How to Increase the Effectiveness of Your For Sale Signs by Over 400%
Wed, Jul 24, 2013
Every one of you uses For Sale signs to advertise your listings, but how effective is your signage at generating interest and awareness? More importantly, how effective is your signage at generating qualified sign calls? Chances are, most of you (within the specific franchises you represent) will all have basically the same signage — the design and look of which follows your franchise rules. All of these signs will look pretty much the same, with the only difference being the agent and number. When agents first started using For Sale signs decades ago, they were more effective. The fact is that people didn’t really move around a lot back then, so a For Sale sign on someone’s lawn really drew attention. These days, the average person moves every 3-5 years, so it’s not uncommon to see a dozen or more signs in your neighborhood on a simple trip to the corner store. For Sale signs have become as common as billboards on a highway or commercials on TV — just one more sales message to “zap”. For this reason, it is no longer enough for you to simply put up the same old sign. You’ve got the opportunity to grab the attention of buyer (and seller) prospects as they drive around the neighborhood. If you want to stand out from your competition, you’ll have to do something different than everyone else is doing.Here’s what I do . . .
First, I effectively used “sign riders” to shout a message out to prospects. Over and above the same old “For Sale” message, I told them that they could “Buy this Home for Zero Down” or “Move up to This Home and I’ll Buy Your Home for Cash”. But that’s not all. I also used “other” signs which gave a “something’s going on here” look to my listings. I had a second sign which promoted my Sunday Tour of Homes. This sign is a bright, garish yellow with eye-popping red, simple-to-read lettering. A third sign I used promoted the fact that I had this listing on my Talking Houses program. This sign identified to drive-bys that they could tune in on their car radio to hear details about the listing they’d stopped in front of. My objectives here were two-fold:- To stand out and grab the prospect’s attention so they stopped, looked and read, and
- To use this “Free” advertising space to promote my USPs (Zero Down, The Trade Program, the Sunday Tour, etc.)