Dramatically Increase the Number of Calls from Bandit Signs

You can dramatically increase your calls from bandit signs. I’ve had some success with several types of bandit signs with everything from blue lettering to red writing, black writing, on white, yellow on poster board, corrugated metal and even on cardboard.  I want to share with you some tips that will help you to dramatically increase the number of calls from bandit signs.

Here are a couple rules of thumb.  The less corporate, the better.  You want to put it where people are going to see it and have time to read it.  You might not know this, and if you don’t I’ll teach you something that’s really cool about how city engineers put cities together and how businesses have used that to position themselves properly or improperly to take advantage of the existing flow of traffic on certain roads.

  All of you have seen that there are certain places where there’s a business and then two years later there’s another business with another name, then two years later there’s another business with another name, etc. We all have it whether you’re in a big town or small, it happens. Quite frankly, it doesn’t matter what kind of product they have at these businesses, they’re always going to go out of business if the same type of business keeps occupying that spot.
  Oftentimes, they’ll never know why they go out of business, why their restaurant doesn’t work there or why their hair salon doesn’t work there. You’ll see business after business that doesn’t work.  They will be there set up with their shiny counters, chairs, and other machines, as well as shining teenagers serving food, but they will go out of business within two years every single time.

  Then someone else will step in and think oh, that’s a good place for a restaurant, it already has the equipment the last company left behind because they went out of business. Two years later at the very least or most again, they’re out of business and I’m going to tell you why.

  This is directly relevant to how you dramatically increase the number of calls from bandit signs.

  Most cities and most major streets are set up and have a flow of traffic where one direction goes towards your home and the other goes towards work for most people. How do you find out which is which? By the way, if you don’t believe me, do this challenge to find out. Go to the busiest place in your area between the hours of seven and eight in the morning or five and six in the afternoon and just stand on the side of the road.

  For every two cars, you see between the morning hours going one direction, you will see 10 going the other direction, which is a full five times more. Then again, between the evening hours it’s about the same ratio where you’ll see two cars going one direction and ten going the other direction.

  You all aren’t exactly rocket scientists, but you don’t need to be to figure that out. This theory works on a macro level in an entire city, as well as on a micro level in regards to a busy street, and even on a smaller level such as within a neighborhood type area. 

  What it teaches you about your business, for example, is that you don’t necessarily want to have your business on the side of the road where people are coming home from if the type of business you have, such as dry cleaning, thrives off of people dropping off their stuff before they go to work, planning to pick it up when they get off work.

  If you start a dry cleaning type of business and people have to make a left turn into your business in the mornings to drop off then your business will go out of business. That’s people’s behavior, dropping it off on the way to work and picking up on the way home. Put your business on the right side of the road, because that one little decision could determine whether the business is a success or failure.

  In reference to how to increase the number of calls from bandit signs, which way are you more likely to stop and take time to look at things around you if you’re driving? Probably on the way home. You have to research and figure out which way that is and then place your signs on that side of the road.

It’s pretty easy to research too. Just go to the area you plan on putting out signs and check the intersections you are going to place them on at two times. Between 6:30 and 8:30 am and between 4:30 and 6:30 pm are the two time windows you want to be out for, and mark down how many cars you see pass you in either direction for 10 minutes each. You can extrapolate that data for cars per ten minutes to give you a good estimate for the number of cars per hour or per minute at that location. Then compare that to the evening time data you get in the same locations. I guarantee you every time you do this, for whatever intersection you do it for in the United States, you will find that in the mornings one direction has a LOT more cars per minute and per hour traveling that way than are coming the other way. This is the “to work” direction in your area, and certain businesses will thrive if they place their location in this area on the right side of the road to cater to people driving to work that direction so they can easily get off the road with a right turn. The flip side is that in the evening you’ll find the OTHER direction has more traffic in that same location, and in that area we can classify this as the “to home” direction for a plurality (if not majority) of people in that area.

So to use real estate terms, most areas have suburbs, residential areas and neighborhoods one direction and retail shopping, office and industrial properties in another direction.

For your real estate bandit signs and your quest to increase the calls from those bandit signs, my advice is this-- place them on the “to home” side of the road that in your area has the most traffic of people on their way home.

Simple as that and you will increase the calls you get from your bandit signs dramatically when you place them correctly, because people are able to slow down, they’re not rushed or hurried. They’re able to relax and think so when they see your sign, they process it more easily, because they’re not in the same mentality as they would be on their way to work. This, of course, is based on the average 9:00 to 5:00 worker that you’re trying to market to if regular consumers are your ideal market.

If you implement this simple strategy, it won’t matter so much whether your sign is white, blue, red, orange or yellow paper, poster board, cardboard, red/black writing or blue text, whatever.  You will dramatically increase the number of calls from bandit signs with superior placement taking into account human psychology, city planning knowledge and positioning. After you get the right positioning, then you can experiment with sign colors and text fonts/colors because while those variables DO make a difference in response rates from bandit signs, I think you’ll be very pleased with how much more difference it makes when you position your signs on the best side of the road to take advantage of these traffic patterns.