MITS Campaign to Increase Ridership through Education

Target Audience: *Ball State University Students *~17,000 under graduate students with a total of over 22,500. *44% live on-campus, 56% live off campus *All Social Media users

Strategy Objective:*Increased presence on social media, television and on campus. *Educate, create interest/excitement, celebrate and show appreciation. *Utilize local resources and social media to share goals and capture student attention while educating them in the process. *Give social media followers a published ridership goal (higher than the previous month/year attainment) and celebrate with those who made it possible when the goal is met.

Situation Challenge: *Downward trend in ridership since 2010. Very noticeably on BSU campus routes. *Total system ridership has decreased over 26% in that same time period. *Marketing class findings that BSU students had little to no knowledge of MITS services. *New Assistant General Manager/Marketing director started in May and needed to quickly implement a campaign to catch rider attention with the intent to appeal to and educate students.

Results Impact: *The first six months of this year, ridership was down 10.48% from the first half of 2017. *We have exceeded July, August, September and October 2017 ridership. Ridership is up 6.7% in the past 4 months of 2018. *November ridership through the 15th is already 14% higher than the ridership in the first half of November 2017. *Conversation with riders during the celebration events lets them know how much their patronage is appreciated. *Increased 'shares' on social media.

Why Submit: MITS is proud of this campaign, our commercial cost $650.00; 2500 how to ride education pamplets = $417, 2,500 BSU Ride guides = $625, redesigned bus books covers with actual photos of stop locations/people = $200, and finally 13 employees participated in 5 different on campus initiatives. Marketing efforts do not need to be high dollar to be effective. We wanted to see more riders, so we published goals; we wanted students to ride, so we used students in our commercial; we realized students didn't know how to ride, we made a simple how to ride guide. More agencies could potentially benefit from similar tactics. MITS should win so others can see our success & use similar tactics at their agencies!