How to make signage work for your business

Advertising can appear like a tug of war but professional advertisers are working tirelessly to have break-through even though consumers usually ignore their efforts. It is predicted that the digital signage market will grow high compare to its percentage years back.

The Science of Signage – Why Do Signs Work So Well? 

The report from a survey predicted that digital signage increases brand awareness by 47.7%, and boost average purchase amount by nearly 30%. More so, quality signage helps to improve customer experience and increase sales and loyalty.

Digital Signage allows brands to advertise the right message, to the right consumer, at the right time without high pay.

Relevance is a necessary in signage design, your advert should walk you’re your product and it allow rand to advertise the right message to potential customers at the right time. As a new business, try making use of point of sale signage to advertise your products.

Also, the survey explains the difference between traditional advertising which is fixed and digital signage which allows a retailer to adapt to his consumer, offering more flexibility service.

We often perceive messages advertised selectively because we are overloaded; we can’t absorb all, so we need to filter. Therefore, consumers mostly recall a digital billboard messages compare to the traditional one.

Traditional advertising is a broadcast medium, imposed upon the consumer. Instead, signage allows the consumer to take control because it reduces the negative emotions associated with pushy advertising and allows consumers to interact directly with your content.

If you can take the three factors into considerations; relevance, personalization and control, there’s assurance you will get advertising medium that will create a better customer experience.

Meanwhile, desire to improve customer experience should be a major factor when designing your signage. Instead of shouting irrelevant messages at consumers when they don’t want to hear them, signage allows us to be genuinely interesting, at the right time.

Signage does not only drive traffic, it also entertains, inform, educate, and in so doing, persuade.

Before you can have a good signage, you need to consider two things and they are:

DEFINING YOUR OBJECTIVE

KNOWING YOUR AUDIENCE

A retailer should always consider the business objective before making any decision. What do you want to achieve? What do you want your consumers to do? A retailed organization trying to increase sales on a featured promotion will understand that in this case, point-of-sale promotion will be more acceptable than out of home (OOH).

If you want signage to be maximally effective, you need to target relevant people to see it because it drives action to your business. Nevertheless, audience profiles are one of those things that every business entity thinks they’ve done well, but the information is often patchy, based on guesswork, and gets lost in translation between silos. Therefore, a retailer should observe the following:

• Who your consumer is,
• What they want, 
• Where they spend time,
• Their emotional profile, their fears, desires and ambitions etc.

Therefore, once you have defined your audience and objective, there are three elements you need to consider.

Placement: once you have identified your target audience, choosing an appropriate display location shouldn’t be a problem. You only need to know the target audience and the location will support it to drive in customer.

Also consider the placement of your signage within the location you choose. Accessibility is important– can people see it, read it, interact with it, if that’s your aim? Then you are sure to have the best.

Design: the next is your design, The Stroop Effect Test is a great illustration of why signage design should complement message and a split can cause a delay in understanding the message you want to communicate with customer

 In signage terms, interference might not always be something to avoid –interruption can break patterns to gain attention– but definitely something to understand.

Message: your message is what your customers want to understand and you shouldn’t write to impress, simplicity is the key to easy comprehension of what you are passing across to your customers. You should always try to make it simple, short and precise.

Timing: Timing is about the interplay of medium and location. Static signage might be more appropriate for low view-time areas like roadside, but longer dynamic segments might work well somewhere like an airport lounge. Always change your signage at the appreciate time; remember new sign will surely attract attentions.

Signage: putting the consumer first