GoRaleigh State Fair Shuttle

Target Audience: The target audience for the GoRaleigh State Fair shuttles were the fair attendees. The State Fair creates an experience unique to North Carolina and is an unparalleled value with free entertainment, thrilling rides and games, thousands of animals, endless family activities, competitions, vendors and creative deep-fried delights. This year the North Carolina State Fair had 998,926 visitors over the 10-day span.

Strategy Objective:The objective of the GoRaleigh State Fair shuttle is to further educate the community about GoRaleigh and how they can easily use the bus to get around town the rest of the year, not just for the State Fair! Residents may not realize that GoRaleigh has just under 40 routes serving all parts of our community, with rides as inexpensive as $1.25, as well as monthly ride pass options. The first ride to the fair is a faster, easier and cheaper ride than driving and parking at the fair. We hope to gain ridership through this first ride experience going to the fair on a GoRaleigh bus.

Situation Challenge: Prior to the recent COVID pandemic, GoRaleigh was running State Fair shuttles from four locations. Due to insufficient staffing, this year we were only able to run shuttles from one location. That also meant that we needed to publicly promote this service for the first time in four years. Many non-riders may not have remembered or even been aware that this service had previously existed. We advertised this service through a local radio traffic sponsorship, TV event calendars, Facebook ads and Google Ads, to reach as many people and populations as possible.

Results Impact: This event piqued the interest of the community with almost 30,000 shuttle riders. Google Ads resulted in 49,655 search engine marketing impressions and 5,390 clicks with a 10.85 percent click through rate. Our Facebook ads received 498,364 impressions and 24,988 clicks with a 5.0 percent click through rate.

Why Submit: Our State Fair shuttle campaign resulted in a gain of almost 30,000 potential new bus riders and brought in more revenue than the cost of marketing this service. It is rare that a marketing campaign for bus ridership, not only yields greater ridership but, also covers the entire cost of the marketing campaign while generating additional revenue.