A company car is a popular benefit for businesses to offer. It’s a great way to attract the best talent to your business and improve employee retention. Providing a company vehicle also ensures that your employees have a reliable way to get to and from work, so it can reduce issues with lateness.
However, many business owners are reluctant to provide company cars because they worry about the costs and they don’t think that the benefits are worth it. But those business owners are not taking into account the fact that a company car is actually a great marketing opportunity. When you consider the marketing benefits of a company car and factor that into the cost analysis, you will see that it’s definitely worth it. These are some of the amazing marketing benefits that you get from providing company cars.
Your Employees Drive Nice Cars
Your employees are ambassadors for your company and even when they are out of the office, they are still representing you. When people see your employees, they make judgments about your business based on the way that your employees conduct themselves. This is why it’s important that you have guidelines about things like social media, and why people often get fired for writing inflammatory or offensive things on their personal social media pages.
You may not have thought about it before, but the cars that your employees drive can have an impact on the way that people view your business. If they are seen driving around in a beat up old car that is falling apart, that doesn’t exactly make you look professional. But when you provide company cars, you can ensure that they are driving around in nice cars, which makes you look more professional.
It Shows That You Look After Employees
Consumers don’t make their purchasing decisions based on the quality of the product alone anymore. People are increasingly concerned about the ethical and moral qualities of the company that they deal with, so they are also interested in things like sustainability and the way that you treat employees. Businesses that underpay employees, don’t treat them with respect, and don’t provide any benefits, will often come under fire from consumers and may lose customers. But if you provide your employees with a nice company car, that shows consumers that you care about your staff and you are willing to invest in them.
Providing company cars also encourages your employees to sing your praises. They will tell everybody how great it is to work for you and how well you look after your staff, which improves your public image a lot. By improving your public image, you can boost sales in a big way.
It’s An Opportunity To Be Eco-Friendly
Environmental issues are so important and all businesses need to make an effort to reduce their impact on the environment. Any business that is not seen to be doing their part will suffer because consumers will be less likely to deal with them. If you provide company cars, you have a great opportunity to be eco-friendly by switching to electric. Your employees are less likely to make the switch to electric because of the costs involved, so if you provide electric cars for your staff, allowing them to cut their carbon emissions, this will play very well with customers.
Branded Company Cars Give Good Exposure
The best way to use your company cars for marketing purposes is to brand them. A lot of people assume that car wraps are an old fashioned marketing tool that doesn’t really work very well in the age of digital marketing, but that isn’t the case at all. In fact, branded company vehicles give you a lot of exposure and car wraps are incredibly cost effective.
When your employees are driving around, your brand is exposed to a lot of people in a very short space of time. You are also getting exposure for your business while the car is parked, and if you include some contact details, it’s a great way to generate leads. Estimates suggest that a car wrap on a vehicle in a well populated area will get between 30,000 and 80,000 impressions per day, which is huge considering the low price. The average wrap costs about $3,000 and they will last around 6 years before they need replacing.
Even if you do not want to use a full car wrap, you can still add other branded items to the car. Things like bumper stickers or custom air fresheners are great ways to add a little bit of branding to a company car without a full car wrap. You can still add contact details to a bumper sticker and generate some new leads, but your employees won’t be so worried about driving around in a huge advert.
What Are The Downsides?
Although there are a lot of great marketing benefits that come from providing company cars, there are some downsides that you need to consider.
The main negative is obviously the cost. Although you should consider it an investment in your employees and an opportunity for marketing, you will still need to cover the initial cost of buying company cars. You will also be responsible for the upkeep of the vehicles, which can get expensive.
In some cases, company vehicles can cause friction amongst your employees if you don’t provide them to everybody. It’s unlikely that you can afford to give a company vehicle to everybody so it will most likely be management that gets cars. This may cause divisions and create a sense of ‘us and them’ in your business. It’s important that you are aware of this and you provide alternative benefits to other employees to balance things out.
It’s also worth remembering that, even though switching to electric is a good way to be more eco-friendly, many people are moving away from cars altogether. It may be better to offer a cycle to work scheme over a company car in some cases.
Even when you take these downsides into account, a company car is still a great opportunity for marketing and it has other benefits as well, so you should definitely consider providing vehicles for your employees.