If signage isn’t produced at a high standard, the chances of it having the desired impact are slim.
And if signage doesn’t work, that makes it a wasted investment for your business.
So how do you avoid this problem?
One of the most effective ways to guarantee that the production of your marketing materials is of the highest possible standard is to bring the production of those materials into your own hands.
By creating your signs, stickers, banners, and other marketing materials internally, you’ll be able to subject them to a rigorous quality control process that ensures that you’re happy with the standard of the signs before they’re put up in public to catch the eyes of any potential customers or clients.
To do this, you need to find the right printing solutions for signage production.
As you can imagine, this massively varies from the standard printing processes that you might use for internal documents and smaller printouts via printers for small businesses, so you might feel a little stuck when it comes to finding the right option for your business.
That’s where our expert team comes in.
Our in-house team has years of experience in the printing industry and we’re putting all of that knowledge in the palm of your hands, helping you to find signage printing solutions that work for you.
If you’d like to learn a little more about signage printers and their benefits, read on below to find all of the key facts - alternatively, give us a call to discuss the options available to your business today!
What are the best printers for marketing materials?
Signage printers are not simply larger versions of the ordinary printers you're used to using at home or the office.
You'll want to showcase your brand, capture readers' attention, and persuade them to take action, and poor-quality print will simply not inspire them to do so.
Investing in a high-quality signs printer will allow you to create signage that helps to carry your marketing initiatives further, resulting in more customers, more sales, and improved profit margins.
Why would you buy a printer for signage?
With this in mind, you'll want to make certain that purchasing a signage laser printer is the best decision for you and your company. If you determine that it is not a cost-effective solution, you may want to look into other marketing printing options, such as managed print services.
Of course, for individuals who will be printing their company signage internally frequently, investing in a specialist laser printer designed to create signage can often be the most cost-effective option.
It all boils down to your specific requirements as a business.
If you anticipate that you'll be printing signage fairly regularly, here are some of the advantages that you may feel by bringing your printing activity in-house rather than outsourcing production to a 3rd party printer:
Reduce your spending on printing for marketing purposes
Every organisation wants to find methods to save money and increase efficiency.
But managing to do so is easier said than done.
By investing in a signage printer for your business, one of the key benefits that you’ll quickly come to find is the cost savings that you’ll see by removing the presence of a 3rd party.
Here’s how a signage printer can reduce printing expenditure for your business:
- Production costs are reduced, with no 3rd party markups
- It’ll take less time for your designs to become reality
- Internal production requires far less admin
Every print passes your quality inspections
Outsourcing any kind of work comes with a degree of risk, but this risk is significantly amplified when it relates to the production of a product that will be used as a marketing asset for your brand.
When it comes to advertising your own business, everything has to be perfect - one wrong move could mean that you’re positioned in the wrong way, which makes it difficult to generate new customers and revenue.
If you choose to create your marketing materials, such as signs, internally, you’ll be able to oversee production more closely, identifying errors quickly and making the necessary adjustments to ensure that your prints are of the highest quality before they’re put into circulation.
Reduce waiting time
If you’re on a tight deadline, you need to be able to take control of the situation and ensure that your prints are delivered on time.
And this is only possible if you’re overseeing production internally, as external partners may not treat your projects with the same urgency that you might.
But it’s not just the speed of the labour that you need to account for either - the rate at which your printers are capable of producing your prints is also a key factor and you should ensure that a high print speed is at the top of your criteria list when comparing different signage printers for your business. It's important to ensure you are choosing the best printer for your needs.
What makes the perfect sign?
It’s the question that every marketer and designer has probably asked themself at one stage or another.
But there’s no exact science to things - what works for one business may not work for another, so it’s all about finding a formula that works best for you.
Here are a few key points that you’ll want to keep in mind when you’re designing any company signage for yourself or your clients:
If it isn’t eye-catching, it won’t work
The first job of any sign is to catch your line of sight.
Once you’ve read the sign, there’s a chance that it’ll influence your behaviour in favour of the business, but before that’s possible, the sign needs to have gained that initial visibility.
But the question still looms:
How do you know if your sign is going to grab people’s attention?
The first thing you need to consider is human behaviour and the ways that we respond to visual cues.
One of the easiest ways to improve any sign, banner, or leaflet printing is by adding colour - the brain associates colours with certain emotions, feelings, and even specific businesses, so by integrating the right colours into your marketing designs, you increase the chances of your signs being able to grab attention and affect change.
To build colour into your signage, you’ll need a colour printer.
Colour printers allow you to pick the exact colours that you’d like to use in your prints by mixing different colours of ink or toner to create a specific colour profile - it’s incredibly sophisticated technology with a very high level of colour accuracy.
The colours that you choose to integrate into your signage will hold huge significance for your brand, so it’s really important to choose these carefully.
In most cases, you’ll want to choose colours that are synonymous with either your brand or the tone of the message that you’re looking to convey to your target audience.
Create a brand identity that customers can trust
When utilising marketing prints such as signage to persuade someone to engage with a product, service, or brand, you must ensure that the customer can see the high quality of your materials from the get-go.
Customers trust brands based on the effort that they make, so by being noticed as a brand that uses high-quality materials where others look to cut corners, you're instantly building that degree of trust.
Don’t confuse your message
One of the worst mistakes that you can make when designing any form of signage is being too complicated with your designs.
Customers want to find all of the vital information as quickly as possible, with as little friction as possible, so by reducing obstacles, you’ll increase your chances of gaining new customers through your printed signage.
To do this, you need your signs to be clear, concise, and action-based.
If you’re looking for people to enquire by phone, include a phone number.
If you’re driving traffic for a website, make sure that your URL is visible.
If you’re directing customers to a store, clearly mark the address and directions.
And above all, ensure that you’ve used the best printer for your chosen media type to guarantee the highest quality results possible.
By creating these clear action points within your sign, you’ll be removing barriers and encouraging people to take the right action
Key features of a sign printer
To recap, here are the most important features and functions that you’ll be looking to get out of a signage printer:
- High DPI - When printing any kind of marketing material that will be customer-facing, you want to ensure that the print accuracy is as high as possible by using the best high resolution printers affordable to you. This makes the print more aesthetically pleasing and also helps to send trust signals to the customer, helping to build trust from the very first interaction.
- Print Speed - The rate at which your printer can produce high-quality signage is vital, especially when you’re looking to create high qualities of these prints to be used in multiple locations. Keep an eye out for printers with a low PPM (pages per minute) rating, as these printers are capable of churning out more pages in less time.
- Flexibility - Your needs will change from time to time and this might mean that you need to start producing different types of prints than those that you’d originally planned to make. Our experts have put a handy guide together of thebest printers by business type to ensure you can choose a versatile printer that offers the flexibility to print on different types of media, in different sizes, and with different finishes and you can be sure that you’ve got a practical printer that can handle any task that’s thrown at it.
- Durability - When you’re printing frequently, you can’t afford to be let down by your printer, so durability is one of the key factors to consider when you’re looking to buy any printer. Most modern printers are built to last - they have impressive print cycles that can last many years when properly maintained, so by looking after your machine and fixing any small issues before they cause major damage, you can prolong the lifespan of your printer for much longer.
- Suitability - Suitability is perhaps the most important part of picking a new printer. Above all else, you need a printer that suits your needs across the board, regardless of the technical specifications, the brand name, or the style of printer that it is. By going into your search with a list of crucial features that you need, you’ll be able to whittle through the numerous options to find the printer that’ll work best for you.
Find the perfect printer with the Printerland team
Here at Printerland, we’re always looking to help our customers find the best printers for their needs, whether that’s at home or in the office.
We know that everyone’s requirements are different, so we look to understand what you’re looking for, the key features that you need, then help to find the best printer for your budget; a printer that ticks all of your boxes as quickly as possible.
Printers can be pretty technical when you’re looking at their specifications, so we don’t expect you to be able to choose the right printer without doing the research - that’s why we’ve compiled guides for every type of printer that you might need!
If you want to check out some of our detailed guides, head over to our ‘Best Printers’ page, or follow the links to some of our most popular guides below:
"Sign printing has had a renewed focus in recent years and OKI has positioned itself in a perfect place with the C650. It's really flexible for creative teams bringing marketing material printing back in-house. The LED technology is brilliantly showcased in this sort of environment which is why it's my preferred recommendation for anyone who's concerned of the reliability of printers in the workplace. The current offer of a free 3 year on-site warranty gives peace of mind for all those wishing to ensure their printer is always up to the task."