blog: Evidence-Led Marketing and Engagement: A Milton Keynes Success Story
Wednesday 30th April 2025
Bus marketing and engagement? That doesn’t sound very exciting…
It is actually, at ITP we’re realising that by applying our behavioural science expertise and research approaches, we can help local authorities and bus operators coordinate an evidence-led approach to marketing and engagement. Which means their message reaches the right people and we effectively engage with local communities, existing and potential users, to help increase patronage.
But in Milton Keynes, isn’t that a car driver’s paradise?
Historically yes, but thanks to Milton Keynes City Council’s Bus Service Improvement Plan (BSIP) a partnership has been established with all bus operators across the city to consider ways of transforming bus travel. The BSIP sets out the ambitions of the Council and operators to deliver an excellent, green and inclusive public transport system and includes objectives to enhance bus service frequencies, improve passenger infrastructure, offer integrated ticketing and more. In more recent progress, one of the operators Arriva, launched a brand-new service called “Loop”.
“Loop” that’s a weird name for a bus service, aren’t they usually just a random number?
Well, yeah, I guess a lot of them are, but “Loop” is called “Loop” for a reason. After the Covid-19 pandemic, remote working created a shift in people’s travel behaviour and a reduction in people driving to city centres and paying for parking. As a result, unfortunately, in some areas, supported bus service provision had to be reduced and innovative solutions such as Demand Responsive Transport (DRT) were introduced.
However, as the world began to return back to some sense of normality, it was clear that unmet travel patterns (based on operational data) still existed in Milton Keynes and a heat map show a demand arc or “Loop” across the southern Milton Keynes area and so the “Loop” service was born.
Ah the pandemic, that wasn’t a great time for bus users, was it?
No, it wasn’t – there were lots of restrictions in place for people’s health and safety and the knock-on effects are still being felt in terms of patronage levels in some areas across the country to this day.
So is that why you’re speaking to people about buses?
Well, kind of. We realise that there’s already a core group of people who have always travelled by bus whether this is for personal, financial or social reasons but there are plenty of people who have either never tried the bus, are out of habit or perhaps never returned to catching the bus after the pandemic.
Either way, we know that in order to encourage people to give the bus a try, we need to tap into some of the capabilities, motivations and barriers that may affect their decision to travel in a certain way and use this information to design and target our marketing, communications and engagement approaches.
Talking with the public, that sounds really tough, what were the people of Milton Keynes like?
Yes, public engagement isn’t everyone’s cup of tea but it’s extremely valuable as part of the projects we run here at ITP and the people of Milton Keynes were great! We held five pop-up events, one at Shenley Wood Retirement Village, one at Milton Keynes University Hospital, one at The Open University and two at Milton Keynes College.
We received great feedback for our Engagement Leads who meticulously planned each event and listened to and provided support to the public. We also received some great testimonials with a PHD Staff Member from The Open University noting that the “Loop” service was making students’ lives so much easier (due to the increased frequency) and one resident from Shenley Wood Retirement Village stated using the service was “like a taxi, it’s so direct!”.
Well, I’m glad you all enjoyed it, but did more people ACTUALLY get this “Loop” service you keep talking about?
Yes ACTUALLY, they did…
At the start of the project, we had two core objectives to engage with at least 100 people at in-person events and to aim to reach an average of 3,000 passengers per week on the “Loop”.
We engaged with 270 people via the in-person events, smashing our target and achieved an average of 2,393 passengers per week. While this was just shy of the original patronage target, it is clear that this was an extremely strong start for what was the initial launch phase of a wider marketing, communications and engagement programme and numbers will be at the 3,000 mark before you know it.
Spikes in patronage also coincided with event dates, which showed us that the time and effort taken to go out and physically engage with people was definitely worth it.
Hmm, fair play. So, if I worked for a Local Council transport team or ran a bus company, how would I get in touch with you to help me coordinate my next bus marketing, communications and engagement approach?
You can drop Kirsty Guttridge kirsty.guttridge@itp.rhdhv.com an email, she’d be happy to discuss things further with you.