Good signage means good communication, and good communication is great for business. Business signage is most effective when it’s cohesive, well-branded and professionally made. However, maintaining a cohesive signage strategy for a multi-location business can present several challenges, including the cost of maintenance, a lack of branding strategy, uncertainty about signage needs, compliance with local regulations, communication difficulties, and other potential factors.
Let’s start by breaking down how to determine brand identity ahead of making business signs, how to identify signage needs and implementation and maintenance of the signage itself.
Understanding Your Brand Identity
A clear brand identity is an important part of creating cohesive signage, especially when there are multiple locations for the business. You want your branding to be eye-catching and easily recognizable by your customers. If your business doesn’t yet have a plan for cohesive branding, this is something you should plan to discuss with your signage company.
Brand identity is determined by knowing your company’s goals, identifying your customers and creating a personality for your company. Once your company knows its brand identity, the colors and symbols on your business signage will fall into place. Some tips for creating a strong brand identity:
- Perform market research to more thoroughly understand your company and its role for your customers.
- Align your business with a marketing company that can help you perform this research.
- Develop a story that supports your brand.
- Create a brand promise, then ensure that your company makes good on that promise to your customers.
Identifying Your Signage Needs
When identifying your signage needs, keep in mind that some branches of your business may have needs now that other branches won’t have for a while. Assume that each location will eventually need each type of signage and plan for your signage to remain consistent across each location.
Conduct a signage audit of each location to determine their signage requirements. Ask business managers to fill out a questionnaire, or visit each location individually. Factors to consider when trying to choose the right signage for each location includes:
- Location of the sign within the branch
- Size of the sign required
- Information to be conveyed with the sign
- Purpose of the sign
Signage Installation and Maintenance
Maintaining a cohesive signage strategy is important because it helps create a relationship between different branches of the business while also conveying important information to customers and vendors. Good signage keeps businesses functioning.
Once your signage strategy has been professionally developed through a trusted partner, each location will need to know:
- Where the signage will be located
- How to best leverage your signage to inform customers
- When signage should be switched out or updated
- How to keep your signage in presentable condition, if maintenance is required
Create a best practices document for your business signage to ensure that staff at each location knows where and when to use signage. To ensure that your signage strategy will work across all locations, create a comment period and allow each location to provide comments, feedback and concerns about signage before setting the requirements in stone.
Having a plan that works across multiple locations will help ensure consistency at each location, however, to ensure that your signage plan works at each location, you must be open to accepting feedback and maintaining flexibility.
Consult with Bishops Image Group for Your Signage Needs
To ensure that your signs are consistent across multiple locations, it’s important to identify brand identity and signage needs, then you must create a plan and implement it. Creation of an effective signage strategy for multi-location businesses also starts with a team of experts. Bishops Image Group helps businesses achieve their signage goals by collaborating with you from the design phase through installation. Contact us today to bring your signage to life!
