How Yard Signs Outperform Traditional Billboard Advertising

yard signs outperform billboard advertising
Often, the best ideas aren’t about spending more. They’re about spending smarter. That’s especially true when it comes to student recruitment.

Colleges often ask us how to get their name in front of prospective students and families in a more effective way. 

Many institutions invest heavily into billboards, and while they may offer high visibility, they also come with high costs, limited targeting, and short lifespans. 

Our take is simple. Invest in a yard sign campaign.  

Yard signs do exactly what billboards can’t. They generate student and family excitement and help stretch your budget further. Most importantly, they build your brand in the communities where your future students already live.

Let’s look at why they work.

Lower Cost with Greater Impact

A single billboard can cost anywhere from $2,000 to $14,000 per month. For that same budget, you could produce and mail hundreds of custom yard signs to your admitted or confirmed students. 

Spending about $5,000 – $7,000 allows you to produce and send 500 of our most economical mailed yard sign solution nationwide. That’s 500 micro-billboards, each placed proudly in a student’s front yard.

And unlike billboards, there’s no ongoing cost to keep your message visible. Families often leave signs up for weeks or even months.

A Built-In Personal Endorsement

Thanks to the rise of social media influencers, today’s students and parents put a lot of trust in personal recommendations. A yard sign is so much more than decoration. It’s a public display of pride that also works as a personal endorsement for your college.

When yard signs are distributed, they don’t just speak to the families who receive them. They put your brand in front of classmates, neighbors, extended family, and entire communities. One sign can spark conversations, reinforce decisions, and encourage others to take a closer look at your college.

In short, billboards push a message. Yard signs create conversation and endorsement.

Smarter, More Targeted Reach

With yard signs, you have more control over who sees your message. Want to focus on a specific geographical area or demographic? You can. Billboards limit you to fixed locations and long timelines. Yard signs let you go exactly where you want, when you want, and they increase your reach by being in many different markets all at once.

We have made the fulfillment process easy. Innovative and economic packaging ships your yard signs (stakes included!) directly to students’ homes with minimal hassle. What makes ours unique? We decreased the size of the sign from the standard 16”x24” yard sign to a 15”x20” in order to avoid the USPS oversize surcharge.

Our Recommendation

If you’re working to meet enrollment goals, it’s worth rethinking how and where you invest your marketing efforts. Yard signs are a cost-effective and personal way to promote your brand. They celebrate your students and spark local awareness in a way billboards simply can’t.yard signs outperform billboard advertising

 

yard signs outperform billboard advertising

Stay Connected

Subscribe to monthly e-news for the latest on promo merch, trends and more!

Variable Data Best Practices

  • At the quoting stage of your project, please let us know how many fields of variable data your piece will have as this can affect pricing.
  • Data should be provided to us as an Excel spreadsheet with only the applicable data included.
  • Verbiage for variable data fields on artwork file should match up exactly with data fields on spreadsheet.
  • Spacing on artwork must allow for longest data entries. We recommend that your designer tests this in advance to confirm that the fields in the design can fit your longest pieces of data.

Postage Permits

We are happy to mail using a client’s USPS non-profit number. Here are a few best practices for this to go smoothly. Let our team know up front on the project so we can make sure to get the information we need right away. 

While our mail house does prefer to use their permit number for the mailing, we can use the client’s permit, If using their permit number, ensure there is enough postage to cover the mailing.

The information we need to in order to use a client’s nonprofit number includes the following:

  • CRID (customer registration ID)
  • Non-Profit Authorization Number (with USPS, not their nonprofit number for the university)
  • Non-profit indicia
  • Return address that is on file with USPS for the non-profit authorization number
  • Permit number

Formatting the Mailing List

Our account team will advise on specific requirements for your project’s mailing list.  We generally recommend these best practices to format the mailing list:
  • Send your data in a spreadsheet, saving it in the comma-separated values (CSV) format
  • International addresses must be separated from domestic addresses
  • Domestic addresses should at least contain data fields for “first name”, “last name”, “address 1”, “address 2”, “city”, “state” and “ZIP code”