Many businesses use tactics to make the cost seem like less than it is. For example, flying in a private jet from Los Angeles to Las Vegas only costs $10 per minute (instead of $1,800). And your cell phone only costs $3 per day (instead of $1,000 per year). But in the billboard business, sometimes it’s all about making things sound bigger than they actually are – and sometimes not. Here’s a list of times in which you want to make things sound big and others when you shoot for small.

The whole point of renting a billboard is to have a successful ad message. Yet many advertisers fail in this mission. When an ad is not good, it sells nothing, and the advertiser doesn’t renew. It’s basically a wasted opportunity on the part of everyone involved. So what do advertisers do that is wrong and how can you improve on that?

There I was, minding my own business trying to keep a bunch of billboards rented when Texas was hit by the 1988 Savings and Loan Crisis and the resulting depression. Billboard rents fell 50% in just one year, while the Texas economy was wiped out with a collapse of oil and real estate values. But I had to keep the signs occupied to pay my bank loans, and failure was not an option. In desperation I configured some new ways to make my billboards affordable for advertisers. In many ways, it’s similar to the Covid-19 crisis, only there were no programs to ease the burden like the Cares Act back then.

Can an individual take on a huge billboard company and beat them at their own game? Yes, it’s been done a thousand times. So how can the small guy beat the big guy? In this episode of the Billboard Mastery podcast we’re going to harness the strategies that allow you to use the weak points of big companies against them and give you a continual edge.

I have long been a believer in this quote by Andrew Carnegie, the founder of U.S. Steel “problems are only opportunities in work clothes”. What that means is that you can look at U.S. recessions as either something to cry about or something to celebrate. I choose not to cry. Indeed, recessions such as the Covid-19 pandemic are great buying opportunities for billboard signs. You just have to know what you’re doing.