For most people, their failure to find a billboard location is due to not working a large enough market. Your market should not be just one city--it should be maybe 50 cities and towns within a three to four hour radius of your home.

But sometimes, even in a well-planned and thought-out market, it can be hard to find new locations initially. That's why I have developed eight strategies to always find billboard locations. Here are three of them...

1. Go one more sign out

Sometimes the best place to find billboard locations is at the end of the world--the outdoor advertising world, that is. On any highway in America, the billboards start to die out as you get farther and farther away from the large metropolitan market.

There are many reasons for this, the largest of which is the declining ad rent as you get farther out and the major billboard companies' belief that locations are plentiful, and they can always go get another one if they need it later.

But for many people, this opens a whole world of opportunity. What's important is determining which market is poised for development and growth and which ones are in decline. If you build a new billboard where the legal locations begin to drop off (one more sign out), then you will ride the increase in ad rents that occur as an area develops.

2. Get a variance

Many people, when told they can't get a permit, simply give up. They are missing an opportunity. An ordinance that does not allow billboards can always be amended by a city council in the form of a variance. The key is to find what the city wants in return.

I have had good success in the past by filing for a variance in which I offer to give the city a "Welcome to (city name)" sign going in each direction for a few billboards. Although this sounds like a complex concept, it amounts to nothing more than having one of the landowners agree to allow a second "city" sign to be built on his land.

I have also received variances through rallying the downtown merchants around the ability to attract traffic off the highway with some billboards promoting those businesses. If you think about it, that's the best kind of variance as it not only gets you billboard locations, but advertisers, as well.

3. New highways

Did you know that your state highway department publishes a report showing all of the future highway projects for the next decade, including estimated date of construction?

Many people don't know this, but that book gives you a road map of future billboard sites. And you can start putting together ground leases and everything short of the permit while a highway is still in its formative stages.

Some of the most valuable ground leases ever obtained were on Highway 190 in Dallas. This was a huge highway project that had published right-of-way data years ahead of construction.

Unlike many road projects that start small (maybe two or four lanes) and grow in stature over time, this highway began life as an eight-lane. And those who were lucky (and smart) enough to obtain ground leases before it was built were later rewarded with up to $100,000 for those leases and permits.

Conclusion

There are many, many legal billboard locations out there in whatever part of America you reside in. Without having the knowledge of where to find them, you can spend years trying to figure it all out.

These three techniques I've described can work wonders, but I've got many more that are just as powerful. And you'll find them in my home study course, Investing in Outdoor Media, available here on the site. Learn all the tricks, shortcuts, and insider secrets that will help you find billboard locations like a pro from day one.

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