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LED Business Signage: Why is it a Good Investment?

Last Updated July 12, 2024  |  Custom Signage



Roland Williams

By Roland Williams

Business Development Executive



Here's what we'll cover:

Whether your company is in its earliest stages or you’re looking to open up new territory, quality business signage is the first (and often best) marketing investment an organization of any size can make.

Without good signage, it’s much harder for customers to notice your business let alone find it if it’s in a hard-to-reach area — costing you sales, frustrating your customers, and making it all the easier for them to visit your competitors.

But when you’re deciding how to allocate your marketing spend for signage, how do you choose between traditional signage and illuminated signs? And how do you even begin to weigh illumination options like LEDs and neon?

Most importantly, how will your signage impact your business’s overall bottom line? And what steps can you take to maximize that impact? 

Together, let’s dive into these questions, find the answers, and explore how LED-illuminated signage can help your business attract more customers, reduce costs, help you stand out from your competition, and win more sales.

When can LED-illuminated Signage be a Better Choice Than Non-illuminated Signage?

Traditional non-illuminated signs, as the name implies, have been the de facto way to go. And they’re always a great first start for businesses who are just beginning their marketing efforts.

But if your business is targeting specific customers during specific times of day, or if you’re trying to establish a powerful brand presence in an area rich with competition, investing in LED-illuminated signage can be a powerful boost for your marketing efforts.

When your business operates during the later-evening and nighttime hours

LED signage is bright, eye-catching, and can easily be read from a distance no matter the weather. This is a huge leg up for almost any business, regardless of industry or audience focus.

But if your business is open 24/7 or targets a later-hour crowd — like many bars, restaurants, and gas stations — LED-illuminated signage is an especially prudent investment and helps you easily catch the attention of customers while amplifying your branding and making your location easy to find.

Not only will your vivid signage naturally catch the eyes of passersby, but your brand becomes a more constant presence in your target location, winning greater presence-of-mind among your local audiences.

When your business is located near similar businesses in a competitive area

When side by side with competitors, LED-illuminated signs will literally outshine your competition. 

More importantly, your lit signage will let people know you’re there, you’re open, and you’re ready for business. 

If you’re a business that’s beginning to reopen in this post-COVID transitional phase, as many states currently are, making it clear that you’re ready to receive customers has never been more important. 

When your business is in a location not easily visible from the street

Even if you’re in a prime location rich with passersby in vehicles and on foot, it’s still never an easy task to win customers to your location. 

But if your storefront is nestled away deep inside of a shopping plaza or business center that’s hard to see from the street, attracting attention and traffic is even more of an uphill battle.

Here, LED-illuminated signage can act as a beacon, making it much easier for you to guide your customers toward your storefront’s location and immediately set the stage for a pleasant experience, all the while amplifying your brand’s presence.

Let’s work together to create illuminated signage that attracts customers and boosts sales.

Get a Free Quote

Why are LEDs Lighting Better than Neon for Illuminating Business Signage?

For decades, neon tube lighting was the industry standard for creating bold, eye-catching signs that would win foot traffic and help increase sales.

But modern advancements in LED technology — making them more cost-effective and energy-efficient than ever — coupled with the ever-growing consumer demand for businesses to invest in sustainable technologies has made LEDs the far-and-away leader in sign illumination.

Let’s dive into the facts of LED versus neon and see how LED-illuminated signs save your business money, time, headaches, and attract more customers to your business than traditional neon-lit signs.

Flexible LEDs are more durable than neon tube lighting.

Flexible LED lighting solutions typically house their LEDs within rugged yet flexible silicone materials that are far more durable than the rigid glass tubes — that are prone to splitting, cracking, and shattering during rough conditions — used in neon signs.

Moreover, solutions like our LumiFlex LED systems also offer superior UV protection and water resistance that ensure your brand’s messaging stays highly visible and uniquely vibrant no matter how harsh the weather gets.

Together, the sheer durability and weather resistance of signage that’s illuminated by LEDs provides significant cost savings, reduces maintenance costs, and keeps your signage performing long after your competitors’ signs dim or fail altogether.

LED-lit signs are much brighter than neon-lit signage.

When it comes to sheer brightness, LED lighting is much more vibrant than traditional neon illumination while also allowing for programmable control of that brightness depending on the LED solution integrated into your signage.

And those brighter lights and vivid colors aren’t just for show — they have a demonstrable impact on how quickly your customers notice your signage and the positive feelings engendered toward your brand.

In fact, according to the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s Lighting Research Center, when consumers encounter bright and clear lighting on a structure, they immediately associate it with positive feelings of safety, trust, and feeling welcomed.

This data goes hand in hand with some of the biggest brands’ strategic lighting investments. QuikTrip, the most popular convenience store in the US (founded right here in Tulsa, OK) hasn’t made it a secret that they take their investment in bright, on-brand, and clean lighting seriously as a part of their continued growth strategy.

LED-illuminated signs use less energy than neon and are more environmentally sustainable.

Central to any successful business is keeping a keen eye on fixed costs; and it’s no secret that energy use can be one of the largest month-to-month expenses any brick-and-mortar brand might face.

With its 85% greater energy efficiency than neon, LED lighting is the clear choice in energy savings alone, but the benefits of this sustainable signage lighting system don’t stop there.

Because not only does the efficiency of LED signage save your business money, but with consumer demand for businesses to invest in sustainable energy solutions, you can demonstrate your focus on sustainability.

And this clearly-evidenced desire for sustainability speaks volumes to your customers — 66% of whom are willing to pay more for the products and services that sustainable brands produce according to Nielsen’s Sustainability Report.

Nearly 76% of all consumers have entered a business they’ve never seen before solely because of its signage quality.

How LED-illuminated Signage Attracts Customers and Increases Sales

As humans, we’re naturally drawn to bright lights, intriguing designs, and vivid colors that capture our attention. And when your customers first encounter your brand’s signage, it’s the culmination of those stimuli that can either draw them in — or, if executed poorly, can drive them away.

Let’s dive into how quality LED-illuminated signage can help you earn the attention of potential customers, lay the groundwork for an excellent customer experience, and improve how both new and returning customers perceive the quality of your brand as a whole.

LED-illuminated signage’s color and brightness attracts more customers.

By leveraging the highly customizable colors, brightness, and designs made possible by LEDs, your signage can organically leverage your customers’ natural urge to discover more about the things that catch their attention.

And the powerful effect that signage can have on customers isn’t just a hunch. It’s a well-documented fact: Nearly 76% of all consumers have entered a business they’ve never seen before solely because of its signage quality.

This makes your LED signage not only a powerful tool for amplifying your brand’s presence, but transforms it into one of the most cost-effective forms of customer acquisition your business could invest in. 

LED-illuminated signage compliments your total customer experience.

When you’ve caught the attention of customers through your quality signage, you’re not simply communicating where your business is. You’re sending a powerful message about the overall quality and value of your brand, its products, and its services.

In turn, you’re laying a foundation of positive emotions that your attentive customer service and quality products can further cement, creating new opportunities to win their loyalty and referral business.

LED-illuminated signage can help improve customers’ perception of your brand.

In an effort to understand the importance of business signage, FedEx launched one of the largest consumer surveys ever conducted to see just how signage affected customers’ decision making. 

When it came to the quality perceptions of a brand, more than 38% of consumers admitted to forming their opinion of a company, its products, and customer service quality purely based on the quality of its signage.

These findings don’t just underscore the importance of signage’s role in advertising; they show just how powerful your signage is in literally shaping the perception of every aspect of your business to customers. 

With the stakes so high, and with the data as clear as it is, your signage budget should be one of the last places you seek to trim when looking to optimize advertising spend.

Investing in Your Business’s Success with LED-illuminated Signage

Investing in LED-illuminated signage helps your stand out 24/7 and outshine your competitors while providing long-term energy, maintenance, and cost savings due to their long life span. 

And with the many color and brightness options and the sheer breadth and depth of design possibilities LEDs make possible, there’s little LED-illuminated signs can’t do to help you amplify your brand’s presence in your target market, draw in customers, and increase sales over time.

If you’re ready to take the next step in your business’s growth and success, we’re ready to get to work. Working together, let’s transform your storefront into an experience that delights, invites, and drives growth.

Let’s get started together.

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Roland Williams

About Roland Williams

Roland Williams, Business Development Executive at Lektron Branding Solutions, specializes in helping businesses understand what makes their branding strong and helps them implement cost-saving LED lighting and signage technologies to amplify their brand — attracting more customers and increase revenues.