Marketing Toolkit
How-to Guide For Marketing Transit
Marketing Tools and Templates
Other Resources
Attractive posters, displayed around your community on bulletin boards and in windows, can create low-cost exposure for your service. Posters can promote your system overall, highlight a specific service, or target a particular audience (such as teens or older adults). They can be placed anywhere you get permission–the bulletin board at a grocery store, at a school or college, in a senior center, or in a social service office.
Tabloid posters (11” x 17”) or letter-size flyers (8-1/2” x 11”) are easy to produce. The Marketing Toolkit includes several templates for creating posters. You can customize them with different photos, illustrations and messages specific to the locations you want to place them. Small quantities of posters can be printed at low cost—either in-house or at a local print shop.
If using posters as a communications tool, be sure to update them regularly and remove out-of-date posters.
With a simple, colorful, and low-cost poster displayed inside your vehicles, you can update current riders about a service change, promote an event that includes transit, or remind them of the affordability and availability of your various fare media. When designing on-board posters, think of them as ads, not notices. Use bold graphics and large text to catch the rider’s eye and make them easy to read.
Many bus interiors have built-in poster, or “car card” holder areas above the windows. These are typically sized to hold posters that are 11 inches tall. If you’re selling advertising in these spaces, the typical poster size is 28 inches wide by 11 inches tall. You can format your own posters that size, or use more common tabloid paper (11" x 17") in either portrait or landscape orientation. These will have to be printed on heavy card-stock paper to stay in the poster holder slots. And remember that a bit of the top and bottom of the poster will be hidden by the slots that the poster slides into.
Other buses have a panel behind the driver’s seat where posters can be displayed. If you don’t have panels, consider installing a plexiglass holder that will display a tabloid or letter-sized poster. This will make it easy to change out the posters and keep them looking fresh.
These are sized at 17” wide by 11” tall, which is a common size for poster holders/car cards on-board buses above the windows.
Updated June 20, 2024
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