Case study: DVLA in the driving seat as low-cost campaign achieves 250,000 views

A current campaign by the DVLA to raise awareness of new rates of tax for new vehicles registered on or after 1 April this year is a case in point.

Speaking to PRWeek about the campaign, which will run until April this year, Rees stressed the "low cost" nature of the awareness drive, which is a "concerted social media effort" on the DVLA’s various social channels using the hashtag #cartax2017.

Although a budget of £95,000 has been allocated for media spend to target new car buyers likely to be affected by the new rates, only around £8,000 has been spent to date.

 

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The DVLA’s in-house team press team is carrying out a mixture of proactive and reactive PR, at no cost.
 

This, combined with digital advertising targeting internet search engines and key motor trade websites, has put the DVLA in the driving seat in terms of hitting its target of a million page views for its webpage - with around 250,000 views already.

Evaluation of the campaign is being done using Google Analytics, according to Rees.
 

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The budget for online advertising will be spent as and when the "business case warrants it," she said, adding: "We’re always monitoring what’s happening so we’re using all the evaluations that are coming through…while we’ve got a target spend of £95,000 it’s not necessarily [the case] that we’re going to spend that. We’re going to see how that’s being optimised across the channels."

Commenting on the wider approach, Rees added: "It’s all about the government communication service principles that we live by, making sure that the right audience knows the right things at the right time and we’re very committed to that."

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