Signage is a crucial component of one’s business plan and marketing and brand strategy, and thus its important to give it the full consideration it deserves. After all it’s an essential component of your overall marketing strategy, as it helps passersby and customers recognize your brand, find your business, and ideally encourages them to shop at your business. If you’re working with an expert sign business such as Ortwein Sign, we’ll put all of our skills into designing, fabricating, and installing your sign to ensure its the most effective it can be for your business.
Even so you may still want to look at the ROI of your signage, to truly assess how your signage helps your business goals, whether that means more foot traffic, higher sales, or increased brand visibility. In this guide, we’ve broken down ways that you can measure the ROI of your signage.
Set Objectives
First of all before calculating your ROI, you must define your aims and goals with your signage. By understanding your goal you’ll know what metrics you need to calculate and assess to identify success.
Calculate Foot Traffic to Your Business
Perhaps you want to drive traffic to your business in certain hours, or at an increased rate overall. If for instance you want to increase foot traffic by 20%, then you’ll need to have the means to measure your clientele. You might need counters by the door, surveillance that assists, or perhaps you’ll need to manually count the number of visitors coming into your store.
Track Sales Before and After Signage Is Installed/Refreshed
If you’re looking at measuring the rate of sales, and hoping for an increase after the addition of signage, or signage refresh, then you’ll want to look at your sales before your signage is installed and after your signage.
Customer Surveys Provide Qualitative Data
Customer surveys can also assist you determine the effectiveness of your signage. You can query your customers on whether your signage drew them into your store, whether it impacted their purchasing decisions, and if you’re using signage to promote a sale or promotion whether they noticed and/or remembered that promotion from your signage.
Promotions, Sales, and Coupon Codes and Signs
If you are using signage to promote a specific sale, promotion, or item, you can track the mentions of said promotions or in the case of a coupon code track the uses of said coupon.
Tracking Signage Engagement with Website Analytics
Even if you have a brick and mortar business that you work out of, you may want to drive traffic to your website. By using signage you can implement this strategy, and with the advent of QR codes in particular you are able to track the engagements with these codes. Therefore you can implement these in your business, and look at your web traffic to confirm the number of times a QR code was scanned and thus drove traffic to the site or page you directed people to.
Social Media and Signage
Similarly you can either use QR codes to direct customers in your store to your social media, or you can use hashtags on signs, or use statement signs that customers will want to take pictures of, and you can track the posts and engagement online across a myriad of existing social media platforms.
Brand Awareness
You may be hoping to increase your brand awareness with your signage, in which case through surveys, and social media and website traffic analysis, you can get a better picture if your brand profile and familiarity increased and improved after the addition of signage.
Comparative Analysis of Signage
To do a comparative analysis of your signage, you will want to compare the cost of signage installation and maintenance against the revenue generated as a direct result of the signage. Calculate the ROI by dividing the net profit (revenue generated from signage minus signage costs) by the signage costs.
Consider the Timing and Time Frame
Remember that though your signage may seem dramatically different from one day to the next, if you’re installing entirely new branding, or refreshing signage, that its impact may take time. So consider the length of time too that you should calculate the effects of signage, as it may impact the results of your analysis.
A/B Testing of Business Signage
Though it’s not practical for all businesses, especially with permanent signage, if you have the opportunity you may want to consider A/B testing your signage to determine its comparative effectiveness. If this isn’t practical but you do implement temporary signage as part of your brand strategy and marketing, then perhaps implement A/B testing with this signage instead.
Call the Experts at Ortwein Sign
If perhaps this is too complex, or you simply do not have the time to fully assess your signage ROI, let us help. We use our expertise day in and day out to provide the best signage for our clients to fully capitalize on your branding and marketing to boost the objectives you want to help your business succeed.