Billboards

What recruiting tactics does your agency use to recruit? If you are like most agencies you resort to a billboard and call it quits. Well, your department should be doing more but if you are at least using a billboard, that is a start. But what makes a billboard effective?

First, you must understand that billboards are the most common recruiting tool used by police agencies across the United States. Upon doing a poll of 20 police agencies with 500 officers or less, at least 17 out of the 20 have tried using billboards to recruit. But, do billboards honestly work? The answer is “yes” AND “no”.

Billboards can work to recruit for your agency. However there are several issues that must be overcome when deciding to use a billboard. Just make sure you don’t let any sales associate with a billboard company tell you anything different. Remember, they are there for the sell! Here are a few guidelines to go by:

1. No matter what financial deal they give you, if the location is not fruitful for traffic the billboard is useless – Now if they are willing to give it to you, I don’t care where it is located, but if you are paying for it, demand a high traffic area. You can request statistical data on the amount of traffic the road receives and even when the traffic is most predominant.

2. The billboard is only as good as it can be read – This means that if you place too much information on the billboard no one (unless the area is a gridlock area as seen in the first picture) will be able to read all of the words you have on it. Remember to make your billboard to the point and "eye candy" for the viewer.

3. Billboards are only as good as you make them – Think about some of the billboards that stand out in your mind. To this day you still remember them and you can refer back to what they were for and why they were attractive to you. You must do the same thing for your agency. The billboard must be catchy, attractive and something everyone will remember. Just make sure it is tasteful! There are good billboards and bad billboards, but which one will yours agency’s be?

The most important two things to remember when using billboards are to
1. Get your message out; while
2. Making the presentation pleasing to the eye.

If you do not accomplish these two important points then you are wasting your time and your agency’s money, no matter where you put the billboard.