Three Factors to Better Tour Routing
As a growing number of nonprofits take to the highway to engage new audiences and spread their mission, it is crucial to understand the importance of tour routing and how to use it to your advantage. To optimize your mobile tour schedule, consider these factors listed below and you will be well on your way to creating an effective experiential mobile tour.
Where to Go: Make sure you are at the right place at the right time. Understanding your demographic lifestyle is key. The knowledge of your audience’s behaviors will allow you to identify area events that offer foot traffic. Also, carefully consider your host sites. These locations need to not only be easily accessible by your visitors, but strategic development of partnerships with hosts can deliver many promotional benefits including added PR and social exposure.
When to Go: There are many factors to consider like product or message, seasonality, audience reachability, market conditions, and the weather. To draw the largest crowds, you want to consider the weather conditions. Although you have no control over mother-nature on a particular day you do have control over which regions you tour during what season. Whenever possible, avoid the high probability of severe weather conditions like the rainy seasons in the northeast, winter in the northern plains, or summer in the southwest. Work your schedule so that you reach markets during seasons where they typically experience more mild weather conditions.
How to Go: Quality trumps quantity. It is important to optimize the tour route to maximize number of stops while covering the fewest possible miles. Mapping out an efficient tour schedule is important to avoid crisscrossing already visited areas. Also, understand the amount of pre and post show prep and pack times to better plan multi-event days or to better estimate required time and the number of miles you can cover between events.
