BiggerPockets

Had any experience with billboard advertising?
Just curious - what kind of leads did you get most of all (regardless of billboard message)? No-equity sellers? Preforeclosures? Ugly houses?

Please share

DON'T DO IT...

I remember when I was drooling at the mouth for a Bill Board. I finally found an excellent deal. A Funeral Home owned the sign and only wanted $1,100.00 a month for the location.

Don't do it.

For that amount of money I could have easily put out printed and delivered 12,000 door hangers that bring me results.

Ditto on what Joseph said. I had a fellow real estate investor, a friend of mine here in Dallas, who tried it and he said that same thing..... it just wasn't worth it.

I have bought quite a few properties from having vinyl lettering on my truck windows (didn't like the magnets personally and the lettering could be read from farther away).

Bandit signs are wonderful. Just be aware of your city code. You have to run out and stick the sign in the ground real quick while no one is looking then drive off LOL! There is a reason why they coined the term BANDIT sign.

Billboards can be great if you buy enough of them. Just one or two will fail miserably. However, depending on your market, you can get what is called a Junior billboard in the lower income neighborhoods that most of us target. You need at least 5 in one neighborhood to make and impact or 15-20 city wide that get moved frequently so it looks like you are omnipresent. It is very expensive, if you try then few words and great contrast.

Great thread... I've always wondered if billboards actually work in these days of information overload. They seem incredibly difficult to track in terms of direct ROI.

Steer clear from billboards.

A lot of people get the idea that billboards are a great way to advertise. You see them all the time, they always look sold out, so why shouldn't you have one too?

Billboards work excellently to push or guide people from one place to another. For example, I'm sure you've seen those "McDonald's Next Exit" signs. That's good advertising. It's near the location and drives people to it.

It's not so great for a "hey call me and I might buy your house" billboard for the following reasons:

1) It's hard to take a phone number off a billboard while driving by.

2) There's 43959430 other signs competing for attention.

3) There's anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours before someone can legitimately act on your message...that's long enough to forget.

I would recommend a television campaign with a memorable website address.

Your campaign should be targetted, and you should look to purchase a day part, or specific show each day. Frequency, frequency, frequency.

Instead, focus on buying a specific show...say, Seinfield. Every day, you have one 30 second spot in that show. Run it for a few months, and you've already branded your company and your image with maybe 3-5% of your total market.

It doesn't seem like much, but that's 3-5% of the total market who has seen your company 50-60 times. They're comfortable with you, you've built repertoire with them and they will respond far better than 100% of the market viewing your advertising campaign once or twice.

If you're going to use traditional channels to bring in the prospects, you'll have to be consistent and have a real strategy. One billboard, even perfectly placed, isn't going to get you much in terms of ROI. For most campaigns, you either break the threshold and bring in hundreds of new clients and customers, or you fail to reach threshold and don't have a single response. It's just the way the human mind works.