First of all your story of how you started is very inspiring.
I have in the last 4 weeks been able to secure 16 billboard sites (I’m from New Zealand by the way) in the inner city of where I live which is the capital of New Zealand. Part of my portfolio includes sites coming into the city off the motorway or state highway as you may be more familiar with. I also have 1 billboard going out of the city heading onto the motorway.
I have premium locations and now want to get them occupied with clients. Question is HOW DO I COMPETE WITH THE BIG PLAYERS AND GET NOTICED BY THE MEDIA BUYING AGENCIES???!!!
Don’t focus on national accounts – focus on local accounts. Use your size to your advantage – don’t try to compete with the larger companies on national accounts. Local accounts renew year after year while national accounts are fickle and hardly ever renew. You will be miles ahead with a local advertiser who stays on for three years over a national account – paying more – who drops off after 6 months.
I’ve got a huge section on selling to local accounts in my book and course – it’s a 10 step method.
When you say local accounts are you meaning the smaller businesses or franchises? If so I have approached smaller businesses and while they want an outdoor presence the incredibly cheap price I have offered is too expensive for them. What I have noticed too is that the media buyers here are incredibly lazy and instead of doing their job properly for their clients they just stick with the big players so their work load is minimal. I have seen some billboards that the big players have in Wellington where I live and I am so surprised that they have brands like Coke and vodafone on them because the sites are in horrible locations. The only reason I saw them was because I was looking around the city with intention of looking for billboards for myself. I have lived in this city my entire life and it was the first time I saw these billboards.
An idea I did have to gain the attention of the media agencies/buyers was to offer my billboards for FREE for one month only to their clients though their clients would have to take care of their production and installation. I was going to call the brands themselves to tell them I have premium sites for them at no cost for one month but they would have to let their media agency know of this and for them to contact me. The other idea I have is to build the biggest billboard in NZ (with a client on board) and get on the news over here to get some attention on myself.
What are your thoughts on this? I rather enjoy the guerilla marketing type of thing.