Why Do Yard Signs Work?

The Three Parts of an Advertisement

The fact of the matter is that all advertising works in one form or another. Advertising is a explination of a product, service, or brand that is of use to the consumer. Any form of advertising works when you connect a product or service with a consumer looking to solve the problem that product or service solves. This could be a interior painting for a new remodel or a barber for long hair.

You know this, so why am I telling you? I'm telling you because advertising needs a few elements to be really effective: a message, a direction and a call to action.

The message is the product or service that solves or fixes a problem. For example "Interior Painting." This lets the consumer know what you do.

The direction is just that, what direction should the customer take? Where should they go, who should they call to fix this problem? A direction can be an arrow on a sign, a phone number, a website, etc.

Finally, and probably the most important and overlooked step, is the call to action. This is the command telling the consumer to do it now. It's the "Call in the next 5 minutes" you hear at the end of an infomercial or the "Offer Valid Through..." on a coupon. However simple this step sounds, it is commonly overlooked. It is NOT assumed by the consumer. In other words, the consumer doesn't know to call now unless you tell them to.

The Consumers

This is pretty simple stuff. The next thing you need is the audience of consumers. This is the group watching the infomercial or the busload of people driving past your sign. Naturally, the larger the audience, the more people see who your ad. The more people who see your ad, the more likely you will find one who needs what you're selling.

Why Yard Signs?

If these four things make sense to you so far, and you understand that the better each of these elements is, the more effective your ad will be, we can move on to the point. Yard signs have all of these elements. They have these elements to the maximum, and they are more cost effective at "driving" them right into the consumer mindset than anything else.

Let's break it down and I'll explain. The first of course are the message and direction. These are the bread and butter of a yard sign. Take the sign below.

The message is "Transmission Repair." It solves the problem of a broken down transmission. The direction is the phone number. It tells people what to do if they need this problem solved.

But where is the call to action you ask? It's in the sign itself. Yard signs are temporary. The consumers know that. They know that the sign they are looking at right now can blow away by the time they get around to seeing it again. I see people do whatever they can to keep their yard sign in place for weeks or months, nailing them high on light poles or attaching them to heavy duty stakes deep in the ground. They are fighting what gives a yard sign so much actionable power over the consumer. Yard signs are meant to blow away or get picked up by the mower.

The Audience

Finally, I'll talk about the audience. The audience is your cross traffic, on one side of the street, going one direction. You might be surprised at how many cars drive through an intersection on a given day. Check your metropolitan area's traffic senses and you’ll understand. Some intersections get 25,000 cars a day to pass through them! If you can only target a fourth of the traffic in that intersection, you're looking at over 6,000 impressions.

Now how much does a yard sign cost? See if your local newspaper can beat that cost per impression. Look up the traffic reports.

I live in Omaha, Nebraska, with around half a million people. We are around the 40th largest city in the US. I can place 20 signs, and get over 100,000 impressions a day without much trouble. How else can you do that for less than $100? Did I mention the signs typically stay up for around a week? That’s over half a million consumers looking at my phone number.

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All in all, yard signs work. They are great for small businesses because they produce immediate results. Unlike the radio, television or other forms of mass media, yard signs portray a sense of urgency in their very existence. Lookers think “If I don’t call that number now, will that sign be there later?” If you have a self explaining service or product, there are few ways a business can generate traffic better than with a simple, to the point, easy to read, well placed yard sign.