By Dan Antonelli
Posted on Friday, December 13th, 2024
The internet message boards are lit up with sign companies complaining about many challenges they’re experiencing. In some respects, the challenges they’re experiencing are exactly the same as what other sign company owners experienced in prior decades: problems with competitors undercutting, problems building the right clientele, problems with educating clients about the value of both signs and design.
These challenges are compounded by technology for today’s shop owners. Technology has made it easier to enter the sign industry (which results in more shops undercutting each other). With easier access via the Web, clients have, in theory, even more options to choose a sign provider—whether local or online far away. Clients “crowdsourcing” their design work (outsourcing the design project via the Web, then buying the design they like best) is also a new, technologically driven challenge facing shops today.
I’m sure there’ll always be complaints about the sign business and the challenges facing them. The real question is: what are you doing about it? I’m often struck by the perpetual self-defeating myths or excuses that seem to permeate the approach of many shop owners. I’m sure you’ve heard these and a few others:
“I can’t get that type of work here…”
“I can’t sell that type of work here…”
“Nobody cares about design here…”
“Nobody will pay those prices here…”
So let’s tackle some of these obstacles and see if there are opportunities to overcome them.
I can’t get and sell that type of work here. This one is more a reflection on the shop, than the local environment. It’s more an issue of their own failure to market their expertise and give that client a reason to believe that your shop is the place to go to for high-caliber work. Most shops that believe they can’t sell high-end work in their area have not made the commitment to effectively market this as an area of specialization.
You have to be the one to create demand for this work by marketing it. Most clients simply don’t know the difference. How effective is your marketing at illustrating it for them? Whether on paper or on the Web, if your shop can’t make the distinction between your service and others, why would they pay your shop a premium? Instead, you’re viewed simply as a purveyor of sign commodities, not services. The same as buying an office chair, whereby the cheapest purveyor is likely to win the sale.
And what if your local environment is so economically challenged? Who says you can only work in your backyard? There’s plenty of marketing-savvy sign companies who have used the Internet to make their backyard the whole country or globe.
Nobody cares about design here. First off, this is a fallacy. People do care about good design—but they need to be exposed to it to understand its value. This is often a missed opportunity for a smart shop. If it is true that no one in the area cares about good design, it’s likely because no one in the area does good design. This is your opportunity to create the market. If you can do this, then you set the benchmark for the area; you command the dollars good design generates. Are you up for the challenge of investing in the marketing needed to build your market? Investing in yourself and your staff to be great designers?
Remember: every job you put on the street is marketing your business. Building this market will take time, and you should consider the extra effort you put into design as an advertising expense. I can say this from experience: the more great work you have in the portfolio, the easier it is to sell great work.
This is largely due to the fact that clients realize they can’t get what you do anywhere else. Imagine if you made the best wood-carved signs, or had the best truck wrap design in your area, and if your shop was the standard every other shop was judged by. Do you think it would be hard to sell design then?
Nobody will pay those prices here. Have you considered that no one will pay those prices here because you haven’t given them any reason to? Is there any difference to what you provide with what the client can get down the road or on the Internet? If there isn’t a significant difference, then I suspect if you’re not in trouble now, you might be soon. If all you’re selling is vinyl by the pound, then you had better be the absolute most-efficient shop on the block, and you’d better be doing a lot of volume on small markups. Some shops can do quite well as such, but that market is definitely getting tougher.
But if you can’t sell higher-priced jobs in your neighborhood, where could you? Can you create a niche for a specific type of sign you do well, and have a high profit margin that other shops can’t? Of course, the Internet makes your virtual marketplace unlimited.
I do very little truck wrap design for clients within 50 miles of my office. But I do a ton of them for clients all over the globe. How do I get that type of work? I marketed it properly and created a highly specialized niche that appeals to a very specific type of client. I wanted to sell more retro-genre type design work, so I worked hard to market it. Now it’s our number one source of Web traffic.
I created the market for it by marketing it as a very specific expertise we had. While we’re not the greatest on the planet at it, we must be pretty good to have clients from Sweden, the UK, Australia, Canada and all over the US seeking us out specifically for this work.
It’s all about the marketing. Most of the issues above can be dealt with by having a better marketing strategy—by creating the perception that your shop is better than the others. This means reinvesting in your advertising by being cognizant of the fact that every job on the street is a potential advertisement for your shop.
You have to create a market for your services and your expertise. You have to work at distinguishing your shop from the others. These are all key responsibilities you need to own. Stop blaming the economy, the other shops, the Internet. The answer lies within you, not within them. Are you ready to plot the course of your shop for the next decade or so?
This article appeared in the September/October 2012 issue of SignCraft.
We made a conscious decision to focus more marketing efforts towards getting work in the retro genre. We now have work coming in all over the globe for this specific look. While not one of these clients are within 200 miles of our office, it doesn’t matter.
Dan Antonelli owns KickCharge Creative (formerly Graphic D-Signs, Inc.) in Washington, New Jersey. His latest book, Building a Big Small Business Brand, joins his Logo Design for Small Business I and II. He can be reached at dan@kickcharge. com. Dan also offers consulting and business coaching services to sign companies. For more information, visit danantonelli.com. On Instagram: @danantonelli_kickcharge.
