Terminology
- Hoarding – the boards or sheeting that go up around a building site, usually meant to keep things tidy and stop people peering in.
- Footfall – marketing speak for the number of people who physically walk past a spot.
- Dwell time – how long someone's attention stays on something, even just a glance while waiting at traffic lights.
- Brand visibility – the general idea of your name being seen, separate from someone clicking or buying anything.
There's a scaffolding firm in Leicestershire, run by a bloke called Jacob who I'll happily admit I've never met but heard about secondhand, who apparently puts his company number on every single job in letters big enough to read from a moving bus. His mate joked it was overkill until Jacob pointed out he'd had three new enquiries that month from people who'd simply driven past a job and remembered the name later. Whether that story is gospel or slightly exaggerated down the pub, the logic holds up. A scaffold stays in one spot for ages. People walk past it every day. And almost nobody is doing anything useful with that space.
The problem with treating scaffolding as just scaffolding
Most scaffolding companies are run by people who are brilliant at the physical job and have never thought of themselves as marketers, which is fair enough, that's not what they signed up for. The result is hoarding or sheeting that goes up blank, or with nothing more than a faded logo sticker that was ordered three van-liveries ago. Meanwhile the site sits there for six, eight, sometimes twelve weeks, visible to everyone on that street, every single day, for free.
It's a strange waste when you think about it properly. Businesses pay serious money for billboard space with a fraction of that dwell time. A scaffold wrap on a residential street might get seen by the same fifty households twice a day for two months straight. That's not nothing. But because the scaffolding industry doesn't think of itself as being in the visibility business, that space mostly goes unused or gets handed over to whoever printed the safety signage cheapest.
There's also a missed opportunity with bigger commercial jobs, where the hoarding around a city centre site is basically untapped real estate. Developers sometimes sell that space to advertisers already. Scaffolders rarely do, even though they're the ones putting it up.
Turning the boards into a billboard
The fix isn't complicated, though it does take a bit of organising to actually follow through on, which is usually where people give up. Start with your own branding done properly, full company name, number, and ideally a reason to call rather than just a logo floating in space. "Need scaffolding in three weeks? Call now" works harder than a logo on its own.
From there, consider renting the space out, particularly on long commercial jobs. Local businesses, especially anyone wanting visibility in that specific postcode, might pay for a banner spot on your hoarding. It's an extra income stream that costs you almost nothing beyond a phone call and a printed banner.
The honest downsides are worth saying plainly. Some councils and clients have rules about what can go on site hoarding, particularly on conservation areas or larger developments, so this isn't always a free for all. There's also a risk of it looking cheap if it's done badly, a poorly printed banner flapping off in the wind does more damage to your name than no branding at all. And if you're renting space to other advertisers, you'll want it in writing who's responsible if something comes loose in bad weather, because that liability lands on you, not them.
I'll admit I'm not fully sold on how well the rented-space model scales beyond bigger jobs though. For a two-week driveway extension, it's probably not worth the admin. For a six-month city centre development, it almost certainly is.
The point isn't to turn every job into an ad agency exercise. It's to stop ignoring space you're already paying to put up. Your scaffolding goes up regardless. Whether it earns its keep while it's there is entirely up to you.