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Your secret advertising tool: empty buildings downtown as billboards

By Becky McCray

Seems like every rural downtown has a few: empty buildings or buildings used for storage. Those empty buildings are actually a potential advertising tool.

Look at these examples that Vienna Lee showed me in Elkhart, Kansas. Both buildings are empty, with only the front windows used to advertise other businesses.

Empty building with windows advertising a moving and storage business

This banner gives the illusion of looking into the front display space and seeing boxes stacked there.

 

Empty building with windows advertising a satellite TV business

This satellite business used existing advertising materials (signs, stand-ups and banners) to fill the windows of this empty building.

The hardest part may be talking the empty building owner into agreeing. It may help to point out that everyone benefits: you get the advertising, the building owner gets a little revenue until they can find a new tenant, and the downtown gets something better to look at than an empty shop.

Also check out this example of renting just the front windows for advertising in Alva, Oklahoma.

Would you rather fill those empty buildings with new businesses? Deb Brown and I have put together a Toolkit to show you how she filled empty buildings by running a tour. You can get the details at the Tour of Empty Buildings Toolkit.

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About Becky McCray

Becky started Small Biz Survival in 2006 to share rural business and community building stories and ideas with other small town business people. She and her husband have a small cattle ranch and are lifelong entrepreneurs. Becky is an international speaker on small business and rural topics.
  • Zoom Towns: attracting and supporting remote workers in rural small towns - December 10, 2020
  • In an economic crisis, spend your brainpower before your dollars - November 25, 2020
  • Video: How to fill empty car dealership buildings for the holidays - November 6, 2020
  • How has 2020 changed the challenges rural small towns face? Tell us here - October 20, 2020
  • The Idea Friendly Method to surviving a business crisis - October 6, 2020
  • Join me for the Rural Renewal Symposium online Oct 13 - September 26, 2020
  • Cheap placemaking idea: instant murals - September 11, 2020
  • Refilling the rural business pipeline - July 7, 2020
  • Huge vacant buildings: grants to renovate? - June 9, 2020
  • Economic self defense for small towns  - June 7, 2020

March 13, 2017 Filed Under: entrepreneurship, marketing, rural Tagged With: empty buildings, empty windows, visual marketing, window decorations, window ideas

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