Your brand isn’t just the look and feel of your logo or the colours and design you use in your promotional literature. It plays a huge part in helping customers recognise your business and everything you stand for. Whether you’re a restaurant, service or high street store, your signage should blend seamlessly with your brand, attract attention and draw those customers in through the front door.
Branded Signage
The main purpose of branded signage is that it creates an image for your customers to latch onto. Because of this, it should be part of your overall marketing strategy and your signage should match with your promotional literature and online presence.
If you have one outlet, a single restaurant for example, signage and branding can seem less important but if you want to stand out in your local area, it is more important than you think. For those with multiple locations ensuring your branding reflects your values and how this fits with your exterior appearance is a vital part of your overall marketing and business strategy.
Top Tips for Effective Signage
Deciding on your brand and how it is represented should be part of your business development plan. Ideally, what you want is for everything to come together to create an easily recognisable façade – something people look at and immediately know what you stand for. If you have a strong brand identity, it should naturally bleed into your signage and make it something more than just a few carefully designed words on a placard above your shop, bar or restaurant.
First of all, you need to put your signage in the right place. The traditional location for most stores and offices is above the entrance. The front of your property will dictate this. On the high street, it’s an easy choice to make. If your building is partly concealed by trees or other buildings, however, you may need to be more imaginative about placement.
Signage is Marketing
You also need to really start thinking of your signage in the same terms of your marketing. While it looks great above the door to your office or café, how is it going to hit the mark on any promotional literature or even online. Is it easy to read across all mediums? More importantly, does it clearly define your brand?
As your brand develops, your signage also needs to be updated. One big mistake that businesses often make is that they progress their brand but fail to then push that into their signage. If you are having a makeover, ensure you factor in the cost of changing your branding at the front of house as well.
Sign Makers are Vital
It pays to work with an experienced sign maker, like Technical Signs, when it comes to bringing your branding to life. It’s not just about that key headline above your shop or office door. It also includes the signage you have in the store window, the ones you have at reception, how you create things like wall menus and promotional literature like posters.
Bring it all together and you have a powerful basis for all your marketing and something that customers will easily recognise. Get it wrong and your visual appeal can feel disjointed and disconnected from your brand.
