Digital signage is booming across the U.S., primarily because of its versatility. The global digital signage market is projected to reach $26.3 billion by 2027, with North American leading in its adoption. Asia-Pacific has also shown a lot of promise in digital signage market growth, thanks to a young and tech-savvy population. The global market is dominated by a few big players, including L.G. Electronics, Inc. (South Korea), Intel Corporation (U.S.), Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd (South Korea), and Panasonic Corporation (Japan).
Retail stores, casinos, healthcare institutions, stadiums, and educational facilities are some of the businesses that are investing heavily in digital signage infrastructure. If you run a retail store, digital signs can help enhance customer experience and increase sales. Similarly, marketers in education and healthcare can install digital signage for wayfinding, emergency alerts, and important messages.
There are multiple digital signage options for the modern marketer, from LCD screens to large video walls with a sophisticated content management system. Therefore, you can leverage digital signage in various ways to reach your specific objectives. Digital signages will help you to announce everything about your company. For instance,  if you want to inform about your new products or if you want to present something new for your employees you can use this high tech digital displays. The practices below will help you get the full benefits of digital signage:
1. Set goals and Develop a Strategy
It is essential to develop a solid content strategy for your digital signage solutions to be effective. To start, ask yourself what the technology is intended to achieve. Do you want to upsell menu items in your restaurant? Popularize your brand on social media? Reduce wait time?
You also need to consider your audience so that you can pick the appropriate content form. Displays can include real-time updates, images, graphics, interactive elements such as kiosks, maps, and videos. Your digital signage content could offer short-term or long-term benefits as long as it is relevant. The most vital step is understanding your audience to determine the topics you are going to create.
You can also use customer data to design more focused and customized messages. If you have messages, videos, and content that you have used in previous advertising campaigns, you can repurpose them for digital signage. Don’t focus solely on large wall displays. Smaller displays are instrumental when promoting products, and you can install a variety of digital signage devices across your business.
2. Determine Your Screen Locations
Screen positioning should be strategic when investing in digital signage marketing. Using digital signage doesn’t mean placing a screen on extra wall space. For example, a window display will be ideal if you want to improve foot traffic with outdoor advertising, while signs behind checkout areas suit stores with long customer queues.
Consider where your customers spend time waiting and what path they take through your business. Additionally, identify the public spaces that receive high foot traffic. Display technology along interior walls will engage your customers as they browse through products.
While electronic signage screens are commonly placed up high in stores, you can place some screens at eye level for maximum engagement. There is a high possibility that visitors will miss content that is outside their field of vision. Therefore, you should consider your displays’ angles and height to let your visitors naturally discover them.
If you want to showcase product information and demos, you can install screens on aisle end-caps. Smaller screens are better for vendors who want aisle signs, where customers can view information about nearby products. You don’t have to restrict your screens to walls and other fixtures. For example, freestanding displays can encourage interaction among your audience.
3. Invest in Engaging Content
Once you understand your audience, you can proceed to curate content that will appeal to them. Uninspired, irrelevant, and outdated messages can break your project. Similarly, your audience will be disappointed by displays stuck on boring loops and low-resolution digital images and videos. You can explore the content ideas below to refresh your screens:
Video Content
People are drawn to dynamic content, making videos perfect for digital screens and video walls. For example, gym managers can display workout and sports videos to engage their visitors. You can use reels, sponsored videos, how-to displays, and viral videos to entertain your customers.
Images
High-quality and compelling images can pull in a crowd. You can display slideshows that showcase your business, the behind-the-scenes of production, events, and staff. Additionally, you can run picture galleries with before and after pictures if you are marketing services like cosmetic surgery and hairstyling.Â
Customer Testimonials and Quotes
Testimonials will boost loyalty among your audience and strengthen your message. You can include customer photos if it is possible to enhance your credibility and promote your products. Quotes and reviews from happy customers are also excellent content ideas.Â
Digital Menu Boards
Marketers in the hospitality industry should leverage digital menu boards to attract customers. For example, restaurants in busy shopping malls can display their menu cards on window displays to show their offers. Menu boards should be eye-catching to appeal to undecided buyers.
Current Events and News
Trending topics and current events are perfect content ideas for waiting rooms and lounges. You can live stream popular news sites to keep your visitors lingering on the screens. In addition, you can showcase industry-specific news that is relevant to your clients.
Campaigns and Promotions
Digital billboards can inform your visitors about current discounts, offers, and deals. When it comes to digital signage marketing, uniqueness is among the essential components of a good strategy. Take a scenario where a restaurant wants to promote a particular drink and food combination. You can run discounts to boost sales for the advertised package.Â
Directories
A digital directory will offer navigational information for your visitors to explore your business. Digital directories can be installed in offices, hotels, and other recreational facilities to share essential details. Your visitors will no longer have to look for someone to show them to the right floor.Â
4. Leverage Social Media and User-Generated Content
Social media and digital signage are excellent tools for digital marketing. You can leverage both of these solutions to take your campaigns to the next level. Start by displaying your social network channels and encouraging customers to follow your brand. For example, you can show live tweets about your business and engage your audience to send a tweet of their own to feature on the Livestream.Â
Facebook is also an effective platform where you can display customer stories and creative or funny comments. Additionally, display the best-performing photos from Instagram and reviews from Yelp or TripAdvisor. Keep in mind that customers prefer the unbiased opinions of their peers. Therefore, you should feature testimonials and videos about your products to show customers how well they work.Â
Interactivity will make your social media feeds more exciting and enhance your digital signage marketing strategy. Add elements like artificial intelligence, face recognition, and touchscreen, and allow users to enter their social media information. Additionally, use incentives like discounts and vouchers to encourage customers to share their photos and videos.
5. Create Playlists and Schedules
Now that you have the content you want to display, it is time to think about when you will be showing it. A digital playlist can help you show different messages at the right time. Displayed messages can change according to time of day, weather, season, and other factors. For example, you can determine which time visitors in your restaurant sit down to have coffee or have dinner with their families.
You can customize the media players in your business to keep every customer entertained. Different screens can show live entertainment, products, company news, and videos. Your playlists should be updated often to keep repeat customers from getting bored.
6. Engage Your Audience with Calls to Action
Calls to action will encourage your customers to promote your business and give feedback. However, your CTAs need to be short and sweet to be effective. A long message will easily get ignored by passersby, as will dull and blend words.Â
You can explore trigger words like free, save, money, proven, and new. It is also advisable to make the desired action as easy as possible. For example, you can place your username next to a CTA that encourages customers to follow you on Instagram.Â
7. Assess and Adjust
Marketers invested in digital signage marketing need to establish metrics to measure the effectiveness of their strategies. Do you intend to boost sales, follower count, web traffic, foot traffic, or referrals? Choose KPIs to focus on, and review how your audience is responding to your digital content. The measurables will also help you make adjustments where needed.
Video recognition systems can track how many people stopped at digital signage displays and how long they stopped. Modern technological advances include traffic tracking tools that will show you a customer’s activity in your store. You will see their movement patterns and their dwell time on displays. Additionally, POS data can track any improvement in sales to measure the success of promotional displays.Â
Wrapping Up
Digital signage has changed the way marketers promote products and services. Unlike traditional forms of marketing, marketers do not need to replace signage manually. With digital signage, you can update content instantaneously and show various content forms in one display. In addition to videos, photos, and animations, you can display interactive experiences for your visitors. To ensure your messages are useful, research your audience, invest in high-quality content, and embrace social media.
