Do you use signs to market your business or service?
You know the kind that I am talking about; the bright yellow signs that are nailed to telephone poles, or trees or are stuck in the ground near high traffic areas.
Investors called them 'Bandit Signs" or "Snipe Signs"
Several years ago, when I first began investing in real estate, I had a friend that ordered 500 of these signs every month to "get-the-word-out" as he says, about his business; when I asked him, "Why 500?" he replied, "Because "They" keep taking them down!"
He never could explain exactly who "They" were.
I accused him of being paranoid :)
I was naive; a "babe-in-the-woods"; I didn't know then what I know now!
So, for all you paranoid Charleston "We Buy Houses "Investors, "Avoid Foreclosure" Mortgage people, Realtors with "Open Houses" or plumbers, lawn care guys, roofers, junk dealers, personal trainers, phychics, or MLM vitamin and supplement folks, who think that your jealous competitors keep ripping off your signs...not only are you correct, but you have an even more dangerous threat that you may not be aware of!
The City of Charleston.
If you are one of the thousands of Charleston entrepreneurs who have read Jay Conrad Levinson's classic,
"Guerrrila Marketing" http://www.gmarketing.com/ and depend on signs like these to drive
prospective customers to your website or make your telephone ring...before you re-order
another trunk-load of signs, you might be interested in knowing that the City of Charleston
may have just become the biggest reason that your signs are disppearing!
Beginning February 17, 2009, City of Charleston code enforcement officers focused their efforts on
enforcing the City ordinance that prohibits illegally posted temporary signs. (See article below)
http://www.wscfm.com/cc-common/news/sections/newsarticle.html?feed=124237&article=5047528
Apparently, City staff regularly receives complaints on this issue from citizens, visitors to the city and commercial sources.
Earlier this year, Charleston County Code Enforcement expert Brandon White spoke to our Charleston Real Estate Association members about the problem the of "Snipe Signs" or "Bandit Signs" that are generally tacked or nailed to telephone and light poles around the city and warned of the "consequences".
So, if you have been cruising around late at night or early in the morning, strategically placing signs on street corners, in the median of the road, etc. and notice that your signs are disappearing faster than you can get them out, pray that it is your competitors that are stealing them...
Why?
Because, if your "scaricity-thinking-paranoid" competitors pulled them up, it only cost you around $3.50 (plus your time & gas);
if a code enforcement officer has them, it could cost you a possible fine of $250 per sign!
P.S. This is not to be confused with the "Bubble Gum Poles" that our roughly 4 million tourists and 26,000 students in downtown Charleston create each year.
P.P.S. Wonder how much the fine is for taking bubble gum out of your mouth (ugh) and leaving it on a pole in the Holy City?
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