Your secret advertising tool: empty buildings downtown as billboards

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.

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

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.

New to SmallBizSurvival.com? Take the Guided Tour. Like what you see? Get our updates.

• About the Author
• Latest Posts

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.

• Survey of Rural Challenges 2021 results, analysis of themes from 2015 through today - June 7, 2021
• What makes a small town a micropolitan or nanopolitan? - May 22, 2021
• Improving Rural Housing: turning blighted dilapidated houses into new homes - May 7, 2021
• Are marijuana shops good or bad for small towns? - April 22, 2021
• Downtown is your town’s core: How to make your case - February 22, 2021
• 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