By signcraft
Posted on Friday, July 19th, 2024
Yard signs are a natural attention-getter. Standing in a yard or along the street, they can be a powerful mini-billboard. They may tap into a current need as in “Hey—I should talk to that guy about my roof…” or they can put a message into the viewer’s memory for when a need arises.
They are a terrific advertising value for service businesses. The cost is low, and they’re out doing their job day and night—often in an environment where there is very little visual competition.
For the sign shop, they make a great add-on sale when a client comes in for truck lettering or another sign. Many business people overlook how much advertising these little signs can deliver.
David Showalter, DavidDesign, Bryan, Ohio, knows how effective they can be, and helps his clients take advantage with signs like the ones you see here.
“Yard signs give a lot of bang for the buck,” says David. “They are really inexpensive, and do the job 24/7. And if one comes up missing, it’s not a big loss.”
Good design and low-cost production
Design is really important on these little signs. A generic, plain text version won’t deliver readers like an appealing design will. As always, simplicity is the key to legibility.
“You’ll catch readers with some nice contrast, good use of color and maybe an image or graphic,” says David. “As always something nice and clean draws their eye, and is quick to read.”
While some are more upscale, most of the yard signs David does are corrugated plastic panels on wire stakes. Short runs are done in-house; medium to large runs are outsourced to wholesale suppliers. He gets the wire stakes from his local sign supplier to save on shipping costs.
“I often have them printed by Signs365.com in lots of 10 or more. The price is really reasonable. I mark them up about three times my cost, and it works out to be a great value for the client and a decent markup for me. You can do them in full color because they are a full digital print on corrugated plastic.”
When the customer needs larger quantities, David outsources them wholesale screen printer. The price per sign gets surprisingly low as the quantities increase.
Yard signs deliver
The owner of a bathtub resurfacing company that’s near SignCraft’s offices says he’s sold plenty of $5000 bath/shower liner jobs from his yard signs—including the one he keeps out by the street in front of his office.
“It’s amazing,” he says. “They are the cheapest advertising I buy, yet callers are always telling us they saw the sign and were calling about getting their bathroom done.”
