancer and when you beat it, you vowed you would take up the torch and do everything you could to support research to rid the world of the horrible disease. You are the director of a fantastic survivor’s group. Each woman in the group has a car magnet, and all of those car magnets show the pink ribbon symbol, and the message:
“Are you, or a loved one, a survivor? Know someone struggling? Our group can help.” And your toll-free number is included.
You don’t go anywhere—in town or out-of-town—without your car magnet. Why? Because you have brought in many a woman in need of support simply because they saw that car magnet and decided to call your number. They wrote it down at a stoplight and called when they got home, or they dialed it on their cell phone right there and then. Either way, women from near and far found help and support in their time of need because you had the foresight to use your personal vehicle as a billboard by placing a car magnet on its side. Simple and powerful.
What message do you have to share? Are you utilizing all possible avenues to get that message out to the largest population available to you? If you don’t have car magnets on the side of your automobiles, then you must not have anything worthwhile to say. There is no better way to passively impact the people around you than to use car magnets to share with them what’s important to you. We live in a society where we touch lives every day on the internet and never see the people. We put out newsletters and e-mails, and post to newsgroups and networks and social sites. Yet to do all that takes active participation. We have to intentionally go to those places, even in the comfort of our office chair, and put out our message.
Yet with a car magnet, we go to places we don’t know we’re going, we touch lives we aren’t aware we’re touching, and we communicate with people who get our message, whether we know it or not. That simple act of placing a car magnet on the side of our vehicle moves our issues to the forefront of their mind, essentially forcing them to think about what we have to say, if even for only a moment. And for those people who need or want we have to share with them via our car magnets . . . we might be giving them just what they need at the very moment they need it.
This is something that would never happen, could never happen, if we simply passed these people as we were going into the grocery store, and they were pulling out of the parking lot.