TV advertising for signs?

[Moze]

Can't say I've ever seen it done. Seeing all of the typical commercials this morning for local businesses (carpet cleaning, plumbers, electrcians), it made me wonder why you never see commercials for sign companies. Seems like advertising anything from channel letters to dimensional letters to graphics to installations would have some success. Anyway, just got me wondering why you never see ads from the sign community.

 

[GAC05]

We see FastSigns and Vistaprint plus a few on-line tee-shirt printers out here on basic cable.
Not any local companies running ads that I can recall.

wayne k
guam usa

 

[Billct2]

Since the business is mostly B2B I think TV ads aren't cost effective.

 

[reQ]

In my opinion, to have proper presence on tv, you have to have very large budget lol, other ways you will be wasting money (same with radio)

 

[HDvinyl]

People complain about tire kickers all the time here, can you imagine the amount you'd have if you had TV presence??

 

[reQ]

People complain about tire kickers all the time here, can you imagine the amount you'd have if you had TV presence??

Plus, you would consider uppin' your prices to be able to advertise on TV and people will complain even more

 

[1goodguy]

Hi
In today's market, to move the needle, anything less than 50K a month won't get you enough impressions. You can have a budget of 25k/month, but you'll be on the wrong channels if you go for a high impression count.

We've considered it, but someone mentioned tire kickers. Unless you already have an abundance of custom quoters, you're current customers will suffer as you struggle to keep up with fantasizers.

For a business doing 3 to 4 million a year, ready to go to 10 million, it's doable. There will be a good 4 to 6 month lag as you build recognition- so you best have people hired in advance, and trained, and be ready to spend 40k on a few custom commercials being made, and another 150k before the needle starts to move.

I've been in marketing and advertising all my life, and I am not ready for that.

What vista print is doing took a backer with huge money. It was a risk, and it worked.

Again, one man's opinion.

Tom

 

[Kottwitz-Graphics]

There is a sign company sort of local to me (45 minutes away), and they run an ad on tv. I see it in the mornings, during the local news. I don't know what their cost or the return is. They are a pretty large company, so we never really compete.

 

[2B]

We see FastSigns and Vistaprint plus a few on-line tee-shirt printers out here on basic cable.
Not any local companies running ads that I can recall.

wayne k
guam usa

we see the same thing

 

[Marlene]

it depends on what you sell. if it's vehicle or the fathead type wall decals, you hit the general public. for the "real" signs, I haven't seen any ads like that. we have a local ad for the wall decals that runs on our local station and I can see paying for that kind of ad. some times when you do see an ad or hear one on the radio it is because the station traded ad time for services. we had one run years ago on a popular radio station but it did next to nothing as we aren't a buy grandma a wall decal kind of shop

 

[Moze]

Yeah, I don't think it would be great for a print shop due to the abundance of tire kickers. But some of the other areas of the sign industry don't get as many of those kickers. In Dallas, we have a few trades (electrical, etc) that have really put their name out there, and it works as far as making an impression. If you were to ask me to name an electrical, plumbing, or painting company, the ones that are plugging these commercials are the ones I think of. I don't think they're HUGE companies, so I would think the budget they spend would be worthwhile for a similarly sized sign company. But I would think the companies that would benefit from it are the ones making channel letters, dimensional signs, monument signs, etc. I just think there must be hundreds of business owners at any given time watching TV that might need what I'll call "substantial" signage and be influenced by a commercial.

This isn't something I'm looking to do - I'm too small fry. But then I guess sign companies that make enough to run the commercials are staying busy anyway and aren't really looking for more work.

 

[HulkSmash]

Since the business is mostly B2B I think TV ads aren't cost effective.

this

 

[nikdoobs]

Our best Advertising seems to be the vehicle graphics on our install trucks. People go up to our installers all the time and ask for business cards.

 

[thinksigns]

I ran a commercial on Comcast 5 or 6 years ago. They were able to limit it to certain areas so they weren't being viewed by someone 50 miles away. At first we did a few spots a day on a few particular channels. Then we switched to two spots during Monday Night Football (one was during the pregame). I certainly would not do that again.

We do have the commercial on our website.

http://think-signs.com/media.php