Baseball Bat Salesman Hits Home Run with Well-Positioned Custom Metal Sign
Small business owner increases his sales by hanging a personalized metal fence sign at the ballpark.
If you're like me, a small business owner with limited resources and infinite ambition, then you probably take advantage of any information you can find that relates to making yourself more successful. As a matter of fact, in my office I keep a file cabinet filled with clippings from newspapers, magazines and books that I have collected over the years, all of which contain jewels of knowledge that I consider useful in my endeavor as my own boss. Some people call holding on to all of this paper being a pack rat, but I disregard that notion because I quite often find myself referencing these materials that I have saved.
Can you share one of these "jewels"?
Sure I can! One clipping that I have held onto involves a man named Rich who makes his living selling handmade baseball bats. When Rich first got started with this endeavor, in order to advertise he used a personalized fold-up that he could place anywhere, because he worked out of his house and city zoning would not let him put a permanent in his front yard. He made the folding double-sided custom metal sign very fancy, and figured that, as long as a lot of people saw the personalized sign and saw what he could do, he would inevitably get SOMEBODY'S attention and thus some business. Rich put his business sign in the middle of the busiest intersection in town, because he was certain that his creative sign would catch the attention of drivers passing by and those people would call him for all of their baseball bat needs.
So was Rich right? Did his business start booming?
Well, not really. Rich got busier making customized baseball bats, but not as busy as he would have liked. People were calling Rich off of his fold-up sign, but the calls were not always relevant to his business. The people who did place orders either were baseball fans or were related to baseball fans, but a lot of times the calls were from people simply admiring his artwork and other times they were just prank calls. Rich was happy that he was getting some business from his personalized sign, but he started doubting the effectiveness of his marketing approach.
Poor guy! What did he do?
Rich invested in a few custom metal fence signs that he could hang in permanent locations. He decided that he would save his creativity for the baseball bats and opted to be very direct with his new business signs, so he included only his name, phone number and a brief description of his business. Since the customers he already had were all baseball fans, Rich decided that he would market his business signs towards baseball fans and thus hung the custom metal signs in the outfield at the local ballpark.
Did it work???
Oh yeah! Not long after he put his signs up, Rich's business doubled! Rich learned that many of his customers were from out-of-town and traveled to his city for games. He also learned that these people had never heard about his business until seeing his metal business sign at the ballpark.
So they had never seen his previous fold-up sign?
Nope. Rich realized that even though his fancy fold-up metal business sign probably made more impressions at the busy intersection, the impressions were not as productive as those made at the ballpark because only a small percentage of the people who saw the sign at the intersection had a need for his services.
What's the moral of the story?
The important thing to remember when thinking about Rich and his experience with advertising is that a fancy business sign is ineffective if it is not strategically located. As a small business owner, you have to go where your potential customers go. And once you're there, you can get their attention with a customized metal business sign!