David Pomeroy is a Houston based billboard advertising consultant who works from the customer side  to help businesses grow their revenues by using billboard advertising to target their customers efficiently. Insider saw his recent post and, with his permission, wanted to pass along his thoughts.

I had one of the most interesting experiences I’ve had in a long time last week. I visited a retailer to cold call. The business has a billboard with a competitor of mine, which indicates they might be a good prospect. I easily found the owner and encountered one of the most talkative, interesting guys I’ve come across in quite a while.

A little back story- the billboard he rents is on I-10 west of town, a full 58 miles from his store. I know the exact distance because he told me so. Most retail advertisers, as you might imagine, prefer billboards much closer to their location. This usually makes good sense because you wouldn’t expect most customers to drive very far. You should fish where the fish are biting, as they say.

His counterintuitive approach of course begs the question- why does he pay for a billboard 58 miles from his retail store? He explained that he got a wild idea one day when driving out that way to call about a vacant billboard with a For Lease phone number on it. The price was right so he rolled the dice out of curiosity. The day his billboard vinyl was installed, he received a phone call from a long time customer. This man was with his wife and a few friends and they were passing from San Antonio on the way to the casinos in Louisiana. They had no intention of going to his store but the billboard started a conversation with their friends about the shop & what a great place it is. They ended up detouring and spending several hundred dollars with him- all within hours of his billboard going up!

Nearly every day in over four years since, he told me that at least one person has commented on his billboard. Some of them ask questions like mine – why on earth do you have a billboard way out there? His response is brilliant- because it makes you think about him. You wonder, you comment to others in the car, and you talk about him. After all, isn’t that the goal of advertising?

So while I typically prospect advertisers with large budgets, here’s a shout to the little guy. Going into business is easy, but staying in business is hard. Hats off to the entrepreneurs with the creativity and guts to figure out how to use advertising as a tool to grow their business, whatever their budget or situation.

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