Matt Riley
VP OF SALES AND MARKETING

Decades. That’s how long weekend directionals have appeared on corners of busy streets and to entrances of new home builder communities. For as long as I can recall, it’s been a standard, age-old marketing practice for home builders.

Determining directional location takes more than understanding some cars pass by here and there. It takes strategy, time and a lot of thought.

Enter, the Marketing Manager. They roll out their city maps and tirelessly go to town on identifying significant intersections where people who live/travel in a particular area “could” be driving. Then, they methodically plan out the sign route in an effort to send people in droves to communities and models. 

But the work doesn’t end there. Next, they take those marked up maps, with the determined route, and send them over to the “sign company”. There, the signs will be oh-so-carefully placed in exceptionally-organized order for the ideal passer-by to instantly see, in hopes they’ll take immediate action and say: “New community? I’m late to lunch, but after seeing these perfectly placed signs, I must follow them!”

For builders, it’s been a marketing practice to hire sign companies to place these plastic, 2”x3” signs—displaying the builder logo, community name and pricing, along with a small arrow—in hopes it’ll send customers in the desired direction: the model home. In theory, that all sounds great, right? Why wouldn’t the customers want to find the model homes and communities easier? After all, they’re just driving around with no direction, wandering about with free time on their hands, not knowing what they want to do with their Saturday or Sunday. Then, lo and behold, they see a well-thought-out and perfectly-placed directional sign. 

But then (gasp), they see every other builder in town did the exact same thing! How dare they steal such a grand idea? Now your well-placed directional sign looks a bit like this…

So, fellow builders, I ask you: Is this truly helping your customer? Is pulling up to an intersection with 10+ signs from different builders, including yours, all pointing in different directions really helping your customer? Or is this the last remaining part of your “print ego”, like billboards?

Now, let me ask you this question: When was the last time you jumped in the car and aimlessly drove around looking for signs? 

Or, did you look the location up on your phone and simply hit “Get Directions”, letting Google Maps take care of the rest? I would bet you dollars to doughnuts it’s the latter. So, if we don’t go driving around looking for “well-placed” signs in random places to tell us how to get somewhere, why would we expect our customers will? 

What if we decided to save our money on print signs and signage placements and put that money into the palm of your hand (home sales) because your customer used their mobile device, in the palm of their hand, to find your new community.

Stay tuned for part 2 where we explain “digital directionals”.