Imagine you are commuting home; you are tired from your busy day. You may notice there is a lot of advertising and signage on your journey, but you are too exhausted to pay much attention to anything.
Your immediate plans don’t stretch past catching up on your Netflix recommendations and having dinner. Wait. Dinner. Now you scroll through your mental refedex of options. You land on the Mexican restaurant on your way home, they have a 2 for 1 offer. Perfect.
How did you know about the offer?
Effective signage doesn’t always make you stop in the middle of the street, staring in awe at it and calling your mum to tell her about this awesome sign you’re looking at. Sometimes advertising’s best work is done with the subconscious; filed away by your customers brain to be pulled out at the relevant time.
Both types of attention grabbing can provide a great return on investment.
One example of a recently effective ‘grab your attention’ campaign is Bond’s famous ‘Boobs’ billboards that looked like this:
This caused a stir, with a large amount of social media attention gained by people stopping to take photos and sharing them online.
The cost of the the market saturation achieved by this clever marketing campaign was significant as it included multiple billboards all over the country. For a large company such as Bonds, this provided an excellent investment in brand awareness. Meanwhile the use of approximately 5 billboards around your Mexican restaurant featuring a 2 for 1 dinner offer could also provide excellent results. Hence both strategies can have a desirable return on investment despite being at different marketing levels.
The key is knowing how to make your building signage stand out for your business. The trick? There isn’t just one tactic. There are several ways to raise brand awareness, increase leads and have your target audience take the action you want.
Contrast
Employing the use of contrast is the first step in making your signage stand out. Colour, light and movement are the three things that your customers will notice subconsciously before their mind catches up. You can employ the use of two contrasting colours such as red and white or black and green. Another option is to add illumination to your signage such as using a neon sign, light box or adding led strips or downlights. Movement can be used with digital signage, which has the added benefit of being updated whenever you please.
A Good Offer
Knowing the difference between a brand awareness campaign and a tactical offer campaign is key. If you can use a unique offer for your building sign, you are one step closer to getting your customers attention and also tracking the success of your campaign.
Of course building signage can be employed for general brand awareness without a specific offer attached as well. In these instances identify what is unique to your business and interesting to your customer and those are the building blocks for the perfect sign.
Keep it Simple
Write down everything you want to tell your customer in your signage. Then treat it like a fraction. Don’t worry, we weren’t great at maths either – find the lowest common denominator. Remove each word and piece of information that’s not entirely necessary and you will be left with the important information you can then form into an appealing message.
If you are wondering how to make the best use of your building signage or you have an awkward shopfront to work with, talk to our team at Fabsigns on (07) 3267 5507. We’ve worked with hundreds of Brisbane building signs and shop front signs – so we can find a great solution for any business!
Have you heard about the Suburban Shopfront Improvement Grants for Brisbane Small Businesses? You may be eligible.
