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From baseball to tennis to the sign industry, "hit ‘em where they ain’t" is a strategy that when perfected, can yield positive results.

William ​“Wee Willie” Keel­er was a right field­er in Major League Base­ball who played from 1892 to 1910. Keel­er had the mot­to ​“keep your eye clear and hit ​‘em where they ain’t” - which he did. Keel­er com­piled 13 straight sea­sons in which he bat­ted over .300 and his team won three straight pen­nants from 1894 to 1896.

Box Butte Gen­er­al Hospital. A project with lim­it­ed competition.

In ten­nis, ​“hit ​‘em where they ain’t”, were prob­a­bly some of the first words most of us heard when we were learn­ing ten­nis strat­e­gy. Hit the ball where your oppo­nent is not stand­ing so that he or she will not be able to return it and you will win the point.

This same strat­e­gy of ​“hit ​‘em where they ain’t”, can apply to exte­ri­or sig­nage. How many times have you chased after larg­er projects with a host of oth­er com­peti­tors and lost the bid­ding war? How many times have you bid low, won the work and at the end of the day made very lit­tle, if any mar­gin on that job? Spend­ing time up front research­ing and going after small to medi­um size oppor­tu­ni­ties and clients where oth­er com­pa­nies aren’t play­ing, can have the same pos­i­tive results as ​“Wee Willie” Keller or the ten­nis play­er hit­ting the per­fect shot in the cor­ner. To tru­ly max­i­mize prof­itabil­i­ty and grow your mar­ket, sig­nage pro­fes­sion­als need to fig­ure out new ways to catch the atten­tion of their small to medi­um tar­get audi­ence. ​“Hit ​‘em where they ain’t”, may be a strat­e­gy worth pursuing.