The underlying purpose behind advertising and signs for business is getting noticed by more people in your community and getting more business. Fair enough. But there’s some debate about the best way to use signs for business to achieve that goal.
In other words, you won’t find much disagreement about the goal of getting more customers waltzing though your doors or frantically clicking away and adding items to their e-cart. The debate’s all about the best way to use signs for business.
Some say that you should be straightforward and upfront in what you say on a sign and businesslike in the kinds of no-nonsense graphics that you use. Other people say that you need to boldly experiment or try dozens of different colorful approaches until something sticks. Who’s right?
Take Your Cues from the Hollywood Sign
The iconic Hollywood sign in Southern California originally had very little, if anything, to do with striking it big in Tinseltown. That now unforgettable sign started out as an advertising ploy from a real-estate guru eager to get people out to the Southern California sunshine.
Other famous landmarks out West like the Vegas Vic cowboy or huge Hard Rock Cafe guitar on the strip are unforgettable mostly because they embody a lot of characteristics of memorable signs for business.
Your signs for business will be remembered for a long time by people in the community if they’re dramatic and a little different from everything around them. That doesn’t mean that you should necessarily go with a hot pink sign with 3-D textures but being slightly different lets you stand out from the pack.
- Context, Location, and Defying Expectations
The Hollywood sign became so iconic because it literally stood out from its surrounding: Gigantic white letters silhouetted against a craggy brown and green background. The sign also happens to be in a strange place, which makes you do a double take.
That Hollywood sign is memorably propped up on a hillside where there’s nothing to detract from it. Vinyl, large-format signs for business can help you get the vibrant colors, perched location, and huge canvas that you need to get customers to screech their heels and take notice of your business too.
The Hollywood sign is unique in another way: The letters are set apart at different levels. Your eye instantly latches on to that because there’s something not “perfect” about it. It gets remembered. With signs for business, sometimes being remembered is better than being elegant, buttoned-up…and forgotten!
Match the Sign’s Location to the Depth and Showiness
Really think through where you customers are going to be taking in your sign. Signs that are perched super high up work best near, say, interstate turnoffs whereas drivers and pedestrians tend to cue in to things at eye- or windshield-level.
The depth of information and glitz of your signs for business should also sync up with the location: more basic information and catchier graphics for signs that are far away and more specific information and fewer or more subdued graphics for signs that are meant to convey information in your store and be read at eye level.
The original Hollywood sign was a real-estate stunt to drum up more attention for a suburban development at that time called Hollywoodland.
Aside from brilliantly contrasting with its surroundings, the sign got something else right: It didn’t say too much. It gets the conversation going and realizes that people couldn’t read mouseprint on a hillside from their cars anyway.
Vinyl banners and signs for business work best when they defy expectations yet take into account context and audience. Contact us for more information.