How We Breathe Life Into Dead Advertising Space

One of the awesome things about Ben Kinney buying ActiveRain, is I get to once again be really close to a successful real estate operation (those that have been around for a long time know that prior to launching ActiveRain back in 2006, we owned our own brokerage in WA, Brio Realty).

Today, I want to share with you something Ben's team is doing to breathe life into what was previously dead advertising space.

Open House Directional Signs - Dead Advertising Space

Ben's team does Open Houses. If done properly, they can be a great source of lead generation at the property and lots of agents and teams swear by them (and I know, plenty don't). But what about those 10-12 directional signs that go out around the neighborhood? Until recently, those have always been 'dead advertising space'. Meaning, people drive by and see them, but they have no real call to action and they don't do a ton for our business from a lead generation standpoint.

Think about it, maybe, if the person is actually headed to your open house, they serve to point them in the right direction. And maybe, maybe (we should probably throw in a third maybe here, because I seriously doubt this happens often) maybe they get lost, see the phone number on the sign, and call? Seems pretty doubtful.

So what then for that person that has no plans to attend your open house right now? Well, when they drive by your open house sign, it's dead advertising. There is no call to action for that person. So we tried to solve that on Ben's team. This is what we came up with:

 

 

Give Dead Advertising Space a 'Call To Action'

As you can see, we created a call to action for someone that might just be driving by the sign, but isn't actually headed to our open house. So what happens when you text BKOPEN to 59559? 

You get this message back:

"Here is a list of upcoming open houses this week courtesy of the Ben Kinney Real Estate Team! whatcomopen.com"

At this point, it doesn't matter if the consumer actually goes to whatcomopen.com (although if they do, they will get exactly what we said they would, a list of all open houses in Whatcom County coming up via the IDX feed on our website and we don't have to update it.....), the act of them texting BKOPEN to 59559 delivered their cell phone number to us.

We get their cell phone number, they get a list of upcoming open houses this week.......everyone wins! And we figured out how to turn dead advertising space into something useful for his real estate business!

In a decent location, this will generate a few leads per open house when there are 10-12 signs out. Nothing huge. But before these signs did nothing more than point them in the right direction......

(FULL DISCLOSURE: Ben created that text code using KWKLY, a text messaging service that we own and operate)

 

Bob Stewart
ActiveRain

 

 Make sure you check out the ActiveRain Facebook Page