Choosing signage is a very important part of establishing your business, but there’s no shying away from the fact that signs can be a big price tag amid all the many other expenses of starting a new business or setting up a permanent location. It’s a daunting purchase! To soften the blow, lots of business owners will choose to set up temporary signage, which is much cheaper than permanent signage, in order to cut costs.
However, the importance of your signs is about more than just their cost, and by choosing temporary signage, you might actually be doing damage to your business in the long run. Signs are an investment in the future of your brand, and a smaller investment will yield smaller results. There are a lot of benefits that make permanent signage worth the money they cost at the outset, and these are a few of the big ones.
Establish a Permanent Location
When you plan for your business to stay in a certain location long-term, you want to communicate that fact to your customers and to people who pass by. Temporary signage conveys temporariness, and by cutting costs with a cheaper banner, for instance, you give people the impression that you won’t be here for very long.
There’s a reason that seasonal businesses like those pop-up Halloween shops only ever use temporary signage. They aren’t sticking around past the end of October– once the Thanksgiving merchandise shows up, they’re gone. This is one of the messages you might be sending to potential customers with temporary signage, or you might be conveying that this is a short-term location while your actual location is unusable, or even that your business isn’t doing well and might not be around long. None of these are messages you want to send!
Become a Community Staple
One big thing that permanent signage can help you do in terms of the community around your business is to encourage familiarity. Think about all of the places you regularly visit in your own home town. If you’ve been living there a while, chances are that these are long-time favorites of yours and they are well-established staples of the town. Restaurants, coffee shops, shoe repair stores, everyone in town knows where the good ones are, and they’ve built their reputation and customer base over the years.
Do any of these places that come to mind for you rely on temporary signs? Probably not. Instead, their permanent signage shows that they are reliable, regular parts of the community, and everyone knows where they are and what they do. This is the kind of reputation that you want to cultivate via permanent signage.
Save in the Long Run
When you think about it, it seems obvious that the reason temporary signage is much cheaper than permanent signage is because temporary signs aren’t built to last a significant amount of time, but in the stress of dealing with so many expenses, some business owners can lose sight of this fact. The wear and tear of daily use over a long period of time is going to eventually lead to your temporary signs deteriorating quite a lot.
Saving money by relying on temporary signage only works to cut your costs at the time of purchase, but over time you’re probably going to end up wasting much more money than you need to due to constantly needing to repair and replace your signs. Permanent signage, however, is much less of an ongoing expense and will actually save you money over time.
Maximize Your Marketing
When you have a permanent sign in place for your business, you’re able to utilize temporary signs for a purpose that they’re much better suited for, which is temporary promotions. Seasonal sales, holiday specials, new inventory and more– these are things that you can advertise to your customers with a selection of temporary signage used in conjunction with your more permanent signage. The cheaper cost of these materials allows you to have a small arsenal of signs that you can use when needed to draw in business and push limited time offers. Temporary signage is much more effective in this use and can bring you in lots of new customers!
While it can be a large expense compared to temporary signage, the benefits of investing in permanent signage for your business are well worth the cost. If you’re interested in learning more about custom signage, contact Bartush Signs today! We are the premier display signage company in Orwigsburg, PA, and a member of our team will be happy to help you.
