If you are looking to invest in LED Signs you might have stumbled across this question. In my experience business owners usually feel they need to put pictures or graphics or animations on their Outdoor LED Signs for them to be effective. Are they right? Let’s take a look at it.
The Graphics Myth For LED Signs
A picture is NOT always worth a thousand words. What picture or video or animation can a bank put on LED Signs which will entice a viewer to pull in? A picture of a dollar? I know it wouldn’t work on me. They need TEXT to sell their services. They need to be able to describe their services. They need to entice people with words not pictures.
Ask yourself this question: “With my product/service is a picture worth a thousand words or does it take a thousand words to describe my product/service?” Once you have answered that question you will have a starting point for deciding if picture/video capable LED Display is right for your business. If you own a restaurant, you could create impulse customers by putting a picture of a big juicy steak on your sign. Car dealers can put up videos of people driving. These are the types of messages that warrant the additional cost of video capable programmable LED Displays.
If you answered that question with “it takes a thousand words…” you should forget the expensive video capable LED Signs and focus on an LED Sign which will be bright enough and have large enough text to do the best job for you. In this case you want a ultra bright LED Sign. This means you will be looking for a sign with more LEDs in each pixel. You will want a sign with tall enough characters to maximize the viewing time of the traffic in front of your business (a rule of thumb is that you need 1″ of height for every 50′ of visibility). Make sure you have enough lines of text to get your message out. Those should be your focus; for you the extra cost of a video LED Display will be wasted.
Why Sign Shops Push Video LED Signs
There are a few reasons why sign shops push video led signs. The most obvious is that there is more profit thus more commission in those units. That is a case of the sign shop doing what is best for them not what is best for you. Another reason is volume discounts. Manufacturers usually base a sign shops discount level on the gross sales volume not the number of units sold. So, if they are selling more high ticket units, they stand a better chance of getting a deeper discount for themselves. The last reason is because that is all the manufacturer they buy from offers.
None of those are good reasons for YOU to decide to purchase one of these more expensive units.
Don’t get me wrong, there is a time and a place for every type of LED Sign but there is no one size fits all. The company you purchase from should carefully look at your business model as well as your location before they make any kind of recommendation on sign size or type. There are plenty of times we recommend video displays but we don’t lead off every sales process by quoting a video board. We lead off with questions to find out what will get you the best return.
Conclusions
Take a look at your business and your location. Think hard about what can sell your product/service. Then and only then will you have a basis for starting to look at whether graphics or text will work better for you. Don’t let anyone push you one way or the other. Make them give you a recommendation AND a reason for that recommendation. If the reason doesn’t make sense, be careful.
