Book Your Billboard operates a 35 face billboard plant in the Sioux Falls Area.  The company’s co-owners Doug Muth and Zach Neugebauer were interviewed on the Daktronics Experience podcast.  Some of the highlights.

The billboard business isn’t a passive income real estate play

Once you’re in it you realize you own a media company.  It’s not like a normal real estate investment.  It’s a business.  You have sales people and you’re trying to motivate them…it all comes down to relationships, not only with sales people…but landowners that are renting billboards to you, people down at the city…prospective advertisers.  It’s the farthest thing from real estate that you can get.  It’s a business that you’re running.

Doing digital first

Our business plan was to go in digital.  We knew that we couldn’t get a massive amount of spots.  Our strategy was to go to digital…and maximize the spots…

But static has a place

We have a pretty decent size of static locations.  Usually you start with static and you can convert to digital.  We started with digital when Doug started the company and then we’ve had to add static to secure some key sites that aren’t quite ready for digital…we do operate some statics now.  It’s not our core focus but we do it to plant the seeds for future growth in key areas…

Daktronics digitals are bulletproof.

The boards are bulletproof.  In 2014 we put two faces up right next to the Western Mall.  A tornado came through in 2019 and tore the roof off the old Western Mall and did a ton of damage on 41st street.  Out two billboards withstood it and are still running today and we are in year 8 or 9.

Don’t set and forget ads

I encourage dayparting…In a city like Sioux Falls there’s drive time.  So maybe drive time is the best time…to hit your sales message for people to and from work…Who typically drives around during the day? Employees delivering material…a nurse going to work.  Daytime is a great time to switch to a now hiring ad…Our software allows us to schedule multiple ads…that opens the door for cooping opportunities.  You might have a gas station that has a cooping opportunity for a Jimmy Dean breakfast sandwich on the morning drive time and then maybe it’s a roller hot dog at noon and a Land o’Lakes milk special on the way home from work…I also encourage you to think about audiences at different times of the day.  If you are trying to reach older, retiree they are not driving at 8am…they fill their prescriptions at 9am…We’re not this old fashioned set-in-and-forget-it media.  We’re a dynamic media which should get treated just like your social media campaign.

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