As a church, you probably are always looking for ways to get more people in your door every week. The good news is that most churches are pretty noticeable buildings, you should stand out already. Having said that, people may still not know where you are. You church marquee can make a difference. If you look at big name stores, you should consider a few interesting facts. People rely on signs to find businesses. Nearly 35% say they only find some businesses because they saw the sign. Best Buy is a very well known store yet at least 17% of the walk in customers it gets only go in because they saw the big, ubiquitous sign out front. Even if people are looking for you, they can use some help in the form of a great sign.
How do you get the most of your church marquee space? Think like a retail store and make the most of that space. Church marquee signs are not commercial business signs but that does not mean you cannot take some of the lessons retail businesses have learned and apply them to your church marquee.
Keep your message short and sweet. You only have a few seconds to get someone’s attention and have your message be read and understood. In the first place, people have short attention spans. You have only a few seconds. First we had to come up with messages that were 140 characters or less for Twitter. Now we can barely get through a Vine that lasts six seconds. Keep that in mind when writing your message for your church marquee. Everyone is in a rush today. If you can respect that, you will have a better chance of having success with your message.
Be careful with your font choice. This is not the time or the place for fancy, ornate and curly fonts. This is also not the time to make your sign have so many colors that the font and text is hard to see, much less read. Again, if people cannot read and get your message almost immediately, it will be lost and that space will be effectively wasted. Use a basic, simple, sans serif fonts work best on these kinds of signs. You may also want to make the font larger than you think you will need. You may be trying to reach Baby Boomers and they often have trouble reading signs when the font is too small.
Make sure the fonts you use are easy to read.andnbsp;Some retailers can get away with crayons on a chalkboard, but getting away with and driving sales are two different things. Clear font characters – without curly-cues and multiple colors – let the customerandrsquo;s attention first gravitate to your message and then to your product. If customers canandrsquo;t quickly read it (see above), theyandrsquo;ll move on. And as Baby Boomers age, smaller signs are harder to read.
You need to test your sign. You have worked on your text and your font and your message is great. Then you place the sign. It looks fantastic at noon when it is cloudy but how about at other times of the day? Drive by at sunrise and sunset. Look at it at noon when the sun is out and when it is raining. Drive by your sign. Walk by your sign. Go by at different speeds. Ask people in your congregation to look at your church marquee sign and let you know what they think. If they go by and cannot see it, you will want to know when they went by, how fast they were going and what the conditions were. This will help you tweak your sign and hopefully get more people into your church.
Have a good time with your sign. If you can make people laugh as they go by your sign, you will get more interest in your church marquee sign and your church. Just because you are a church does not mean you cannot have a sense of humor. People who laugh at your marquee will talk about it and awareness of your church will grow.
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