What is digital signage?

Digital signage is basically today’s version of traditional printed posters, advertising and billboards. Most digital signage systems are good LED/LCD screens with a built-in media player which leverages a USB stick to show the videos and images. Often seen in hotels, retailers, fast food outlets, restaurants, airports and train stations, digital signage offers a more exciting and engaging alternative to traditional printed marketing and billboards. While initially digital signage has been used to predominantly show images and video, as you’ll see in this post, this is so yesterday! There are many other more innovative ways businesses can now use digital signage to increase customer engagement and excitement.

What are the benefits of using digital signage?

Let’s take a look at the benefits of using digital signage for your business compared to traditional printed marketing:

Reduced Costs

Surprisingly, replacing your printed signage with digital signage will save you money! Following the initial outlay for digital signage, the costs to operate and maintain it are minimal. Compare this to the ongoing costs of printing for each promotion, new menu, seasonal changes etc, and your investment in digital signage will quickly pay itself off.

Easy to update

Following on from the first point, businesses often need to change their messaging. Whether it is a new promotion, to introduce a new product, change the menu or to allow for seasonal updates, the printed marketing material within all types of businesses is always changing. A huge benefit of digital signage as opposed to traditional printed material is the ease at which content can be updated. With a few simple clicks, you’re whole digital display can be updated. Not only can this assist with changing promotions and introducing new products, but businesses can also use this to target customers at different times of the day. For example, restaurants might have different displays for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and the local pub might change the display to call out happy hour during set hours.

Grabs Attention

Compare walking past two stores – one with a poster in the window and another with a digital screen showing you the latest products, promotions or how-to video. Which attracts more attention? Of course the more interactive digital signage will attract more attention that the bland window poster. Digital signage manufacturer offers a realistic way for businesses to cut through the marketing clutter and connect with customers through more thoughtful and interactive engagement.

More than Images & Video

Digital signage can be connected to the internet, making it easy to display more than just images and videos. Businesses can also incorporate news feeds, weather updates, blog posts, video content (from sites such as YouTube), Twitter feeds and more; if it’s online, you’ll have the ability to display it through your signage.

What to look for in your digital signage:

With the increase in technology, we’ve seen the digital signage market become highly saturated – there are so many options businesses can choose between. As with any piece of technology, there are certain things to look out for before investing in one option or another. Here are a few helpful tips (or a checklist, if you like!) to help compare the various digital signage options available to you:

• Optimized for digital devices: Given that content creation is often one of the most time-consuming elements of marketing, it’s important that your digital signage system also allows you to deliver the same content across other digital screens including tablets, computers and smartphone devices, automatically resizing the content to fit.
• Turn data into dynamic graphics: Look for digital signage that can turn raw data into dynamic graphics. For example, displaying exchange rates by pulling them directly from a database, or using data from your POS, Loyalty System or Presence Analytics to tailor content specifically tailored for your customers.
• Easy to use: Ease of use is a must, as you’ll need to update content regularly. Make sure you are comfortable uploading content, scheduling and managing the system.
• Wide range of players: There should be a wide range of players available including dedicated players which have no fan or moving parts that will quite happily work inside an enclosure. You should also be able to turn your standard PC into a player which is helpful for testing purposes.
• Library of Widgets: This enables you to utilise dynamic content such as the time, RSS Feeds, Twitter and text feeds.
• Interactive: Further add excitement and engagement by investing in digital signage with a touch screen that allows customers to be presented with relevant content of their choice.
• Scheduling: Importantly, you should look for a system that allows automatic scheduling to turn messages on and off during certain days or times.
• Internet Connectivity: Your system should have the ability to connect to the web and potentially also have the ability for customers to login to web pages.
• Display Priority Messages: It should have the ability to display priority messages across all screens with the messages delivered via broadcast trigger API.
• Workflow System: This allows content to be signed off by more than one person before being displayed.
• Incorporate IPTV Application: This enables your ability to incorporate IPTV Application experiences such as the display of special events.
• Integrate Calendar: Digital Screens can be used to dynamically show upcoming meetings in rooms, in addition to the ability to book rooms etc.
• Support Large scale video walls
• Supports interactive kiosks and wayfinders
• Includes a camera: Allowing for real time display of data based on audience demographics.

While this checklist might look substantial, it’s important that you cover all areas before investing in digital signage. Having the functionality built into the system your purchase means that even if you don’t require everything at the start, it’s there to use when you want to in the future, without having the upgrade the entire system. Often businesses begin using certain elements of digital signage and continue adding the different functions as they become comfortable using the basic functionality. Investing in a digital signage system that ticks all these points provides your business everything you need to improve your communication, interaction and engagement with your customers.