Curiosity works - think about Alice in Wonderland when Alice followed the rabbit down the hole? There’s a simple way to drive a lot of curious buyers to your property. Directional signs can be a great marketing tactic for real estate investors because they can create curiosity among people who are already looking for a house in the neighborhood of your property.

Directional signs are usually simple plastic yard signs with arrows on them that direct people toward an end point - usually an open house, new development, etc. For real estate investors a few well-placed signs can bring potential customers right to their doorstep. Arrow signs eliminate the need for memorizing phone numbers, getting directions, etc., and breaks your call to action down into the simplest terms - follow me.

Creating and placing Directional Signs

Sign content should describe the kind of property you are advertising and the address underneath in big, bold letters to catch the buyer’s attention, and (of course) arrows. Placement strategy for directional signs is pretty easy, as long as you do your homework on the neighborhood. Start by driving around and figuring out the best routes to get from Point A (busy intersections) to Point B (the property). Street corners should be key spots for your signs as they dictate where to turn. You may not need signs on a long stretch road, but it may be a good idea to place one there anyway to let your potential buyers know that they’re on the right track and to avoid any confusion. Signs can be placed at the corner of someone’s property as long as you ask for their permission first. Most people will agree to the sign if you agree not to disturb anything on their lawn such as sprinkler systems or anything else on their yard. It would also be nice to toss in a gift card for their troubles, if it is within your budget.

Directional arrow signs are inexpensive, no-hassle on your time, and easy to implement and manage. There you have it, an effective marketing tool that will drive people from their cars straight to your front door.

Tuesday at Shop.org; the session was led by Kelly Moore from www.resourceinteractive.com.  I am using the ‘*’ to denote what could work for SuperCheapSigns.com. I have included examples throughout and I encourage you to explore these on your own.  The same goes for any terms you don’t recognize…

Kelly from Resource Interactive wrote a book called ‘OPEN BRAND’.  It will be available in December 2007.  Her presentation was very well thought out and detailed.  I’ll just note areas that stood out for me, and include what I’m thinking www.supercheapsigns.com can utilize and how.

It’s all about being ‘OPEN’ vs closed.  The ‘Social Web’ and birth of the iCitizen is the theme, with the moral of the story being this: you need to not only allow, but encourage your customers to talk about your products/services with each other in a way that is easy.  This interaction will not only increase profits, it will move your brand in the way your customers want it to move.

‘Closed’ is a monologue that targets customers. ‘Open’ fosters communication and dialogue, allowing customer to create, edit, and share what’s already out there.  George Lucas was called ‘letigious Lucas’ because he wanted to lock up his brand from being used in any way outside of his intent.  He now has opened up star wars clips for editing by users online to share with others. OPEN is an acronym you can use in any order; On demand, Personal, Engaging, and Networked.  I see this as feeding the child instincts; I want it now, It’s just for me, its interesting, and everybody else can see what I have done.  On one hand we are recognizing and encouraging individual ego, while at the same time realizing that we live in a global world and no one person has all the answers (but together we have a lot of them)! For those of you who know what ‘open source’ coding refers to, this is credited to have influenced ‘open branding’.  Now the brand is being created by the consumer.  Truely, this is bottom up managing.

It starts with people having fun with delicious and flickr because its easy and anyone who tries it feels competent to use it regularly.  Bringing everyone and anyone into the mix makes it interesting (i.e. mugglenet, geriatrick1927, & Emmerson Sparcs).  Ebay & Amazon take it to the consumer level.  Beautydish.com shows what bad can happen when Marykay doesn’t support the social web that encourages more sales.  ZeFrank is a now celeb because of some youtube videos he launched (and now he has paid sponsors).  Starts out as one person with a passion for sharing a message, then  people like it and keep tuning in for more.

*How can SuperCheapSigns.com use this stuff?  Internally, first:  Training videos put into youtube.  Communication with blogs.  Allowing CSR’s to share experiences online, and if customers want to chime in, all the better (careful, this would not be for venting be it employee or customer).

*We now offer a brief survey in exchange for a $10 coupon on the next order.  Survey is sent few days after customer gets their order.  The customer needs to be able to offer input a multiple points along the buying path.  Each template could have a customer rating system, “I give this template the highest rating of 5 signs because I got 1 call for every sign I put out”.  Build in an email reply that encourages feedback about customer’s template selection; must be easy and give consumer reason to do it (examples of reasons are celebrity, competence, collectivism, maybe a coupon).

The Funnel is the web page path a consumer is suppose to follow through to the sale.  The social web funnel is different; Listen & learn by monitoring the buzz around your products, build awareness with consumers who want to contribute, facilitate participation with a follow up email or call out etc, support the purchase (this is the part we are use to), and then re-engage by using what has been created by other consumers to bring them back.

JayRuns from Nike is a great example of a segment oriented community site.  *supercheapsigns.com can do this with REI’s & our Partners like an affiliate site.  It can be separate like a “yousigns.com” or can be part of the main site.  You gotta have some cool tools to make the sites.  According to Kelly, 10% of consumers contribute the majority of all social media.  Those 10% have to be actively engaged to facilitate participation.  Netflix.com includes customer reviews and recommendations that other users can interact with.

Lot’s of great opportunities for consumer involvement that has to be encouraged!

I’m writing this post after finishing the last session at Shop.org. This was a 3 day event for Internet Retailers to learn how to increase business by working with the web.

What a great experience! Most of the attendees are from big e-retailers looking to improve everything online. The other big group is trying to sell to the previous. It was humbling for me, cause these sales people sort of smiled at the our web site name, SuperCheapSigns.com, and then moved on to bigger fish. Nobody was rude, and I understand: I’ve been in sales and nobody is getting paid by the hour. But so many people were very helpful: Laura Galante, Dana Todd, Elizabeth Bell, and lot’s more too. I’m going to be posting what I learned.  Hopefully, it will help things sink in, and through the process I’ll figure out what action steps to take from all this new knowledge.

I just have to remember not to try and implement too many things too fast!

What do you want to see in a ‘Sign Design Tool’ on our website? I know what WE want, but that may not be what the customer wants! Many of you have suggested adding a this kind of feature. Other printing and sign companies have created things that are good, some very good. But there is always better.  What do you think?

Everyone wants to get the biggest bang for their Yard Sign buck as possible. This does not mean squeezing as much working as possible on your sign! The key question to ask is, “What is legible”? By definition, legible is “capable of being read or distinguished”. For this lesson, we’ll focus on “is your sign capable of being read”?

First think is contrast which is “the relative difference between light and dark areas”. This is why all books are written with black ink on white paper. Black vs. white offers the largest amount of contrast, thereby increasing legibility.

Second is spacing. As I write I can see that this font provides a good amount of spacing between the letters.

Last is more of a guideline than a rule; DON’T STRETCH IT! Nobody likes stretch marks, so why do it to your sign if you don’t have to? Stretching is like using Silly Putty on your text. Remember Silly Putty? Put in on a news paper and stretch it up and down and left and right- pretty soon you can’t read a thing. The same is true for your sign. Remember some recent slogans for Nike? End of every commercial a black screen would appear with white lettering, ‘just do it’. They didn’t say, “Hey, we’ve got the entire screen, let’s make it as big as we can!” Granted, people are sitting 10 feet away motionless and not driving by at 60 mph.

In February of 2004, my wife and I bought Super Cheap Signs after finding it with a business broker.  There were 2 employees and I made three.  Wife did the books part time.  3 years later we have 18 employees and we’re still growing!  Since then we haven’t put a bunch of money into forcing growth, so why did we grow 400%?

I’ve enjoyed recent luck with friends and good hires who have recommended books, ideas, and other people to help.  Occasionally, I can even blend my liberal art degree with an emphasis in psychology with some IT & Telecom recruiting & sales with everything else and make it work.   Looking back, all the first year improvements were customer service oriented.
I remember the previous owner, Alfred, would answer the phone, “sign shop” so fast it took me a while to figure out what he was saying.  Our first big change was to answer, “Thank you for calling Super-Cheap-Signs, how may I help you?” (Zig Ziglar said call 10 businesses without knowing who, and you’ll be lucky to understand 2 without asking them to repeat themselves).  Now maybe a few customers would associate us with a name.
Next was the computer situation.  Alfred had one computer attached to the internet, and two for designing in the back.  If someone sent him a file for their order, he’d have to save it to a disk, and then walk it back to the designer’s computer.  We got the computers in the store to share information by adding a small business server environment (thanks to my buddy Larry at Univista.com).  We could see previous orders from any computer.  That was huge.
My favorite story was the phones.  There were three lines.  And there were three phones - one for each line!  Imagine trying to talk to three different customers at the same time.  Keep in mind the phones weren’t even in the same room! Alfred must have got them from a second hand store- they barely worked.  No voice mail or old machine.  So we found a simple multi-line phone system with voice mail.  Working IT & Telecom really helped with my understanding here, and I my buddy Dave Frumkin was key in setting it up. Now Alfred already had a dedicated fax line - got to give kudos for that!

So some phone manners, a new phone system, and a computer network.  Now we could put a customer on hold, find their previous artwork without having to go to the back and ask the designer to get it, or customers could leave a message if we weren’t around or all the lines were busy.  We took our time implementing the phones and computer network.  After 6 months, we had done it with cash flow and not credit cards. Yeah!

Two months after acquiring the shop, my friend Gary left his job at Dell and wasn’t doing anything.  He said he could help for a while until he found a ‘real’ job.  I was very grateful to have his help.  It was getting pretty busy.  When he did find another job it turned out he was having too much fun at the shop!  So we talked and now he’s in charge of operations and keeping me on my toes!  What a great asset.

A few months ago, I picked up The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It and quickly realized that there were areas within Super Cheap Signs that I could apply the E-Myth principles. The gist of the book is this: “Work ON your business, not IN your business.” The E in E-myth stands for Entrepreneur, not E-commerce or E-mail or anything online or computer related. Most people who start a business (Entrepreneurs) are usually widget makers within a company who think that they can make a better widget, or provide better widget service, or sell more widgets, etc. 

Since I started my business, one of my favorite web sites for hints and tips has been www.entrepreneur.com. They have great information to help you build and grow a business, regardless of what you sell. They also have a really good email newsletter (I’m a subscriber).