Have you been using posters in your advertising lately?
Sure, these days digital media will most likely be your weapon of choice when you want to advertise an event, a new product, or a limited-time promotion. But if you’re a local business, don’t forget to keep posters in your arsenal, too.
Advertising posters can be a simple and effective, not to mention low-cost, way to communicate with people who are already in the vicinity of your business.
10 Easy-to-follow Tips for Posters That Sell
Here are a few things to keep in mind for designing engaging posters, signage and display ads.
Be clear about the main point of your messaging.
When you look at your poster, is it instantly clear what you’re trying to communicate? It should be.
Let’s say you’re promoting a limited-time offer for one of your services. Make sure it’s immediately clear that there’s a promotion, and it doesn’t seem like you’re just promoting the service in general.
Highlight your main point by making it stand out from the rest of the page.
In this sample ad poster: if the main thing you’re trying to advertise is the discount until the end of December, you may want to make it more prominent.
Answer all the W’s and H as needed.
Make sure that anyone who takes a look at your advertisement, and who is in your target audience, comes away with all the information they need.
Don’t forget: a poster is just a standalone page; they can’t click around to find relevant info like they would on a website or social media post.
Here are a few examples:
Who: Wedding Planners, Vendors, and Couples
What: Annual Wedding Expo
When: 15 March 2025
Where: XYZ Convention Hall, City
How much: $15 for walk-ins on the day, or pre-register for free admission until 15 February!
Who: Dogs (and their humans)
Where: Posh Paws Pet Salon
What: Get 15% off on your next grooming service
How: Post the before and after of your grooming at Posh Paws on Instagram or Facebook, then tag us!
When: Until 30 November
Don’t forget your call-to-action.
So you’ve provided all the necessary information. Great!
Time to include a call-to-action so that the viewer actually does something with that information.
CTAs are a simple but effective way to spur someone on to the next stage of the customer journey. It takes them from being a passive recipient of the information in your poster, to an active participant with a decision to make.
Examples of calls to action can be:
- Try it now!
- Register until 30 September for the 15% early-bird discount!
- Don’t miss it!
- Scan this code to join!
- Sign up at the front desk!
Limit yourself to one call-to-action per poster to avoid diluting the messaging.
Something as simple as a “Try now!” can be that little push your customer needed to decide.
Consider the location.
Where you put your poster is as important as what it looks like. A great looking poster isn’t going to land you any business if it’s tucked away somewhere no one can see it!
The key is to leverage foot traffic and idle time. Here are some ideas for effective poster placement:
Within Your Own Business:
- Entrance and Windows
- Checkout Area
- Waiting Areas
- High-Traffic Hallways
- Restrooms
Outside Your Business:
- Community Bulletin Boards
- Public Transportation Stops
- Partner Businesses
- Event Venues
- Street Poles and Public Kiosks
Use brand colours and fonts.
Your posters should visually fit right in along with your other brand materials, such as your website, social media posts, and (if applicable) store colours, packaging, and uniforms.
Use the same colour scheme and fonts across your different media (a good brand identity designer will typically provide these details to you along with your logo.)
This way, the viewer has a better chance of recognising the poster as coming from your brand, even before they stop to take a closer look.
Choose your typefaces carefully.
When it comes to poster typography, clarity is key. Sure, it’s always good to try to make your poster pretty, and make it fit a certain feel or theme, as long as you’re not doing so at the cost of legibility.
Not sure where to even start with fonts? It’s hard to go wrong with a classic sans-serif typeface like Futura: clean, readable, and visually pleasing. Plus it has multiple weights, so you can use it for everything from the main headline down to fine print.
Keep your text tidy.
Depending on how much detail you need to include, a poster can easily get text heavy. That’s not a problem as long as you keep your text organised and tidy.
Text that’s just scattered all over will look cluttered and feel tiresome to look at; your viewer’s eyes will be jumping all over the page. Instead, use a grid to align different elements and keep the poster visually balanced.
Also: It can be tempting to centre-align all poster text, but you don’t always need to do this! Left-align is often a great way to go, especially if there’s plenty of text.
Use negative space.
Now that you’ve placed all the important text elements and decided how to organise it, you’ve got all that empty space for decorative elements, right?
Sure… just don’t go crazy with it.
Purposely leaving spaces empty might not feel intuitive, but can go a long way in making your poster pleasing to look at.
A poster that’s overly stuffed can be fatiguing and confusing to look at; negative space lets it “breathe”.
Having empty space surrounding your main texts and call-to-action also helps draw the eye to them.
Use high quality images.
If you’re going to use images in your poster, make sure they’re high resolution enough. Print images generally require larger resolution than images for social media or websites.
300 ppi (pixels per inch) is a good rule of thumb for images that will be viewed up close, such as posters and brochures.
So let’s say you want the image to appear roughly 8 in. x 8 in. (22.86 cm x 22.86 cm) on the printed poster. You’ll want to use a digital image file that’s at least 2400 px x 2400 px large to avoid a blurry print.
If you’re not using your own photos and just need generic photos for decoration, source them from stock photo sites instead of just grabbing random images from Google Search.
You’ll find plenty of free high-quality images from sites like Pexels or Pixabay.
Add a QR code.
It’s always a good idea to have a QR code on the poster pointing to a website, landing page, or even your social media.
Not only does this give the viewer a convenient way to get more relevant information, but it also lengthens the time they spend interacting with your brand even when they’ve walked away, thereby increasing the chance of converting.
You can generate a QR code for free using a website like MeQR; if you’re designing on Canva, you can use its own QR generator.
Want pros to design your posters and other marketing materials for you?
If you decide that designing posters really isn’t your wheelhouse, our expert team of content designers is here to help.
We’ll create eye-catching and well-designed print and digital materials that will help your brand make a great impression.
