11 Summer Outdoor Marketing Materials

Summer is the best season for outdoor marketing, especially in northern climates where the winter chill forces customers indoors for months on end. By the time summer rolls around, customers are ready to get outside and enjoy warmer weather and sunshine. If you want to boost business all summer long, it's important for your brand to be part of the summer landscape. The following lists 11 summer outdoor marketing materials you can use to promote your brand, products and services to increase profits this season.

1.   Flyers

Flyers are excellent summer marketing tools because they're incredibly cheap to print so you can mass-distribute them anywhere and everywhere your target audience will see them. Consider printing flyers with perforated tear-offs with special discount coupons, URLs, or phone numbers so customers can easily remember to respond – and you can track response.

2.   Stickers

The most versatile summer marketing tools, stickers can be affixed almost anywhere: on walls, windows and doors; on sidewalks, utility poles and vehicles; on ceilings, stairwells and public restroom stalls; on mirrors, hand dryers and park benches; on gas station pumps, electronic devices and clothing. You name it, and stickers can help you market. Enhance your brand image by printing stickers relevant to your target audience: decorative skateboard stickers for a skateboard company, for example.

3.   Door hangers

Get the power of postcards without the cost of postage by distributing door hangers. You can print door hangers cheap then recruit a team of volunteers to help you blanket neighborhoods where your target customers live, according to demographic data. Reward your volunteers with pizza, ice ream or cocktails after, and they'll be thrilled to help again next year – or next month.

4.   Posters

Big brother to flyers, posters command attention and can be boldly placed just about anywhere flyers can, provided there's room: walls, community bulletin boards, doors, utility poles and more.

5.   Vinyl banners

Few single marketing tools can have such incredible reach as vinyl banners. Relatively cheap to print, vinyl banners are made to withstand weather conditions and are fade-resistant so you can rest assured your campaign will survive the elements and be noticed by hundreds if not thousands of potential customers. Think of attention-getting places to place your vinyl banners for best results: in busy shopping districts, near high traffic intersections, at sporting events, fair, festivals, and more.

6.   Club card flyers

If you own a restaurant, night club, or bar and grill, one of the best ways to market it is to hit the streets with club card flyers. You can leave club card flyers in public areas where they'll be found, or – better yet – recruit a “street team” to hand club card flyers to passers-by. Your club card flyers should include an incentive to try your establishment out right away, such as a free drink, appetizer, VIP access, or discount. You might also include a QR code that can be scanned to give mobile walking directions right to your front door to encourage groups of friends to visit your club together.

7.   Rack cards

Restaurants, nightclubs, bars, spas and tourist attractions can all benefit from distributing rack cards to outdoor card racks. Such racks can often be found outside Chambers of Commerce, convention and visitors' bureaus, visitor's centers, hotels, restaurants, and other travel hot spots. Print large, tall and colorful rack cards to ensure you command attention over your competitors.

8.   Table tents

Outdoor bistros, bar and grill patios, sidewalk diners, and similar hot spots are perfect for table tent distribution. See if you can work out a deal with establishment owners or managers in which you print the table tents and provide them for free – the establishment gets to put it's promotion on one side, and you get to put yours on the other. This is a great way to get the word out about your business at some of the most popular local eateries.

9.   Auto decals

Vehicle wraps, bumper stickers, door decals, car door magnets and window stickers are all good ways to promote your brand name on-the-go. Place auto decals on your own vehicle and encourage customers to do the same – one way to do so is to offer a discount whenever a customer makes a purchase and has your sticker on their vehicle. A single auto decal can expose your brands to thousands of people over the course of a single summer, and many more if the vehicle in question travels to vacation destinations.

10.   Summer-themed promotional items

Beach balls, frisbees, water bottles, fans, beach chairs, umbrellas and other summer-themed promotional items emblazoned with your brand name can help increase your exposure this summer. Promotional items might not lead to direct sales, but they will definitely help make your brand a household name.

11.   Billboards

Finally, you can invest in billboard marketing to help get your company in front of travelers and commuters. Bigger than banners (and more expensive), billboards can help generate brand recognition and even promote special sales. The key to successful billboard marketing is to keep your message simple, so drivers can read, understand and commit a response to memory at-a-glance. It's no secret that if you want to effectively market your business, you have to do it where the people are. In the summertime, that's often the outdoors: restaurant and bar districts, shopping areas, the beach, public parks and more. Take advantage of the power of outdoor marketing to disrupt the summer landscape with your brand, and you can boost sales all summer long.