We are running a series of interviews with Tom Giesken who recently sold his billboards after a 35 year (including 25 years on his own) in the out of home advertising business Last week, Tom talked about billboard leasing and landlords. Today he talks about how to find good static and digital billboard locations.
Static Billboards
I try to get leases on primary highways into a town, main directionals. They don’t even have to be highways but usually are. I was consulting with a guy recently and we drove this one road and it was a County Road but there’s all kinds of traffic. I told him I would put 1 or 2 signs on this road and space them out a little bit. If they sell out, put another one there. I’m talking about static signs now because when you go to digital it’s got to be an A+ to a A- location.
Digital billboards
If you’re putting a digital up you got to sell 8 spots compared to 1 and you know you know maybe three or four of those might be national accounts but the rest of those are going to be local…at least the first ones you put up will be local because you won’t get national right away. And national advertising is six weeks or three weeks. A digital should be on a curve with no clutter. It has to be good traffic count. And the big one that I always tell people is the demographics is really important. When I was in Detroit they had these big billboards on high traffic roads and I knew what they were l only getting $800/period and because it was in a depressed area. If you put that same billboard on the same traffic in northern Detroit where there were some really nice communities you’ll get $11,000-12,000 per period per flip.
Permits
If you can have the wherewithal to stay awake reading zoning codes you can find some things. People always say it’s all picked over and there’s nothing out there anymore. There are spots out there. You can find them. They’re harder to get. It takes a bit more work but they’re priceless if you find them. I found these two Township parcels once and they were actually in the city but they were the Township. They were like islands. I was in looking at tax maps in the in the city office and I asked the staffer “what is that right there?” and she said, “that’s actually the Township that never got incorporated in. And you could put a billboard in a Township so I put a billboard up on each of those properties. And everybody was like how did you get that lease/permit?
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