How to Market Your Signage Business in 2025

In an increasingly competitive digital ecosystem, signage companies face a growing challenge to stand out from the crowd. While sign and graphics professionals are integral to the wider marketing mix, many struggle with knowing how to effectively market themselves.

It is no longer enough to simply provide a good service and build yourself through word of mouth – having a strong company identity built through various marketing channels is vital. Understanding how to promote your business on these channels and build a robust marketing plan is therefore more important than ever.

In this feature, we speak to a range of professionals in print and signage with strong marketing expertise, exploring how you can leverage strategies to promote your services with impact and precision.

Plan of Action

For Colin Sinclair McDermott, aka The Online Print Coach, having a strong marketing plan in place is not merely recommended, but “absolutely vital.”

“Without a marketing plan,” Sinclair McDermott explains, “most print and signage businesses are just reacting, chasing jobs, and relying too heavily on word of mouth.

“A proper plan gives structure, direction, and consistency. It ensures you’re building awareness, educating buyers, and staying top of mind long before they’re ready to order. In today’s market, where 70% of the buying decision happens before the customer even contacts you, that’s not optional – it’s survival.”

Having been in the print industry since the mid-90s, including running his own company, Sinclair McDermott has experienced a number of highs and lows that have informed the lessons he passes on as The Online Print Coach. In this role, he provides a wide range of professionals in print and signage access to a robust online training platform, Print Mastermind, as well as private one-to-one coaching and a range of member events and meetups.

Sinclair McDermott emphasises the importance of creating marketing that focuses clearly on the customer, saying: “Whether it’s SEO, social, email, or paid ads, every tactic should support a bigger system built around your customer journey.”

This customer focus, as Sinclair McDermott asserts, can only come from a clear understanding of who your customer actually is, and building an avatar based on those assumptions. “You’ve got to know who you’re targeting, and who you’re not,” he explains.

“Once you know this you can create a content strategy with blog posts, emails, videos, and social media that educate and inspire, not just sell.”

The Online Print Coach has a number of top tips for signage and graphics professionals that want to stand out in a crowded online world, built both from his own experience as well as years of coaching within the print and signage sectors. Firstly, he asserts: “Narrow your focus – speak directly to one niche, like events, property, or hospitality and become known in that space.”

He continues with a number of other clear suggestions, saying: “Educate instead of sell – make helpful content like checklists, behind-the-scenes videos, or ‘how-to’ print tips, to build trust and credibility. Also, try to use email properly. Most companies either don’t use it at all or just blast offers. But when done well, email can prompt repeat orders, referrals, and reactivations.

“People buy from people, so show your face – social posts, videos, and email signoffs that feel human, not corporate, go a long way. Finally, be consistent – you don’t need to be everywhere, just show up with something valuable on one or two channels every week.”

The Online Print Coach brand has seen notable growth in recent months, both in the UK and internationally. This includes being chosen as an expo partner for Printing United Expo 2025 in Orlando, Florida, combining a speaking slot at the show with a programme of lessons and events leading up to the exhibition.

For Sinclair McDermott, while the online world is of increasing importance, live events still hold the key to building lasting relationships that can allow your business to flourish.

“Live events are more important than ever,” he says. “Even in a digital world, face-to-face still cuts through. Trade shows, networking events, or even a well-timed phone call can turn cold leads into warm conversations. The beauty is, when you combine that with a strong marketing strategy, follow-up emails, direct mail, retargeting ads, or a strong LinkedIn presence, you’re covering both bases. Live events build relationships.”

More industry tips and tricks from The Online Print Coach, including how to build a network, expand your team, and create customer strategies, can be found in our sister magazine – Print Monthly.

Telling Your Story

As a B2B PR and communications agency with a variety of clients in signage and graphics, Karis Copp Media has built a three-dimensional image of what it takes to successfully market yourself in the sector today. In the opinion of KC Media founder, Karis Copp, a comprehensive marketing plan in today’s industry is a necessity, particularly in the face of change and uncertainty.

“Comprehensive is the operative word here,” Copp explains. “Marketing and communications in 2025 are multifaceted, encompassing content strategy, media relations, social media, SEO, email campaigns, partnerships, paid marketing, events, and a whole lot more. Print and signage businesses need an integrated approach that supports brand awareness, lead generation, and customer retention across all channels.”

Copp asserts that consistency is also one of the most important factors when building up your marketing, saying: “When work is flowing in, it can be easy to let proactive marketing and comms fall by the wayside, but we would advise against that – consistency is key here, and that consistency will pay off when leaner times hit. When business slows, marketing is often the first thing to be cut, which can be a false economy.”

In its work with its various clients, KC Media’s focus is often on the personality behind the numbers, working with the aim of telling a company’s story with sentiment and excitement. The agency aims to translate the sometimes technical and complex topics surrounding print and signage and transform them into impactful, successful communication campaigns that can get a target audience enthusiastic about a business and its products.

In Copp’s opinion, creating that enthusiasm requires deeply understanding your identity and personality as a brand. “Businesses should start with clearly defining who they are and what sets them apart from the competition,” she says. “What makes your business special? If you can’t answer that, beautifully designed brand assets or a lot of cash thrown at online ads can only take you so far.”

When business slows, marketing is often the first thing to be cut, which can be a false economy

KC Media counts companies such as Inkcups, Four Pees, and Kavalan among its clients, all of which have innovated in recent years with new solutions that push forward what is possible within print and signage technology. But no matter how much innovation we see in our industry, or how much marketing tools evolve, the fundamentals of selling your solutions are the same, according to Copp. “Start with building strong and authentic customer relationships,” she asserts. “Drive loyalty from your longer-term connections and create strong opportunities with new prospects by prioritising genuine, human partnerships."

Another marketing option sits directly under our noses. As Copp puts it: “The key to standing out in a crowded online world? Print, of course!”

Copp adds: “We know better than anyone the impact that tangible, high-quality print communication can have. Use personalised, data-driven direct mail campaigns to target your ideal clientele. Put your signage to work for your own business, not just your customers.”

Once your brand identity and marketing plan are joined up with comprehensive, consistent output, and a coherent message, it is important that all future communication aligns with that message. As Copp puts it: “Whether it's your website, your social media, your trade show presence or your customer emails, every piece of communication should reflect a joined-up brand personality and purpose.”

Delivering on that level of purpose is the reason why agencies such as KC Media exist, providing a professional team that can focus on consistent communication to reflect the identity of a business. Copp concurs, adding: “Engaging with an external marketing, comms, or branding partner can be a smart investment that can set a print or signage business up with the assets and information needed for long-term success.”

A Platform for Success

For Gavin De Boos, director of print ecommerce platform, VB Media, while building a marketing plan may not require constructing lengthy documents or undertaking exhaustive research, having a coherent understanding of your marketing is still vitally important. As he puts it: “If you don’t take the time to map out how you’re going to market your business, you’re setting yourself up for failure.

“Why would potential customers buy from you if they don’t know what you can do for them? If existing customers don’t know what else you offer, how will you develop your relationship with them?”

If you don’t take the time to map out how you’re going to market your business, you’re setting yourself up for failure

VB Media is an ecommerce and web-to-print platform built specifically for the print and signage industries, providing a range of online tools and capabilities that enable companies to bring their sales and marketing online. As well as allowing for the creation of trade sites and storefronts, VB’s platform offers the ability to seamlessly integrate with major trade print suppliers to fulfil orders, with companies including Tradeprint, its sister company Venture Banners, and Solopress – all of which are connectable as integrated APIs.

VB Media has also released a number of blogs, how-to guides, and other resources for printers wishing to boost their marketing output in the modern online world, including an article detailing marketing tactics to help you drive buyers to your website.

For De Boos, a key part of marketing will always be to find out where your audience resides, either online or in-person, and target that specifically. “It’s vital to think about where your customers are,” he says, “and what motivates their purchases. Like most of us today, they’re increasingly online, and with the volume of online print and signage sales growing every year, setting up your website for success should be a big part of your marketing plan.”

According to De Boos, a key reason that VB set up its platform was to create a central hub for marketing activity, making it easier to set up branding across websites from a master dashboard. “Even if you’re not a branding expert,” he asserts, “when you keep bringing every channel back to your website, that can help you to build a consistent experience for customers and potential customers alike.”

De Boos continues with a set of questions to consider that can inform your marketing, saying: “Ultimately, it comes down to putting yourself in your customers’ shoes and thinking about how they engage with your company and your brand. How and where do they find information about your products? How do they typically place, manage, and receive their orders? By walking through their experience in this way, you can easily identify all of the marketing ‘touchpoints’ that need to reflect your brand and what you stand for.”

In his opinion, modern marketing plans need to encompass a plethora of promotional tactics, not least of which being a robust website which operates as its own buying channel. VB’s platform is designed with that in mind, with orders and payments going directly to the individual company using it, allowing the flexibility to fulfil orders in-house or to easily send all or part of an order to a supplier.

The idea of ‘build it and they will come’ just doesn’t work in the world of ecommerce

“Beyond the basics, your website has to be much more than an online version of your brochure,” De Boos posits. “It is also an essential utility that can facilitate user-friendly print buying. Even more importantly, it should be an active selling channel to which you drive traffic through your social media, videos, email marketing, printed direct marketing, event branding, and paid advertising, as well as with tactics such as SEO and blogging.”

With limited time and resources available, signage and graphics professionals may be hesitant to spend so much of it on marketing rather than on maximising output quality, but De Boos insists that having strong and consistent marketing is of particular importance in an increasingly online world. As he deftly puts it: “The idea of ‘build it and they will come’ just doesn’t work in the world of ecommerce.”