We are always looking for innovative ways to market our company. We had considered getting some additional billboards at key places around town, but they can get expensive. I thought, “How about making my trucks into billboards?”
I could do full vinyl vehicle wraps for less than $3,000 each. That’s about what a good billboard would cost for a month and a half, or a lower-quality one for about five months.
My roving billboards go to subdivisions where we’re already doing work, and up and down the interstate between our various markets.
The trucks basically mimic the billboards we already had near our stores. They’re bright and visible. You won’t mix them up with anybody else’s. There is no spot that isn’t lettered — they’re just rolling information centers. They don’t even have a phone number. They send people to our Website. I got a Web address you can remember — 1800newpool.com. But if they dial it on the phone, and they’re in my area code, they will reach our offices.
These trucks get an incredible response. We get stopped in parking lots all the time. Somebody came into one of my stores and said, ‘Boy, I see your trucks all over the place.’ And I only had two of them on the road at the time.
We eventually will wrap all of our trucks. We think it’s the best money we’ve spent in quite a while on advertising.
— Lew Akins, president, Ocean Quest Pools by Lew Akins , Belton, Texas
