KCATA's 510 K-10 Connector Route Campaign

Target Audience: The target audience for this entry was college students at the three schools that are on the 510 K-10 Connector route. This included students at the University of Kansas (KU) campuses in Lawrence and at Edwards, along with Johnson County Community College.

Strategy Objective:Several marketing approaches were combined to create a rich marketing campaign for Johnson County Community College and the University of Kansas (KU) campuses in Lawrence and Johnson County at the start of the 2018 spring semester. Digital ads were purchased and geotargeted toward the three campuses. These ads focused on the price per ride, our RideKC mobile app, and where you can go from each school. Posters were distributed to all campuses as well as installed on all Lawrence Transit and KU buses. We coordinated a social media campaign with the colleges with Facebook and Twitter ads that ran from January through March.

Situation Challenge: After seeing a decrease in ridership since 2013 on the 510 K-10 Connector, this route seemed to be a great opportunity to focus on increasing ridership. Our goal was to promote our new mobile app that was developed in 2017 to give people a more convenient and efficient transit experience while cutting the amount of money spent on printing ticket and pass material. We also wanted to increase the awareness that it can be easy to ride the bus. These students were a great target audience because many of them travel between campuses throughout the week and may not have other transportation options.

Results Impact: With the paid digital ad campaign, desktop and mobile ad impressions reached 349,481. There was a significant spike in purchases of the Suburban Single Ride, the pass required on route 510, through our mobile ticketing app. These pass sales increased by 93.1% from the start of the campaign. Ridership was typically 550 people per day on the 510 K-10 Connector. From January to March, ridership increased to roughly 580 people per day, an increase of 5.5%. Ridership has been holding steady since this campaign.

Why Submit: This entry is worthy of an AdWheel Award because our thorough campaign resulted in an increase in awareness and an increase in ridership that correlated with our campaign. Our mobile app single ride pass purchases skyrocketed during the campaign, showing us that targeted marketing can have measurable data-driven results.