DaveJ1963

I'd like to know if anyone here has ever used "bandit signs" for generating leads. I'm talking about coroplast signs that you set up at intersections. I know real estate investors have done real well with this over the years.

I thought it might work with loan modification, employment, dating, car insurance.

You could put a phone number on the sign, then when people call they are instructed to leave an email address. You then email them the link to the offer.

One single sign (about $2 in cost) at the right intersection could be seen by 10,000 people a week.

Any thoughts?

DaveJ1963

Whoa everybody, don't all of you reply at once!

I guess the 0 replies is all the answer I need.

Now I need to figure out if that means anything, or if my idea is still as good as I think it could be.

Phobos

I guess nobody answered because nobody uses them
Why don't you try it and see how it goes. Who knows the gold mine you could stumble upon. Be brave and act on your ideas. This is how most great people found success. ... and don't forget to keep us posted Good luck
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DaveJ1963

I have real estate friends who swear by them, that's why I'm intrigued. I also called an insurance guy in my area who's used them for years. I just need to figure out the right offer and go for it. If I can get 1 or 2 $9 leads per month off of a $2 sign, then that's something to scale up from there with more signs, more areas and other offers.

We'll see.

Phobos

I think you should first go with automotive offers and see how it goes.
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HowWhoWhen

I was actually thinking about this a few days ago. Then I wondered about the legalities. The city could possibly fine you if you put the signs in the wrong areas. Secondly, what if the sign falls over into the road causing an accident. You could be found liable for something like that.

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cpabrainstormer

Hey DaveJ1963,

It's actually really funny that you posted this today because about 2 hours ago, I was at a red light and I looked over to my right and I saw a little sign with a metal stand stuck in the ground. It read something like this, "Need auto insurance? Call this number and leave your name and email address and we will contact you with further information."

I thought to myself, "That's actually a REALLY clever idea." The morality/ethics of the strategy is in question a little bit, but if you really are HELPING the person, I think it's a great idea. If you are just emailing them a link to an offer that's going to trick them into paying a monthly fee or something, then maybe not the best idea. But I like the creativity behind the idea! Hope it works for you though!

Best of Luck,

CPABrainstormer

Tim Van Dalsum - Owner of CPABrainstorm.com. A site dedicated to bringing the community of Cost Per Action Marketers together. Check out the site and see exactly what I do, every day, with my CPA marketing business!

DaveJ1963

I think I'm going to start off with a Loan Modification offer. A sign that says: "Facing Foreclosure? I'll help you save your house! Call ASAP 1-888..." Then they listen to a 2 min. message instructing them to leave their email address for more info. Then I email them back and get them to double opt-in and I drip info on them every week via aweber. Offer Vault has a few listed and they pay up to $14 per lead. With home foreclosures still running high this could score really well.

valdivz

Dave....where are you located? I think I might try it here in central Florida. Now...I just have to find some cheap signs.

Most marketers won't do this because it's outside their comfort zone which is golden for us action takers.

Cut The Crap & Give Me The Goods...!

DaveJ1963

I'm in St. Louis, so knock yourself out, it won't effect me.

Bryan V

Ah good idea! I've never thought of doing this, but have seen it all the time. It's working for SOMEONE.

Personally I would never rent a room, buy insurance or anything too serious from these kinds of street signs. Unless it was a well known establishment already.

I also would never take a phone number down from one of these signs. If I'm driving, maybe I'll try to remember a domain name or something if I think it might be worthwhile.

I always see people rollin up in their Benz taking down or puttin up these signs. Definitely something to test!

ShaneBoyd

maverick money makers talks about this I believe.

Personally, I think it would work. I see them where I live...they just suck that's all. Any kind of work from home sign would work. At $2-$10 a sign, it's a lot cheaper to test than using PPC.

Peace,

Shane

p.s. direct them to a squeeze page, not a phone number. then offer a free report at the sight. You understand the rest.

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bsnrjones

I know this is an old thread, but here are some other thoughts about this idea....

I have a friend that owns a huge home security business down south. 4 months ago they started putting out 100 bandit signs a week - outside the city limits primarily. They sell between 15 to 30 systems a month from these signs. They do lose signs, that is not the point - the point is they make sales.

I just struck an agreement with a security company here in my town. I will place signs each Friday night and pick them up Sunday night. The calls will go thru my Google Voice account to their phone. That way there is some oversight. I will make $100 per install.

We are going to start with about 20 signs a weekend at key intersections. Based on traffic counts provided by the local city website, I predict that 20 signs will yeild about 60-70,000 cars seeing the signs per day.

I will let you all know how this turns out! Stay tuned....

bayshorekid

Nice work buddy! I love offline stuff due to the lack of people willing to actually go out and put signs up...better for us!

imback

I have tried back in the day on college campuses with a pretty good success rate. You need to make sure you find a way to track your visitors so you know which spot is hot.


Good Luck,

CHAD

jeffrey73

Don't listen to anyone trying to talk you out of this. Follow your gut and test it out! The worst that could happen is you lose some time and a couple bucks.

But think about the possible upside...

Matthew NY

What a great way to get tons of people to check it out at once. Give it a go and see what happens. Worst comes to worse you lose $10 in some signs. Much less of an investment than whatever else is out there online. Good luck!

Syzygy999

I don't want to put a damper on this because it is something I am thinking about trying myself.

If you Google "bandit signs" you will find that many real estate people already use these ... or have used them in the past. I'm not talking about the "For Sale" signs in front of houses. I mean signs that you see near intersections and along the sides of highways that say things like "We Buy Houses" and give a phone number to call. These are put there by real estate investors who are trying to flip houses for a quick profit, or gain new prospects, etc.

What the real estate people all say is that these signs are often very effective ... but also risky. That's because every county and every city in the country has laws against putting signs in the right-of-way (or in the median strip) of public roads. Just because you see other people's signs in those places (especially during political season!), doesn't mean the laws don't exist. Some jurisdictions are more diligent about enforcing the laws than others are, but it's hard to know ahead of time which ones are which.

Most of the time (as I gather from reading what the real estate folks say), the county or city code enforcers will just remove your signs. If enough people read your sign and go to your CPA offer to make this just a cost of doing business, this might not be so bad. But in most places they can fine you if they want to. Sometimes it's a flat hundred bucks, say. Sometimes it's $100 per sign. In some places it's more. I read one real estate guy say he was fined $20,000 once, but since he had managed to make like $100,000 profit on one of the deals he secured via the signs, he could afford it.

How do the "sign Nazis" (as some of the real estate guys prefer to call them) find the sign owner in order to fine him? They call the number on the sign, pretend to be interested in selling or buying house, set up a meeting, and then whip out the citation. As CPA marketers we wouldn't put phone numbers on our signs, but we would put URLs, and all of a URL's contact info (registrant's name/address/phone) can be found through a WHOIS search.

Now in all honesty I don't think most of us would have any problem putting a few small signs here and there, except having the signs disappear after a few days. I may try this myself this weekend, so again, I'm not attempting to dissuade anyone else from giving it a shot. I just wanted to insert that the cost of your signs isn't all you risk losing, however small the actual risk of being fined.

I would sure love to hear from warriors who have actually used such signs, though, and could tell us 1) how effective they were in getting people to the CPA offers, and 2) whether or not they caused any problems with the local "sign Nazis."

joolkano

As a real estate investor, I personally have done this when I was looking to buy houses and it works well.

I have seen it done by others promoting non-real estate related products & services. It could yield to be very profitable. But like the previous post said, you have to be aware of the risk. You can get away with it on crappy neighborhoods but once you start putting it on better neighborhoods, you will get a call from the township.

But don't just stop there. I think offline promotion for CPA offers is still an untapped area. You have to do it right so you can track which offline campaign works and doesn't work.

There can be no great success without great commitment.
www.jmarcusmedia.com

Syzygy999

I'm bumping this just once in hopes there may be some others with experience on this that they can share.

QuickSurf

Actually your very correct... you have to be extremely careful with bandit signs. Every state/county/city has different laws/regs from what the sign can include for writing and where it's placed, how it's placed etc. Like FL for example, you can get fined up the a$$ and further into trouble depending on what your doing and if you just keep breaking the rules on signage. Like my city for example, their not illegal however city workers are told if they pass any to yank them out, and they do. I had a buddy do this for his biz, but after all the fines and the cost of having to keep replacing signs like every other day and people to go around all day and replace them was too much of a headache for him.

So you may have a massive street or intersection with traffic, but sometimes where you think the sign would best go could be against reg's, and what direction it's facing etc. Just call up your county and city and see what they say.

martbost

I am looking at doing some PayDay loan CPA offers in a high traffic area where there are $500 payday loan shops about every 10 feet. I think some high volume areas that I can put some 100 day loan or similar signs up would get a good response.

Marty Bostick
Mobile Marketing That Works
Txt MOBILEDEMO to 75309 to see it in action

bayshorekid

I did the same thing with some success. Also, stuck fliers on bus stop benches...worked nice!

mizsporty

I am thinking about doing bandit signs as well, I have a dating agency and I know other larger companies use these religiously.

I have been told that its best to use these signs on Friday Nights through Sunday.

Any thoughts to a good strategy?

bayshorekid

How about biz cards or fliers on cars outside of night clubs???

bsnrjones

Thought I would update everyone - my first batch of signs will be going out on Friday night for the home security guy. I setup a tracking number that will forward to his phone, so I can at least track the calls.

I will probably put out about 25 or 30 signs on Friday night and pick them up on Sunday night. I will get paid per sale on this venture - we will see how it goes. I will report back on Monday with number of calls, etc.

bayshorekid

Nice! Keep us posted Monday!

bayshorekid

Any update on how things went???

raven2424

ya i am interested to hear about this as well it could be used in many cities and location what a great idea dave

JenniferMarie

With that type of a marketing it's important to identify your end goal (consumer action item) and the best way to achieve it. The most effective ads can be presented in many ways, but most importantly you'll need to keep that message to the point. Best of luck!

jbradley56

I was getting ready to start a SIGN campaign and called my local Code Enforcement Office to make sure it is ok. Well, it's NOT ok and if you put signs out at intersections you can be fined, etc., etc.

I can almost bet that the laws are similiar to other counties/states. You really need to check.

You really don't want to risk getting fined.

Not sure what state Steve is in and if, in fact, he is doing this sign campaign and making tons of money per month.

My guess, he's not doing it at all.

Just my 2 cents worth,

John

MartinBuckley

DaveJ1963,

I think your bandit sign idea is a great idea.

I hang sales flyers that promote affiliate products in laundry mats, bus stop boths, bulletin boards, etc. and I also use business drop cards that i have a few distributors pass them out for me to people on the street and place on car windshields.

I get 1,000 drop cards distributed per week and average around $300-$400 in sales per week depending on the product i'm promoting that week.

I would suggest that you buy a .com for each CPA offer you plain to promote and have it forwarded to the main sales page.

I can't see any reason why if you promote a good CPA offer with bandit sign that you wouldn't get good results from it, so go for it.

Please update us on how things work out for you.

I wish you much success,

Martin

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abby1

Why not get a trac phone, forward the number to Google voicemail with recorded message directing people to your offer/landing page. This way you won’t get caught.
Work from home
Data Entry
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Simple and very affective.

Saito

I've been a real estate investor for 10 years and put up bandit signs for 3 of them. You WILL deal with sign nazis and the city code enforcement folks, but yes, you can often get around that by putting them up for the weekend---a LOT of work!

But it might be worth it to test out for 2-3 weekends to see what happens. I would pick 30 ideal spots (sometimes 4 spots in one 4-way intersection) to hang them. Get a staple hammer and you can hammer them up high on telephone poles. Attach the hammer to a wooden pole and no one can reach them...hilarious!

I used to put up 30 signs per week, or rather, visit those 30 spots and put a sign back up if it is gone. I would get about 30 leads per month which was enough to do one deal per month. So I think it might be worth it if your payday is $5000+ but even with that I stopped using them because of the drama.

Ready to Profit from Your Next Moneymaking Product But Short On TIME?

FrankWellington

Test for yourself.

Much success,
Frank