Lea esta historia en español aquí.
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A local digital advertising company has found a way to harness the potential of rideshare vehicles and bring value to businesses in Longmont. By placing smart screens on the roofs of rideshare fleets, Robert Gutierrez, Bryan Miranda and Aaron Danks, co-founders of iLOKY, believe they have cracked the code of hyper-targeted advertising.
“There is no other thing like this in Longmont or the state of Colorado. It catches a lot of attention. The value (it brings) to smaller local businesses is that it is focused on the local economy, where businesses can showcase their brand,” Gutierrez said.
The iLOKY program consists of a web platform through which businesses can set up an ad campaign with no minimum budget and customize it to target potential customers by geography and time of day.
“We launched in October of 2019 as a startup, building the platform from scratch ... we decided to go into the (digital marketing) space because of the lack of honest data tracking and data measurement, to create a platform that is accessible for all businesses of all sizes and created in a way that was easy to access,” Gutierrez said.
For Mark Pinkerton, co-owner of AlohaTrading Co., who participated in a beta trial of the service back in February, the idea of hyper-local promotion was most appealing, along with manageable cost.
“I really liked the idea of it being very local to our shop, which is right downtown … it (also) seemed much more accessible than doing a bus board or a bust stop ad. It was very incremental, you could control how often you wanted it to be played based on how much you wanted to pay,” he said.
In addition to being a potential game-changer for small businesses, the model offers the promise of extra income to another sector of the stay-at-home economy.
“For any driver working for food delivery or (driveshare) companies, this is another way to create more revenue with having the screen on top of their cars. We provide a screen for them to use, all they have to do is … press play when in the vehicle and when going through their routes. We take care of all of the back-end management,” Miranda said.
As new business owners, the founding trio are still ironing out the details and developing a model that provides the right value to its customers. Since June, they joined the EforAll accelerator program, which provides local support and expertise to aid in the development of businesses.
“(EforAll has) been really helpful during the past few months. Feels like they have provided a lot of help and ideas for new strategies to implement into our startup to help us be successful in the future,” Miranda said.
The iLOKY co-founders understand the impacts the coronavirus pandemic is having on the local economy. Seeking to alleviate their and others’ struggles, as well as reignite community attention, the startup has launched a relief program offering an affordable advertising option to small businesses.
“We are seeing businesses having a hard time, we had nine (clients) back in March and since then most have not been able to spend on advertising. We have this platform that we can use for good and would like to help these businesses as much as possible,” Danks said.
iLOKY’s back-to-business relief program offers any new business the opportunity to redeem a set credit toward an advertising campaign. Businesses have the flexibility to customize their promotion plan according to their needs, according to Gutierrez.
“The platform is very interactive, cuts to the chase. It’s smart and tactful for advertising. It’s technology that is running the frontier, something I would definitely recommend for businesses wanting to try it out,” said Ariel Wishkovsky, owner of Boocha Products and a former client of iLOKY.
For more information on the back-to-business program, click here. Rideshare drivers interested in earning extra income through this platform can enter their information here.
