If you’ve ever driven around during election time, you’ll notice political yard signs all over the place. This is because sign advertising is still such a powerful medium for candidates due to its social proof aspect; the more signs for a particular candidate people see, the more name recognition he/she receives. But signs cannot just be throw in yards recklessly. A well thought out yard sign placement strategy should be created to obtain the best results with this marketing.
An powerful technique is to get in touch with your political party, retired political figures and nominees from the same political group who are campaigning in the region and check with them for names of supporters who permit political lawn signs on their residence. Position them at office centers to increase the candidates name recognition with business people. Shopping centers are good locations when targeting women voters.
Some of the best areas to display your political yard signs are in high traffic spots. This will generate more name recognition and interest in the candidate. Lately more and more young voters have been showing up at polls to vote. Keep this is mind when developing your sign campaign and target areas where young crowds hang out. You will also want to tap volunteers to help get signs out to as many places as possible.
Going out and placing signs all over your neighborhood may be your first inclination but be careful; too many signs too close together could have undesired results. People are often over-exposed to advertising, and seeing one sign over and over could actually cause a person to filter out these signs. This would obviously be a negative for the candidate as the potential voter wouldn’t want to vote for them at all.
It is better to place signs in tight groups, with a few to a group. This give the appearance that these people are supporters but not fanatics. This method of placing campaign yard signs is much more effective and can create the effect of more signs being out than there actually are. A good way to achieve this is use the “social proof” angle and ask neighbors next to sign supporters if they would like to join with their neighbor and help support the candidate.
One final note, be sure to choose a type of custom yard sign that is approved for your climate and fits your budget. While you can often get discounts for buying multiple signs, you still need to know what you need for your project. The common type are corroguated plastic yard signs, coroplast yard signs, sealed and bag signs.
A single fact remains that no matter how many corrugated plastic yard signs you place, until someone sees your sign, you have squandered your money. The best way to catch people’s attention with your signs is to map out 90% of all your yard sign’s locations before your signs even arrive. Then on one evening get all the volunteers you can muster together and put the majority of your signs up all at once. The next morning, your constituents will drive to work noticing the vast change in the landscape. Suddenly they want to know; what this new candidate all about, and why are so many people rallying behind them.