Managing Digital Billboard Customers
Managing digital billboard customers can be very difficult. On an average we have 12 client’s on one board. Divided into full and half slots. That can get tricky when you have many locations. Especially with all the art work changes and rotation requests. As long as you have a good system in place, it’s manageable without too many headaches . Here is how we have done digital scheduling for many years and found that it has worked well for us.
Scheduling:
What is on the contract? Does the customer want a specific location or locations? Or are they on “rotary”, meaning you can put them anywhere. With digital, rotation is always recommended to reach more people. Once you know where your customer is going to start you can put them on the spreadsheet. We use a google spreadsheet to manage where our clients are and where we move everyone around to.
The spreadsheet has 3 columns across the top (Location | Customer | Slot (full/half)
When it comes time to rotate we simply draw lines (in pencil) on the sides of the spreadsheet designating who is moving where. If a customer is coming down, we highlight them in pink so we know it’s an open space. This method may seem old school, and yeah it is, but the alternative is using a schedule/business management software that is often out of the small billboard companies budget.
We keep a printed copy in a binder with a date at the top so we can keep up with who was on what location and how long. These records come in handy when you have to do land lease payments.
Rotation:
Ideally, we would rotate every digital customer within a given market (city) around to its various billboards every month. However, when you have so many locations this becomes nearly impossible. We rotate customers as they ask, but also in a sort of random fashion if we think a customer has been at a location too long. The tricky part is making sure you don’t put 2 customers in the same industry back to back. We make sure to put as much space between them as possible. And not on the same location if possible.
If you have a location that has ad restrictions, for example, in a bank parking lot where they don’t want other banks advertising on it, you can designate that billboard with a special color in the spreadsheet as a warning when you are doing rotation.
ON and OFF List:
We also keep an on and off list for each market. That way we know exactly how many spots we have available at any give time. A google spreadsheet can be accessed from your phone or computer and we keep a printed version in our scheduling book as well. This spreadsheet is simple as well. Columns include: Date | Off | On and a section to make notes to the right for leads and such.
