The Need-To-Know Guide For All Things Digital Signage

Print Marketing is on Life Support

If you use print marketing anywhere in your business, whether that’s posters in the window, menus, promotional leaflets, or anything else, you’ll know that it comes with its own headaches that we put up with because, well, it works. Digital signage solves practically every one of these problems, yet retains all of the benefits and then some.

Cost Effective

Anyone who has dealt in print marketing knows the problems that can arise from the static and finite nature of the marketing product. Once it’s printed, you’re stuck with it until you pay to have a new design and message created and printed.

A good example was during the Covid-19 pandemic. Information was constantly changing, and premises such as medical practices, restaurants and shops had to keep their visitors informed of the latest restrictions and policies. With digital signage the information displayed could be changed instantly, without the time and expense involved in using static media.

People naturally pay more attention to dynamic, eye-catching media, so your conversion rate, even if the conversion is simply having visitors follow Covid policy, is automatically higher.

Combining Traditional Print with Modern Social Media Marketing Styles

Successful business social media pages have regular updates, are seen to be engaged, and offer perks for fans and followers. What if you could leverage this power in elements of your marketing that traditionally use print? With digital signage, there are so many possibilities that can be delivered in a social media-responsive way.

Changes Are Easy

Need to change your offer? Run a themed promotion based on a current sporting event? Try out new items on your menu? Change your content often, show that you are fresh and dynamic. People love the instant, real-time, livestream-style nature of digital signage, and will choose those businesses over ones that they perceive as stagnant and slow.

Automate Your Marketing Strategy

Prepare your content in advance and schedule it. Analyze what worked and when, and what didn’t. Repeat the campaigns that worked, try them at different times, in front of different audiences as the demographics change throughout the day, week or season. Make use of QR codes in your digital signs, or discount codes unique to that sign for a specific campaign or location, and measure their success.

John Wanamaker, founder of Wanamaker’s, one of the first department stores in the United States once said, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” By segmenting your campaigns and audience and scheduling targeted messaging in your digital signs, you can easily track exactly what is making you money, and what needs to be adjusted.

Taking this a step further, you can have a TripAdvisor QR code on your digital sign that people can scan in store and instantly review their visit, putting you on the map and driving brand awareness. It’s a well-known fact that customers are happiest and give the most positive reviews at the point of the transaction.

Yet after they leave, they are less and less likely to leave a review at all. Scanning the QR code in-store from your digital sign automatically brings up the review page for your business and allows them to leave their review instantly in a frictionless way.

Learn more about the difference between promotion and advertising, here.

Calls To Action (CTAs)

Run time limited offers or promotions, or flash sales that are very short, requiring instant action. A 24 hour sale with a countdown timer., or 10% off today only. Digital signs in the window with dynamic offers with consistently fresh content get noticed. The same old stale poster in the window can’t do that unless you have the time and money to get a new one printed every single day.

Digital signage isn’t just for big corporations with money to burn. It’s surprisingly cost effective and quick to set up. You don’t have the panic of triple-checking, (then checking again) before sending to the printers and hoping you haven’t missed what will be an expensive typo.

You don’t have to worry if you’ve printed too many promotional code leaflets and wasted money, or printed too few and missed out on a higher discount and pay twice as much for a second print run. You can customize your messages, policies, offers, or menus exactly when and how you want, and drive customers via digital signs in a way that you can fully track the ROI.