Advertising is a very critical aspect of business. No matter how wonderful your products or services are, no one will come for them if they are not aware that you offer these products or services. A wise man once said that doing business without advertising could be compared to winking in the dark. No one but yourself knows what you did.
Aside from this very obvious benefit of advertising, there are some other interesting ones which you can read about here.
Advertising is done in different ways, using different media one of which is signage. We will be taking a closer look at this method and how effective it is in promoting your brand, product, services, campaigns, events or any other thing you want to put in the faces of the people.
What is Signage?
This refers to the use of symbols, images or texts in a design meant to call the attention of people around to something. This could be a business, a cause, an event, an instruction, direction or anything that you need people to become aware of.
A few examples of these include: billboards, banners, electronic or digital outdoor ads, storefront displays, pylon displays, monument displays, wayfinding signs, reader boards, window lettering and graphics and others. All of these fall under outdoor signage.
How Effective Are They?
The pace at which the world is moving into the digital space is making a lot of folks think that traditional advertising methods like outdoor advert placement is no longer relevant. Nothing can be farther from the truth. Have you wondered why the almighty Google, Amazon, Facebook and some other wholly internet based corporations still place adverts on the traditional domains?
As an advertiser, you want to reach every one of your audience anywhere they may be. As of today, we are not always on the internet. We still drive or walk through streets, sit at bus or train stops, visit office complexes or walk past physical stores. All these places are prime targets for the placement of appropriate advert displays to engage the attention of anyone who walks or drives through.
To put things in proper perspective, let us look at a few statistics that may help us better understand the importance and effectiveness of signs.
About 50% of Your Customers Come in Because of Your Sign
Yeah, yeah! We know you did some local search engine optimization so your business now ranks well and is probably placed in Google’s 3-pack for local searches. But wait a minute! When the potential customers eventually gets to the address, how will they know where to come to? Yeah, the sign at your premises confirming the presence of your business.
The sign you place at your business location helps your SEO efforts convert better.
35% of Your Potential Customers Will be Unaware of Your Business without a Sign
People will walk past your business place without knowing that there is anything going on there without a sign properly informing them of what is going on there. Your local SEO efforts targets people who are searching for your business at the time. There are however those who may need your business sometime in future who will simply walk in because they had seen your sign at one time and had mentally stored it for future references.
Boosting Word of Mouth Adverts
Any advertiser knows how effective word of mouth adverts are. A person may see your sign and later refer someone to your business just on the basis of the fact that they recollect that your business exists there simply because they saw your sign.
There are a number of other benefits but we will stop at these for now.
Choosing a Signage Company
The effectiveness of your sign is determined by the knowledge and creativity of the company handling it for you. To ensure you choose the right company, there are a number of things you need to consider when making your choice.
Reputation
Find out all you can about the company. You want to know who they’ve worked with and the results they’ve recorded with their existing or previous clients. You also want to find out how their past clients view their services. This will give you an idea of what to expect from them.
Location
Location is a very critical aspect of advert placement. To know where to place a billboard or other display ads, you need to understand the terrain and flow of traffic in the area. It is therefore important to choose a company that already understands the area.
For instance, if you are looking for Calgary signs, choose a company that understands Calgary and its population so they can place the ads in the most optimal locations.
Services Bouquet
There are different aspects of the process of placing an outdoor ad. This includes concept and design, fabrication, installation and maintenance and other support services. If you can get a company that offers all these, you will likely save some cost and also improve efficiency.
