4 Reasons Real Estate Businesses Love Sign Riders

Sign riders are small signs that are placed close to a larger main sign. They usually contain information that the sign owner wants to highlight or use to help make a sale easier.

The real estate industry is by far the biggest user of sign riders today, for a number of good reasons. Laymen may not realize it, but there is a sophisticated art behind the design, placement, and, writing on today’s real estate sign riders. They’re more than what they appear to be, and real estate professionals love them for their low cost and their ability to smooth out different friction points in the sales process.

Here are just four reasons why property developers love using real estate sign riders:

1.) Sign riders can help direct a prospect’s attention

While online listings are now perhaps the most powerful top-of-the-funnel tool for real estate agents today, foot and vehicle traffic is still an important source of potential buyers, especially those who already live or work within the area around your property. This means signs and riders can be a powerful tool for attracting the attention of these types of buyers.

They are also useful for buyers who find your listings online or through referrals. You can share addresses and GPS coordinates, but even with such incredible technologies at our disposal, we all still need physical roadside and  property signs to both direct potential buyers to the property’s location as well as to confirm that they have, in fact, found the right place.

2.) They communicate professionalism

Real estate sign riders can be designed in a number of ways to strengthen both the core message of your real estate practice as well as the qualities of the property you want to convey. Even just having them around can already serve as evidence of professionalism, suggesting that you’re a real estate business that understands the buyers’ needs.

3.) Real estate sign riders can be part of an automated CMS system

While rider signs are pretty old school as far as marketing materials go, they can be a key part of a real estate practice’s automated customer management system (CMS).  They can be set up on the property itself to facilitate the instant transfer of information should a customer text a number printed on the real estate sign rider.

You can do a lot with such a setup, including sending property details through text and email, sending the customer info to a CMS database for future marketing campaigns, as well as informing agents onsite that a customer is outside, perhaps ready to start the buying process. The possibilities are only limited by your imagination.

4.) Rider signs can influence buyers at the point of sale

Real estate sign riders are usually separate from the main property sign themselves precisely to better draw a buyer’s attention to information that the real estate company wants to highlight.

Physical printed signs also tend to carry more emotional resonance than their digital counterparts, as noted in a series of papers cited by Forbes. As purchases are both logical and emotional, having a printed sign at the point of sale itself can tip the scales in your favor when you are making an emotional appeal to a customer.

The arrival of new digital marketing tools has not dampened the need for sign riders in real estate. As the industry continues to expand and as different types of technology become available, it’s likely that real estate sign riders will continue to play a special role.