Custom business signs are an extremely effective way for startups to attract more customers and kickstart sales. In fact, on-premises, custom business signs have been shown to attract half a startup’s new customers.
This is incredible in its own right, but it actually only tells half the story. When you bring more customers through the door in your first few months, guess what? You’re also getting a lot of referral customers through word-of-mouth exposure.
Word of mouth, as the saying goes, spreads fast. It spreads even faster now that we have online review sites and ways for customers to talk online about their recent experience with your company. The cascade of positive benefits starts with eye-grabbing custom business signs that attract and gets customers excited.
Tips for Buying Custom Business Signs
Real-world business signs are so effective because 85% of your customers, on average, live or work within a five-mile radius of your brick-and-mortar store. That’s a lot of opportunity when you sit down and think about it.
While it’s true that a lot of customers occasionally move or relocate to another job, there’s always a market and customers to attract in Santa Rosa. And a lot of your customer traffic is coming from curious, impulsive customers who are just looking to check you out. Here’s how to make a good first impression:
Tip #1: Consider Location and Customers’ POV
The best sign in the world that’s out of your customers’ line of sight or blocked by shrubs is definitely not as valuable as a sign that makes an instant impression and is a simple right turn off a busy street.
With that in mind, you need to ask yourself where your sign should be placed in order to be attractive to customers. A sign that customers see at thirty five miles per hour as they cruise by needs to have certain characteristics to make it happen. Your logo, name and tagline should run alongside your business’ address or an arrow where customers can turn off.
It’s surprising how much business is lost because businesses forget to indicate where exactly their place is. Putting yourself in the customer’s shoes – and maybe getting in your car and driving by to see if the location and instructions (“next right” or “Exit 403”) make sense to you – can clear up a lot of confusion.
Tip #2: Consistently Use the Same Logo, Tagline and Typeface
This might sound like a boring way to go – where’s the excitement in making the same poster twice? – and to some extent you’re absolutely right. Telling the same story twice might not win you an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay but it does wonders with getting your logo consistently associated with your brand.
You know when you see the Coca Cola label and immediately have the flavor in your mouth? Maybe you’re more of a Pepsi person…the point is that by using the same logo, color scheme, and fonts across all of you signs, letterheads and posters, customers will automatically associate all of your marketing material together…a lot like people do with the Coke label.
Tip #3: Err on the Side of Simplicity
This last tip may be the most important – instead of using every ounce of space on the sign, just have your logo and name front and center, a super quick rundown of what your company does (if it’s not obvious in your logo or name), and some indication of where you’re located or how customers can get in touch. These are the simple things that sustain attention and get word-of-mouth referral customers later on.