Signs Help Gain New Customers

by Jennifer Minge

The most critical task in property management is to quickly rent any vacant units. Vacant units have negative impact on your cash flow and can quickly turn a profit into a loss. So how do you find potential tenants to rent your vacant units? The answer is marketing, and signs can be the most cost effective marketing tool.

The quickest and cheapest sign to buy is an 18” x 24” sign placed in the front yard of your property. This size can be easily read by passing traffic at 30 – 50 MPH. The signs can also be placed at major intersections where stopped traffic can read the sign from a distance. Property owners can increase call volume drastically after a weekend of strategically placing these signs around their property.

The most important items to be placed on your sign are your message and your phone number. Your message should be based on the KISS principle: short and simple. Do not go overboard and have 5-6 lines in your message. Traffic will only have about three to five seconds to read your sign if they are traveling at 40 MPH. If you message is too long they will not be able to read it and will not remember your message.

Besides your message the next most important bit of information on your sign is your phone number. The phone number should be displayed in larger text compared to your message. The goal is to get potential tenants to write down the number so they can contact you later. There is some debate on whether or not to include your website address instead of a phone number on your signs. From our experience we have found that a phone number works better than a website address. If people were looking at your property online, they could easily look up your competitors!

Property owners should always keep a sign in the front yard of their property – even if you are at 100% occupancy. The signs can generate a list of potential renters that you can contact when you do have a vacancy.

The best strategy is to order about 100 signs and place about 25 at a time each week. These signs should saturate an area so that people notice them. The best time to put out signs is Friday evening.

Every few weeks you can start rotating the placement of the signs to generate new call leads. Be sure to track the number of calls you receive each week so you can determine the locations that generate the most calls.

Most sign ordinances limit the location of signs and property owners should be aware of the sign ordinances in their county. Sometimes local code enforcement officers will collect signs that have been placed improperly. Also it is possible for your competition to remove your sign when they place their signs. This is why you order more signs than you will place each week to account for this potential loss.

Signs can be the most cost effective method a property owner can utilize to drive potential traffic to their property.