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Welcome to the RV Park Mastery Podcast, where you will learn the correct way to identify, evaluate, negotiate, perform due diligence on, renegotiate, finance, turn-around and operate RV parks. Your host is the 5th largest owner of RV and mobile home parks in the United States, Frank Rolfe.
Pop quiz, are vacant spaces in your RV Park good or bad? Of course, the answer is bad. Pop quiz, what are the top five things you can do to get those spaces filled quickly and at low cost? That's what we're about to go over. This is Frank Rolfe, the RV Park Mastery Podcast. We're gonna talk about the top five ways to fill your RV lots immediately in a very, very low cost. Let's start with the big number one, numero uno in today's world, and that is online visibility. If someone goes and puts in RV Park located in blank, wherever you are, you have got to pop up on that list. If you don't pop up on that list, the game is already over. So you need to get with someone who understands the internet and how to get the job done, and you've gotta make sure that in a simple search of your market that you are on the official list. Now most people will go and contact many of the people on that list comparing prices and locations, but you have to be on the list or you're just excluded, you're completely out of the game. So make sure that you have that online visibility. And additionally, if you have online visibility, you can't just stop there, you can't just be on the list, you've gotta have a decent looking website that gives the reasons and the photographs as to why someone would want to stay there. You also need to have really, really good social media reviews so that people know that you've got a good product.
We all are often steered today by those stars and commentaries of what people think of your business. So if you wanna succeed, you've got to have good visibility, you have to have good social media reviews, and you have to have a good website. That's more important than anything else we're going to talk about. Number two, you've got to have good signage. Now, if someone is driving down the highway and they found you online and they're gonna go to you and maybe stay there, or if they're driving down the highway and just have decided without doing any prior research, wait a minute, is it an RV Park? You need to have something big and bold that tells them, yes, I'm an RV Park. I'm located right here. Here's the name of my RV Park. And you've gotta make sure that they can see it from the road so they know to turn in. If someone doesn't see you, they may go to your competitor. If they can't find you easily, they may then give up and do another simple Google search and go to your competitor. You have to have a really good sign. Now, some people will say, but wait a minute now, that good sign is enormously expensive.
No, they're not always enormously expensive. When I say sign, it has to be something that can grab attention. But typically, you can build a sign out of metal or out of wood that is maybe 4 by 8 feet or 5 by 10 feet in size, held up by two four by four posts for not a tremendous amount of money. And it's a permanent feature that every RV Park needs to have. So you've gotta have a really good sign at the front to announce where you are and who you are. Next, you've gotta have some bandit signs. Now, what are bandit signs? Bandit signs are little, very inexpensive signs that you can have printed almost any Kinko's or FASTSIGNS. I know you've seen these things, it's basically a coroplast sign with some words on it on a wire frame that you stick in the ground with your foot. Now, what's a bandit sign do for you, you might say? Well, look, a lot of signage opportunities are in fact not necessarily legal to put signs in. Now, when people put signage beside the road in locations that they have no permit to do so, those are called bandit signs because you're putting signs in really without permission.
And the downside bandit signs typically is, they'll be pulled out of the ground. Often the State Highway Department or the local inspector, he'll just yank out the bandit signs and throw them in the trash. As your competitors may also do so. But sometimes you put a bandit sign in the ground and it will stay a very long time, it might even be months. And the important part of the bandit sign is it serves a very, very important function for its low cost. Let's say, for example, you have an RV Park that's in kind of a difficult to find location. People exit at the same exit that you told them to exit at, but they don't really know when they exit there, they forget, do I turn right or do I turn left?
And then they may also forget, well, how far down the street do I even go? So you can print bandit signs with a turn arrow here or turn left arrow there. You can even put how many miles until they get to your RV Park, it helps people just find it. They can also be used competitively. You can put bandit signs near your competitors kind of and just put RV Park with an arrow to try and direct people past their Park and on to yours. It's basically a cheap form of advertising that can pay big results if you have them properly placed. Now, if you're gonna use bandit signs, make sure you know the downside penalty, don't do it if there's a huge fine for having a bandit sign. But for most RV Park, typically ones that are operated way out there in the county, there typically isn't really a penalty for them other than the fact that your sign may be disposed of. Next, put something big and exciting out in front of your RV Park besides just your sign, something to grab attention. Now, what can that be? Well, you can get inflatable things to put on your frontage, not a lot of money, or you can build a giant US flag, that would be some more money, but anything you can do to garner attention would be great.
Now, some RV parks, they go over the top. They go out and buy an old abandoned plane and put up a giant metal pole with that old plane on top of it. And yeah, that'll definitely garner attention, you bet it will. But that's kind of expensive. For most RV Park owners, a better solution that's more affordable would be such things or what are called feather flags. A feather flag is a vertical flag, it doesn't require the air to keep it furled out at all times, and you can buy feather flags for maybe $200 a piece. And a good feather flag will last you a really long time, maybe even into the years, although it'll get pretty faded after a year or so. And you can put them into any kind of color combo you want. Just put them right down your frontage and you will get a lot of bang for the buck. A lot of people will turn their head and look over there because wait, what is that? Look at all the flags. Oh yeah, look, there's the RV Park. Finally, you've gotta make sure that you have properly trained your manager on the basics of phone etiquette. When someone answers the phone at your RV Park, it needs to be the name of the RV Park and how can I help you? It needs to be professional. It needs to sound cherry like they're in command. It can't just be, hello, or what do you want? That's a real turn-off to most customers, we're trying to make a decision on where to stay.
Also make sure that your manager always answers the phone. It won't do you any good if you have all this online visibility and all these other items going for you and then no one answers the phone when they call. You can take your phones and port them through a service such as who's calling, and you can actually see what happens with those calls. It'll tell you which ones are answered, which ones weren't, it will even record the call so you can listen in on what was said. The important part is having a really great marketing program won't do you a stick of good if you don't have a manager to help use it. It's like having the greatest race car ever made, but a terrible driver, you're unlikely to ever win at NASCAR. People will admire your car, but you'll always have a disappointment thereafter. So having a good manager and a properly trained manager is the final step to really getting your occupancy boosted quickly.
Now, every item I just told you is not really very expensive. The big sign out in front is the most expensive, although there's many inexpensive methods you can do that with. But all of these steps are extremely important if you wanna get those vacant spaces filled and filled fast. This is Frank Rolfe, the RV Park Mastery Podcast. Hope you enjoyed this, talk to you again soon.