A bandit sign is the same thing as the term you’re probably more familiar with—yard sign. Bandit signs can be effective tools for advertising, promotions, home sales, and more. We’ll get into all of it in this article.
Why are they called bandit signs? Because if you use them, you are essentially stealing business from your competitors. Therefore, you are “stealing like a bandit.”
These signs are used to promote stores, services, and more. How effective are they in this capacity? Well, Ross Hamilton, who is the CEO of a company called Connected Investors says he has made millions of dollars with bandit marketing. And if you want to display some bandit signs during political season, good luck with that. You’ll see every corner of busy intersections littered with them for months at a time. Those little pieces of corrugated plastic are used to advertise candidates and help them with their political campaigns.
Bandit Signs for Real Estate:
While those running a political campaign dominate the bandit sign space during the season, realtors employ them constantly (and those who don’t should) and are probably the largest segment of the workforce who use these real estate bandit signs. They work extremely well not only for those in real estate selling houses, but for any real estate investor as well…perhaps even more. You don’t have to think hard to remember the last time you saw one of these on the corner of a busy intersection:
For you realtors out there, when you stick a slick, glossy-looking aluminum sign in the yard of a house you’re selling, you’ve made it clear to your competition that this client is yours. However, is there anything more you can do to get this house sold? Yes. With bandit signs.
It’s a tad ironic that several municipalities across America treat the use of bandit signs as code enforcement violations. Government in those areas likely realize they’re on the wrong end of the law if they enforce the code. The reason? It becomes clear that they would be infringing on the 1st Amendment right to Freedom of Speech. So, it’s extremely rare that they act on their codes. Think of them as the polar opposite of homeowners’ associations.
And if you weren’t aware, there’s not a national law that would preclude you from putting up your signs.
While not every municipality in the nation has a code about bandit signs, there are several across the country. Should you be a real estate agent selling houses where regulations are in play, know that if you get caught, it’s not as if you’re going to jail. It’s just a code infraction.
In some rare cases, you may be warned once, maybe even twice, to stop putting out bandit signs. If you fail to comply, you could be fined up to $200. In other regions where penalties are stiffer, you might wind up getting charged as much as $500 per sign. Having been in the sign industry since 2009, having spoken to several people in the real estate business, and having done our homework, we’d recommend you not worry too much. As we mentioned, infractions are very rarely enforced. They generally serve as more of a scare tactic than anything. Just know we’re saying it does happen, but the percentage is miniscule.
The reason is that cities don’t want to squander their resources looking around for all the signs in town to get the business names off bandit signs, then deal with the hassle of following through to dole out fines. It’s more likely that if they happen to see a sign, they’ll pluck it and throw it away. While that doesn’t sound like fun for you, you can expect that’s truly going to be as harsh as it gets for you.
And let us tell you about some creative things you can do to keep your signs staying up.
Use your eyes. We think of it as eyeball research. Take a trip around town to locations you think would be ideal for you to display your signs. If you see literally zero other signs at a location, it’s a clear indication that it’s an area being enforced. Another idea is to experiment. Put just one of your signs out with other people’s. Return to that location every day for a week. The day you see your sign has been yanked, then you know the code has been enforced the day before. Now you have a schedule. Return to the location one week after you saw your sign had been pulled. Have another sign with you ready to go. Place it where the other one had been. Then head back two days before you saw the original was gone and put it in your trunk. Rinse and repeat and you will continue to maximize its visibility.
The point is, there are tactics you can take to get the most out of your message.
Another Thing- We’re forewarning you that you need to be ready to have your signs pilfered. It’s inevitable. And not just by anybody. You know how competitive your industry is. Would it really surprise you to know that realtors have been known to swipe their rival’s bandit signs?
If they don’t get stolen, your signs might possibly be vandalized. Will it happen the day you put them out for display? Highly unlikely, just be prepared for it. Check on them regularly. After all, they are your bandit sign campaign, your advertisement. If they look bad, you look bad. And we don’t want that for you.
Now to the Good- Remember that aluminum sign we mentioned a little bit ago? Without question, you have to have that on location of the house you’re selling. What if the location of the house isn’t on a high-traffic street? What if it’s in the back of a deep neighborhood? It’s conceivable that house hunters won’t end up going down that road when they’re looking.
You can increase your shot of selling the house exponentially by employing these plastic signs. Place them on a corner where the main cross street leads into the neighborhood. All it needs to read is, “Open House” with an arrow directing house hunters to the home.
Put bandit signs on display in the grass on corners of high traffic areas nearby. Drivers at a red light get bored and tend to look around. You will have boosted the viewership of potential buyers. It’s a no-brainer that the more people who see your “ad,” the greater your odds are of making a sale, sooner than later.
Your Sign’s Message- Brevity of your message is critical. Understand that when people are driving by they have very little time to read your sign. Some examples of sign messaging are:
• “Home for Sale”
• “Beautiful House Available”
• “3/2 Home Cheap”
Be as creative as possible given the concise nature of what it has to be. Your phone number obviously needs to be on there. Maybe put your name, and even your headshot. It’s a fact that people respond far greater to images more than with just text.
For you real estate investors out there, cheap bandit signs are a fantastic tool for your advertising, too. You’re likely fully aware of all those “We Buy Houses” signs planted in the grass at intersections, and you should be doing that with your real estate investing.
Somebody might be looking to move their house quickly. It’s possible a property owner just doesn’t want to endure the long process of waiting for the right offer to come along. Or maybe they’re on their way to foreclosure. Thousands upon thousands of foreclosures happen every year in this country. Perhaps they simply don’t want to work with a traditional realtor. Many people purchase another home and have to unload their current one, as they know they can’t afford two mortgages. They become a very motivated seller. Examples of simple, but effective messaging:
• “Cash for Houses”
• “Avoid Foreclosure”
• “Cash for Houses”
• “Avoid Foreclosure”
Buy plenty of signs. Put them in places where you are looking to buy and with regards to your purchase price window. Sign placement is important. Remember—location, location, location.
Making a Bandit Sign- We make them for you using a material known as corrugated plastic. It’s a light, yet durable substance that’s the go-to material for outdoor marketing when you combine its low price with its outdoor longevity (it can last 2-3 years outdoors).
Coro is affordable, recyclable and extremely versatile. We then print your graphics with high-quality UV inks digitally when you order a low volume. It’s a quick, efficient method of printing in low numbers. Should your volume of signs be higher, and you want them with only one or two colors, we go to the silkscreen procedure of printing. Silkscreen printing is unique in that for each color, a different screen is required. It takes some extra time to do this. But once one sign is made, the process becomes like an assembly line, and we can crank out bulk orders at a rapid pace.
Pros & Cons of Using Bandit Signs:
Let’s get the cons out of the way real quick, because there are only a couple. We already mentioned that people steal realtors’ bandit signs. It doesn’t hold true for that industry alone. Any yard sign for any business or any purpose is subject to being stolen. There are some people out there that just don’t like them. They find them to be cheap forms of advertising. They think of them as cluttering up certain areas.
They believe them to be infringing on space that doesn’t belong to the sign’s owner. When a sign is stolen and thrown away, it causes two problems for the owner. First, they have to pull out the wallet and shell out for another sign. While not expensive at all, it’s frustrating to have to do so. The second scenario is that the person who bought the sign could get discouraged and give up on using bandit signs altogether.
And then there’s the vandalism aspect. Some people don’t want to go through the trouble of pulling a sign and taking it to where they can throw it away. But they still want the sign owner to pay a price. Their thought process is that they can just vandalize a sign, leaving the owner to deal with the effort of taking it away and buying a new one.
And if they’ve given it an even deeper thought, they understand that if a sign is vandalized for days or weeks before the owner discovers it, it’s cost that person revenue. We mentioned earlier that if a sign looks bad (vandalized), it reflects negatively on its owner.
The only other negative is that the sign could conceivably get lost in a sea of all the others around it, and therefore your message could get drowned out.
Pros- Bandit signs are a very affordable way to go to spread your message. Buying just 10 of our smallest 18” W x 12”H 10 coro signs costs you under $5.00 per sign. Were you to purchase 100 of them, the price per sign drops dramatically down to just $2.58 a sign. It’s about as inexpensive of an advertising tool as there is out there.
How about the impressions your bandit sign can yield you? According to the Wall Street Journal, a sign can be seen by as many as 25,000 people per day. At the $4.60 price of a sign, it costs less than one one-thousandth of a cent per impression. That is flat-out unmatchable by any other advertising medium on the planet.
Research also indicates that 85% of your potential client base live or works within a 5-mile radius of your business. Your bandit signs will be seen by the people mostly likely to buy from you if you have a product they covet or need.
Because these signs are so lightweight, you can easily move them around to other high-traffic areas to advertise to new audiences.
If you’re eco-friendly, your signs can be recycled, so you know you have the option of not just throwing them away.
Companies That Benefit Most:
We’d like to think that nearly every company can reap the rewards of using bandit signs. For this article, we’ll focus on just three.
First, retail stores- Inside these places of business, signage is sometimes called the “Invisible Salesman.” Signs are there to promote deals and products. Outside, you can plunk down a sign that echoes those inside and drive customers to your store in droves.
Next, gas stations/convenience stores- Signs at these locations have perhaps the highest revenue-generating potential. And like retail stores, signage outdoors is a great way to lead and entice customers with promotional messaging.
Third, auto repair shops- Every single person who owns a car will need service. Have you needed an oil change, and low and behold you see a sign with the lowest price you’ve seen? Of course. And that repair shop has gotten you in the door. They provide the service quickly, and you may have earned their trust to keep coming back, even for the high-end repairs.
Avoiding Common Bandit Sign Mistakes:
We mentioned earlier in the real estate section of this article, that putting bandit signs up in municipalities is a code infraction, barely bordering on illegality. Will you find yourself in handcuffs? Absolutely not. The main problem people putting them up might not know is that they can’t place a sign on both private or public property without permission.
Make sure to give it some thought before placing your bandit signs. Remember how the large majority of your customers live within 5 miles of you. Would you like to snag every buyer in the city? Of course. But we don’t live in a utopia, so don’t place signs way out of range. You can fan out your signage a little bit to attract more people. But you will find yourself experiencing the law of diminishing returns at some point. The farther you put the signs, potential customer numbers won’t grow as much as they were until you hit that certain distance.
Messaging has a two-fold potential for disaster. Some people will have insufficient information on their sign, like lacking a phone number. This is especially problematic for real estate investors. Typically, the only message on their signs is something to the effect of, “We Buy Houses.” There is no business name or address, so missing a phone number is absolutely counterintuitive.
The other side of the coin is having too much information. With the minimal time someone has to read your message, they can’t digest too much. A good rule of thumb is to go with “KISS” (Keep It Simple Stupid) when designing your sign.
Another common mistake often made is choosing the wrong size of sign. It should be at least 24”W x 18”H. There is a similar principle as with messaging. Too small of a sign is hard to read, and it might get buried if there are a lot of other signs in the same location.
People who begin a marketing campaign with bandit signs might not necessarily know what works best with color schemes. Choosing a strong scheme is of vital importance. If your sign’s background is white, light colors or pastels do not work. They’ll be “camouflaged,” and will subsequently be far too difficult to read. Dark on dark=no good as well. It’s the same principle as with light on white. We have been making bandit signs since 2009. We are supremely knowledgeable regarding color combinations and what will work best. We are here to provide you with the advice you need. We want you to succeed with your campaign and see your revenue take off to heights you’ve not seen.
Ordering Your Custom Bandit Signs:
We sincerely hope you choose to order your bandit signs from us. So, if you do, here’s how it goes. When the ordering process takes place, we are prepared for your questions.
We most often get two of them right out of the gate from clients looking to buy products from us. The first is, “How much does it cost?” It depends on the size and quantity of bandit sign(s) you’re looking for. When you’re on the product page, it will clearly indicate the pricing.
The second is, “How fast can I get it?” Once you place your order (see the process below), and you approve the proof we send you, we will have your sign ready for you to pick up, or for us to ship to you, in just two business days.
When ordering your signage, there are three easy options for you:
#1- Call us at (800) 614-8040 and speak with one of our helpful and professional sales staff members. They’ll listen to your needs and talk through everything with you.
#2- Go to our website at www.goodguyssigns.com. When you get to the product page, you can use our handy, user-friendly design tool. Click on “Get Started” when you choose your sign(s), and you’ll see the option to select the design tool.
#3- If you’re someone who’s capable of creating a design with your own software like Photoshop or other, upload it and email it to us at goodguyssigns@gmail.com.
In Closing:
There it is, the skinny on bandit signs. A highly inexpensive and simultaneously effective guerilla marketing tool, they might just be the thing you need to take your company to the next level and beyond.
If you still have any questions or are set to place your order, we’re ready and looking forward to helping you.
