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Loop TV is a digital signage company that specializes in music. Some businesses have turned to Loop TV for their digital signage needs because Loop offers them a free way to keep their guests, customers or patients entertained.
But if you run a business, you know that what’s free isn’t always what’s best for your company – and that just because you’re not paying for something with cash doesn’t mean you’re not paying for it in other ways.
Let’s take a look at what is Loop TV, what it has to offer and how those offerings, well, pale in comparison to UPshow. “Of course you’d say you’re better,” you’re thinking. Stick with us.
We're confident you'll agree by the end of this blog post.
How much does Loop TV cost? Well, it won’t cost you anything right now but it will cost you something later. In fact, Loop TV has quickly built a name for itself because it offers free entertainment for businesses.
All that a company needs to do to get started is order a Loop media player, install it and they’re good to go. Then they can begin keeping their customers entertained without paying a dime.
While only paying for a Loop Media Player does sound like an attractive option, in theory, companies often find that it doesn’t quite live up to their expectations. Here’s why.
You’re probably familiar with the marketing adage: if something is free, you’re the product. So, is Loop TV really free? Remember: Loop TV is a business, not a charity. They offer free services because they’re making money elsewhere — in this case, on ads.
While ads are a common revenue strategy, you’re required to run premium ads roughly every 10 minutes when you use Loop. That comes out to a massive 5-6 commercial breaks for every hour of content.
For perspective, this will likely leave you showing more ads than standard TV shows, which typically include about 14-17 minutes of ads for every hour of content.
The bottom line is that if you’re not paying for the content on your TVs, your customers will. They do so by sitting through more ads, which means more time on content they may not be interested in, and less time on content custom-designed to engage, entertain or educate. his is exactly why Loop TV for business may not be the best idea. In fact, even loop TV for home would get old really fast. After all, nobody really wants to sit through so many ads.
Loop TV channels are pretty limited. There are, including:
You won’t get access to local sports, premium entertainment channels or interactive content that your guests may care more about than what’s included in Loop TV’s basic lineup.
It means that you likely won’t be able to keep your guests entertained for as long as you would with a more comprehensive service – especially since other companies’ ads will interrupt this already-limited content every 10 minutes.
On-premise marketing is an excellent way to improve your relationships with existing customers and upsell people who are already in your establishment.
But if you use Loop TV, you’re missing out on the best opportunity that you have for on-premise marketing. That’s because Loop forces you to show dozens and dozens of ads for other companies.
Instead of advertising for other companies — or even competitors — use that ad time to promote your company’s special offers, products, services and more. Of course, we’re a little biased, but UPshow is the best customer engagement platform — and we’ll tell you why.
UPshow makes it easier to take full advantage of the power of on-premise entertainment through personalized content, advertisements and a wide range of entertainment options. Here’s how we do it:
This is maybe the biggest advantage of choosing a Loop TV alternative. Instead of showing ads for other companies every 10 minutes, you can advertise:
Another beneficial aspect of this benefit is getting to choose when your ads run in addition to what they include.
With UPshow, you won’t have to interrupt your guests’ viewing experience to meet an ad quota for another company.
Instead, you can take advantage of the natural lulls in live content to advertise your brand without bringing down the vibe.
You also get many more entertainment options to choose from when you go with UPshow. We give businesses access to over 500 channels, including local favorites like live sports, local news broadcasts and even interactive content like trivia and sports betting.
When you have more channels to choose from, it’s much easier to find those that your customers will love.
With UPshow, you can do more than simply entertain your customers. We talked a bit about how UPshow lets you run your own advertisements. That’s great — if you have the time to make those ads.
That’s why UPshow integrates seamlessly with Canva, giving you access to the Canva Pro toolset and a robust library of premade templates. Simply select the template that works best for you or use Canva’s best-in-class design tools to create stunning ads without ever leaving UPshow’s platform.
Creating eye-catching content to run alongside your entertainment is a start, but there’s no point in running content if you can’t measure its performance. That’s why UPshow comes with an onboard QR code creation tool.
Use QR codes to allow customer engagement at the moment of highest intent. For example, invite customers to scan a QR code to download your app and provide a coupon as a thank you, or use the QR code to add a future event to customers’ calendars.
Then, later, you can log into the UPshow manager to see how your campaign performed.
We don’t want to come on too strong, but Loop TV doesn’t offer any form of analytics, and a marketing tool without analytics capabilities is a marketing tool that doesn’t provide value.
Not seeing the performance you want for a given campaign? UPshow’s onboard, drag-and-drop playlist-building tool makes it easy to run the right campaigns for the right audiences at the right time. Editing your playlists lets you run a given promotion more frequently to boost engagement — or pull it down entirely if it’s underperforming.
Plus, playlists offer a quick and simple means to insert limited-time offers that tie into special events. While Loop TV offers flexible scheduling (we’ll be fair where fairness is warranted), they don’t provide multi-screen zoning for TVs.
What’s that mean? It means that you can showcase your best offers and most important messages all throughout the day across your TVs. More specifically, multi-screen zoning enables a static panel alongside the other content on your screens. Because it’s always visible to customers, there are more opportunities for them to take the actions you want them to take.
UPshow is the first on-premise marketing platform that doesn’t just engage your customers. We make it possible for you to engage one of your most important audiences: your employees.
UPshow SHIFT integrates with several point-of-sale systems, allowing you to display the KPIs that matter most to your business and keep your employees motivated. Plus, you can use UPshow SHIFT to recognize your best performers, call out birthdays and job anniversaries and lower the lead time on training.
If you want a holistic customer experience and employee engagement platform, there’s only one reasonable choice: UPshow.
Employee Engagement With UPshow
Do you think UPshow is the right solution for your company’s entertainment goals? If so, we’re happy to have you. Here’s what getting started looks like:
First up, if you don’t have the right screens in your business already, then you should begin by installing them. The optimal types of screens and locations for them will depend on your layout and goals.
For example, installing TVs throughout your waiting area will be very important if you run a healthcare clinic. But if you run a bar, then placing TVs in your highest-traffic areas at angles that guests can see without craning their necks will likely matter most.
One last thing you might consider is installing some touchscreen TVs or tablets in your business. With these, you can keep your guests entertained while also opening up a ton of new ways for them to interact with your company.
For example, you could use touchscreens to let customers:
Once you’ve decided on the screens you’re going to use and have installed them, it’s time to connect UPshow. Doing this is simple. You’ll just need to use one of our dedicated media players.
But don’t worry. We’ll send you everything you need to do this when you sign up. Plus, the connection process is very straightforward.
Once you’ve got UPshow hooked up to your on-premise screens, you can begin playing content immediately.
You can leave the screens on a channel that you know your customers love, or you can opt to set up a dynamic channel-changing rotation that adjusts the content shown on your screens based on the time of day.
With UPshow, the power is truly in your hands to entertain your customers in whatever ways you want. You can even alternate between live streaming video content and games.
Now you’re ready to begin using UPshow to create and share ads for your business, which will show in-between the content you play.
The process for doing this is quick and intuitive. There are two options:
First, you can create your ads from scratch using UPshow’s built-in design functionality. We give you all of the tools you need to create ads:
But you don’t have to go through the entire design process each time you want to create a new ad screen. You can also just use one of UPshow’s many pre-built templates.
These templates are a great way to quickly highlight new products, special deals or any other limited-time offerings that you want to make sure your guests know about as soon as possible.
Now that you understand what Loop TV is, let’s be open with each other as we wrap up this piece: those of us here at UPshow think we have a pretty great platform. We love our product, and we want you to love our product, too. But we’ll be honest with you where it counts.
If all you want is a digital signage solution with robust access to music, then Loop TV is the platform for you.
But if you want a customer experience platform that drives action and increases revenue while also allowing you to reach your employees? Then you want to upgrade to a service like UPshow.
With UPshow, you get:
A recent Gallup Poll found that people spend an average of about 109 seconds looking at a restaurant’s menu.
That short browse of your menu may be the best opportunity to engage your customer and help them connect with your brand.
Unfortunately, standard menu boards aren’t very good at this. If you want to make the most of the time customers spend looking at your menu, you’re better off with an engaging LED menu board powered by digital signage.
Not convinced? Keep reading for seven reasons why that’s true.
LED menu boards are large digital screens that restaurants can use instead of traditional printed menu boards. They’re distinguishable from other types of digital menu boards through LED technology.
LED screens are beneficial because they:
To bring your LED menu board to life, you also need digital signage software. You use this to create and manage the display screens that your customers will see when they look at your menu board.
So, without further ado, here’s how an LED menu board can help you take your sales to the next level:
On average, upselling is 20 times more profitable than cross-selling. So if you can do it well, your restaurant should see a nice bump in its revenue.
An LED menu board can help you make this happen. You can use these to automatically suggest more expensive versions of the food that your guests order.
For example, your restaurant might sell individual chicken wings and combos that include chicken wings, a drink and fries. Just before someone checks out, you could show them that they could get a drink and fries with their wings for a small amount more.
If that works even a fraction of the time, you’re likely to see a noticeable increase in revenue.
You may be thinking that your employees can do this type of thing themselves. But LED menu boards automate the upselling process, so it’s never forgotten and give guests the information before they begin ordering.
These two key differences make LED menu boards a more effective channel for upselling.
LED menu boards enable you to share high-resolution images of your restaurant’s options. They also let you rotate through a series of pictures so you can highlight everything that your business has to offer.
This is beneficial for a few reasons:
This feature can be valuable when you have extra supplies that you need to get rid of.
For example, you might have more onion ring inventory than you want. With an LED menu board, you could highlight onion rings on your menu to encourage customers to order them so that you can bring your inventory back down to where it should be.
Digital menu boards also let you bring an entirely new dimension to your menu. For example, animation is an excellent way to draw your audience’s eye toward certain pieces of information.
Humans naturally pay more attention to moving images than static ones. You can use that fact to your advantage by using animations on your menu board to do things like:
You have a lot of room to be creative here. If there’s anything on your menu that you want to draw attention to, an LED menu board enables you to use animation to do it more effectively.
Even your most loyal customers may get tired of coming back to your restaurant and having the same options presented to them repeatedly.
That’s why it’s a good strategy for restaurants to change their menus from time to time by offering new items and evolving old ones. LED menu boards make this easier to do.
You can use digital signage technology to easily update your menu boards by creating new display screens on your computer.
That should enable you to change your menu more often, as you won’t have to worry about printing out and installing a new menu every time you want to make an update.
Armed with this feature, you’ll be able to keep a higher percentage of your customers engaged by giving them new menu items to try more consistently.
We outlined in the last point how digital menu boards enable you to make changes in more efficient and cost-effective ways. That capability also extends to how you use the limited space of your menu.
With a digital menu, you can:
It’s another example of how you can use an LED menu board to be more precise about how you’re sharing your menu items with your audience.
When your restaurant has a special discount or deal, you want to make sure it’s displayed prominently. What better place to do it than on your menu board itself?
Without a digital menu board, you would need to print up a new version of your menu and install it to make this happen. But with one, the process is as simple as creating a display screen.
This opens up a ton of possibilities. For example, you could get into the habit of sharing lightning deals that customers hear about and visit you for. Or you could highlight a consistent rotation of daily specials.
If you integrate your POS system with your digital signage software, this feature gets even more powerful. For example, you can use inventory data from your POS system to automatically show ads for items that you have extra inventory of in real-time.
This can help you reduce food waste and increase your profitability.
Part of engaging your audience is creating consistent branding, offers and menu items across your locations. But if you’re using printed menu boards across many locations, it’s almost impossible to remain flexible while ensuring brand uniformity.
That means there are times when you’ll likely have to choose between being consistent and sharing information with your customers that could increase your revenue.
LED menu boards fix this problem. They enable you to manage the displays on your menu boards from a single internet-enabled device.
That way, you can remain consistent with your branding and offers without sacrificing your ability to be flexible as new opportunities arise.
Employees who take orders from your customers are busy. They’re often juggling multiple tasks, making it difficult for them to always remember what they need to tell customers when they're ordering.
For example, many restaurants instruct order-takers to let customers know that they can upgrade their order for a small charge. Others will ask counter workers to share daily specials or limited-time deals with customers while making their purchases.
But busy employees aren’t perfect. They’re liable to forget to share the information you want them to share with every customer they see. That means your business could be missing out on valuable revenue.
LED menu boards give you an easy way to ensure this doesn’t impact your bottom line. You can share the information that you want your customers to know as they’re waiting in line with them.
That keeps guests engaged as they wait and reduces the impact that a forgetful employee may have on your sales that day.
Are you interested in adding an LED menu board to your restaurants? If so, UPshow can help you do it.
Our digital signage software offers:
Competition is fierce in the fitness industry. Someone who wants to get fit can go to a small gym, a major chain or just work out at home. Your gym will need to stand out if you want to come out on top and this is exactly why you need to focus on fitness digital marketing.
Since fitness digital marketing can be challenging in most cases, creating robust digital marketing strategies for gyms and fitness studios may be where you need to start. Having the right online fitness marketing strategies on your side can make a big difference when it comes to convincing people in your neighborhood to sign up with your fitness center instead of your competitors.
The tricky part, however, is finding the right marketing strategies for gyms and then using them to maximum effect. Fortunately, we’ve got your back! Keep reading to learn about all the different methods of gym marketing and how to weave them into your online fitness marketing strategies.
Research from Harvard indicates that earning a new customer is 5-25 times more expensive than retaining an existing one.
So if you want to get as much out of your digital marketing budget as possible, the first goal of your gym marketing plan should be to better leverage your existing members.
Digital signage may be the most effective way to do that. You can use it to:
The coolest part is that you can manage all your digital signage displays from a single internet-enabled device. That makes it even easier to cross-sell and upsell to your existing customers.
Social media is the latest frontier in digital marketing. So establishing a presence for your gym on popular platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and even TikTok is a must.
But instead of making ads he lynchpin of social media marketing for your fitness center, you may get more bang for your buck by deploying an influencer marketing strategy.
71% of marketers say that the quality of traffic they get from influencers is better than other sources.
But if you want to optimize your engagement, then it’s better to go with a micro-influencer (someone with a few thousand followers) than a macro influencer (someone with tens of thousands of followers)
It all means that the ideal way to market your gym on social media could be to partner with a small local fitness influencer. These accounts tend to have more dedicated fans, so the influencer’s support of your gym will matter more.
SEO is another pillar that you need to incorporate into your online fitness marketing strategies. More than 50% of traffic across the web comes from organic SEO results.
The best way to improve your SEO results is to build web content that better reflects what your target audience is searching for online.
This is why creating an engaging blog needs to be a big part of the marketing plan for your gym. Every blog post that you publish can address a specific SEO search intent. If the content is valuable and uses the right keywords, it should drive traffic to your website.
The structure of your website can also impact your SEO results. Here are some tips:
The amount of online video content people watch has nearly doubled since 2018. That says a lot about where people’s attention is when using the internet. These statistics are even more relevant when it comes to marketing in the fitness industry.
Your gym needs to prioritize making video a key component of its fitness marketing strategies – but what types of videos should you create?
The idea behind video content is the same as if you were writing a blog post. You want to create something that your target audience finds valuable.
You could film a video series that explains how to do gym exercises properly. Or you could create videos that expose fitness myths. You can make more extended versions of these for your YouTube channel and shorter ones for your TikTok account.
The goal is to get your target audience to watch the video. Then, you can leave them with a call-to-action that prompts them to learn more by visiting your website or signing up for a gym membership.
Nowadays, marketing in fitness is all about customer engagement. People expect to be able to engage online with a business in all of the same ways that they would over the phone or in person.
The last thing you want is to run successful digital strategies for your gyms only for someone to give up on signing up for a membership because they’re unable to do so on your website.
That’s why it’s important to make sure that potential customers can engage with your fitness center online in whatever ways they want. They should be able to:
If you want your digital marketing campaigns to be successful, the roads you build have to lead back to a website with great functionality.
In addition to your standard digital marketing strategies for gyms, it’s also a good idea to create unique content that takes advantage of seasonal opportunities.
For example, that might include writing a blog post about how to stay healthy during Thanksgiving. Or you could create a video about fat loss myths as people prepare for the summer sun.
You can attach special seasonal deals to your seasonal content to really up the ante. For example, you could run summer preparation campaigns or offer holiday boot camps at a discount.
Seasonal digital marketing content helps you take advantage of people’s fitness interests, and goals change throughout the year.
Some data suggests that as high as 97% of consumers say they look at reviews before making a purchasing decision. That makes online reviews a vital part of your gym digital marketing strategy.
If you have lots of good reviews, it prompts customers to do more research. But, on the other hand, if you don’t have many reviews (or, worse, have lots of bad ones), then a potential customer may begin looking elsewhere right away.
That’s why it could make sense to incentivize existing customers to leave reviews for your gym online. For example, you could offer a discounted membership for a month, a free product from your store, or something else you know your customers will find valuable.
A new person will only join your gym if they believe that it will help them reach their fitness goals better (or in more preferable ways) than the alternatives.
To convince these consumers of that fact, you need to make your gym stand out from the alternatives. Real-world success stories are one of the best ways to do that.
Gym members who have lost weight, gained muscle or met their fitness goals in other ways are often happy to talk about how they did it. As you share these stories on your website, try to highlight the specific ways that your gym helped them reach their goals.
For example, maybe a specific personal trainer had a significant impact. Or they got to work on a specialized machine, which supercharged their results.
There’s an old idea in marketing called “The Rule of 7." It boils down to the concept that the average person needs to see a product or service at least seven times before they’ll purchase it.
One of your digital marketing goals should be to reach the same people multiple times. Retargeting is the most effective way to do that.
It’s the idea of using paid ads that only reach people who have already visited your website or social media profiles.
With retargeting ads, you keep your gym at the front of potential customers’ minds as they go through a decision-making process that takes time to complete.
The hope is that you become the first gym that they think of when they’re ready to sign up for a membership somewhere by doing that.
Gym digital marketing is just one part of growing your gym’s revenue. If you can excel at on-premise marketing, then your company will be well on its way to success.
UPshow’s digital signage software makes that much easier to do. It provides a simple way to:
Restaurant menus have looked pretty similar for a long time – there’s only so much you can do with a paper menu!
As technology continues to push everything forward, many businesses are sensing the value of investing in digital menu boards to stand out from the competition and improve customer experience.
If you’d like to do the same, you’re in the right place. Keep reading to learn how to create a digital menu board for your restaurant.
We’ll give you detailed instructions to create a digital menu below. But for now, here’s a quick overview of what the digital menu board creation process looks like:
Setting up a digital menu board won’t require as many items as you might expect. Here’s what you’ll need:
Your digital signage software is what will power your menu board. With this in mind, you’ll want to pick a provider that offers all of the design, sharing and analytical capabilities you need to get as much out of your digital menu solution as possible.
The first step is deciding what your digital menu board design will look like. It’s essential to put some thought into this, as it can significantly affect customer experience.
Your menu is a direct expression of what your restaurant stands for. It’s a crucial marketing opportunity to highlight:
Keep in mind that 31% of restaurateurs update their menu monthly. So when you’re picking a design, you’ll want to give yourself the ability to make changes as needed without completely remaking the design. The big question is if you should be using a pre-made digital menu board template or creating a new one from scratch.
There are pros and cons to each strategy, so it’s a matter of deciding what is best for your restaurant.
Using a pre-made template is often easier and will let you get your menu board up and running faster. However, these may also limit your ability to customize your menu board, making it feel a bit generic.
Creating your digital menu design from scratch gives you total design control, but it will also take more time and investment.
Freelance graphic designers cost an average of $25/hr, and your menu board may require several hours of work. It’s up to you to decide whether that cost is worth paying.
Once your menu design is ready, you can start adding dishes to it – but not ad hoc! Plan out your menu sections before you get started, and follow best practices for menu design to ensure your customers can clearly see and compare your offerings before they order.
With that in mind, here are some of the best ways to organize your menu:
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, which holds true for restaurant menus. When people can see how tasty a dish looks, they’re much likelier to order it.
That’s why it’s super important to make sure that you place images of some of your most popular (or profitable) dishes on your digital menu board.
But you should be strategic about doing this, as placing too many pictures on your menu could overwhelm your guests and increase their decision-making time.
You’ve chosen your digital menu design, added your dishes, and livened it up with some well-placed images. Now it’s time to take advantage of the unique capabilities of digital menu boards.
With digital menu board software from UPshow, you can take your digital menu board design to the next level. Some features include:
You can even display targeted ads for specific dishes on your digital menu board.
For example, let’s say you serve chicken wings, and you’ve got more in stock than you’d like. You could run a flash sale to help clear out the inventory and advertise it on your menu.
With features like this, you can get creative about how you market your specials. And since your menu board is fully digital, it’s easy to change the ads, animations, and screens you show daily.
That’s it! You’ve put together your digital menu board, and it’s ready to be shared with customers.
But don’t just assume that you’ve got it all right, and you can ignore your digital menu board moving forward. Instead, you’ll want to keep tabs on whether or not your menu board is helping you make progress towards your goals over time.
You can use UPshow to track the analytical information that you get from your menu. That way, you can quickly see how well your ads are performing, what dishes people are ordering the most and other valuable information that you can use to refine your menu board over time.
Digital menu boards are an excellent way to give your customers a more enjoyable ordering experience while supporting your business goals.
But some problems can arise while you make this transition if you’re not careful. Here are three to keep an eye on as you get started:
If you want to get as much out of your digital menu board as possible, you need to make sure that all of your guests can see it clearly.
That means investing in large enough screens to display your full menu at a high resolution.
Additionally, you want to make sure that you hang your digital menu board at an angle that’s easy for your guests to look at. They shouldn’t have to crane their necks to figure out what they’re going to order.
Adding details to your digital menus – such as photos and animations – can bring them to life and engage your customers. But if you add too many details, your menu board could quickly become overwhelming.
You can use the built-in analytics features of UPshow to make sure that you’ve got this balance right.
Some restaurants make the upgrade to a digital menu board and then treat it as though it were a regular menu. But if you’re going to invest in this technology, you want to make sure that you’re getting as much out of it as possible.
That’s why it’s a good idea to design a high-level marketing plan for your digital menu board. Set some goals for it and develop the strategies that you’re going to use to reach them.
For example, you might have a goal of selling more of your lunch specials, or you could focus on decreasing your ordering time to move customers through your restaurant more efficiently.
Whatever your goals are, don’t let them fall by the wayside as you get used to having a digital menu board. That way, you can make sure that you’re using the technology to its full potential.
Now that you know how to create a digital menu board, it’s also important to realize that the key to nailing your switch to a digital menu is choosing the right digital signage software. That’s why you should check out UPshow.
A digital menu board app has everything you need to create your ideal digital menu board. With pre-made and customized design options, it’s easy to use UPshow to create displays that bring your imagination to life.
Plus, our software comes with loads of built-in analytics features. These will enable you to track your digital menu progress and adjust over time.
Tens of millions of people in the United States use VR technology – and that number is growing.
That’s why entrepreneurs across the country are beginning to launch VR bars. These businesses blend the digital with the tangible to create fun and unique experiences for visitors.
If you own a VR bar, digital signage may be just what you need to get more out of it. Keep reading for step-by-step instructions on how to take your VR bar customer experience to the next level.
While virtual reality (VR) is a familiar term for many, it’s still the case that VR is a relatively new technology. That means if you run a VR bar, your staff is probably familiar with explaining how it works to new customers and troubleshooting issues.
While crucial tasks, this can reduce the amount of time that your staff has available for other parts of their roles like running food orders and making drinks. Digital signage lets you automate much of this process by replacing your staff’s instructions with signage.
You can record a staff member showing how to use VR once and replay that explanation infinite times. This can free up a ton of time for your employees to optimize other parts of your business.
On top of that, digital signage also makes it easier to:
We’ll dive into these steps later on, but for now, here’s a quick look at what it takes to add digital signage to your VR bar:
Yup, it’s that simple.
There are only three things you’ll need to add digital signage to your VR bar:
Once you’ve got all that, you’re ready to begin the installation process.
The first step in adding digital signage to your VR bar is figuring out what you hope to achieve.
Maybe your guests have complained about long wait times for food and drinks. If so, your goal may be to use digital signage to allow guests to order themselves to reduce those wait times.
Or you might want to reduce your printing costs by swapping your analog on-premise advertisements for digital ones.
You could even use your digital signage to entertain your guests in-between VR games with live streaming video content.
There’s a lot that you can do with digital signage. When you clearly understand your goals, it becomes much easier to figure out the specific types of hardware and software that you need to reach them.
Next up is installing the screens that you’ll use to display your digital signage content. Again, the best way to do this will depend on the goals that you came up with during the previous step.
For example, if you want your guests to be able to place their own orders, then you would likely want to install tablets in each of your VR rooms.
Or, if you want to keep your guests entertained, you would want to install large televisions in the parts of your bar that get the most traffic.
And if you want to accomplish both of these goals, you need to install tablets and televisions in suitable locations.
After installing your screens, you’re ready to select your digital signage software provider. You want to be sure to choose a provider that gives you each of these features:
UPshow offers each of these features and more. That makes it a good fit for any VR bar ready to make this update to their business.
Now you’re ready to begin using your digital signage software to create the displays that your guests will see.
You’ll be able to choose between designing your displays from scratch or using a pre-built template to quickly bring an idea to life. Thanks to its versatility, this technology enables you to create more engaging types of displays than other media.
For example, research shows that animated ads often perform better than non-animated ones. And with digital signage, it’s easy to bring your ads to life with engaging animations.
You can also include value-adding features to your digital signage content, such as:
Once you’ve created your content, you’re ready to develop a rotation schedule for displaying it to your guests.
It’ll be important to mix up your advertisements and entertainment to keep your audience engaged. However, the best rotation schedule for your VR bar can vary based on the shifting preference of your customers.
That’s why it’s essential to use analytics to assess the effectiveness of your digital signage content over time. Then, when you notice dips in performance or see that your ads aren’t performing as well as you would like, you can make informed adjustments to resolve the problems.
Research suggests that people need to see an ad 7-8 times before acting on it. So that could be a good benchmark for how often you leave the same ads running in your VR bar.
When done right, digital signage can enhance the overall experience of your VR bar. But there are a few potential pitfalls that you’ll want to look out for while implementing it. Here are 4 to keep in mind:
Your digital signage can only be effective if it’s easy for people to see and access. A big part of that is making sure that you put your screens in the right locations and at the right angles for viewing.
For example, if you want to use digital signage for advertising, you’ll need screens in your highest-traffic areas to get the most out of those campaigns.
Similarly, let’s say you want to use digital signage to entertain your guests while they wait at the bar. If you hang the screens at odd angles requiring customers to bend their necks, fewer people will pay attention to them.
It’s also imperative to keep an eye on the effectiveness of your digital signage content. You can do that with built-in analytics features from UPshow.
If you don’t do this, you have no way of knowing whether or not your content is resonating with your audience. And that could lead to a scenario where you’re spending a lot of time and money on building out a content pipeline that isn’t working for you.
Analytics is a great way to understand how effective your digital signage campaigns are. But they shouldn’t be a complete substitute for what your customers tell you about your digital signage.
Raw data doesn’t always tell the whole story. So it’s crucial to also solicit feedback directly from your customers to make sure you’re not missing anything.
Finally, your software is everything when setting up a digital signage solution.
If the software you pick is limited in its functionality, you’re not going to get as much out of your digital signage investment as you should.
That’s why it’s crucial to look for digital signage software that will allow you to accomplish all of your marketing and entertainment goals.
Digital signage could be just what you need to keep the party going in your VR bar for years to come. UPshow is the perfect partner to make that happen.
Our digital signage software can help you take full advantage of the versatile benefits of this technology. From live streaming entertainment to self-ordering, UPshow can do it all.
The average human attention span is down to just 8 seconds. So as a business owner today, you need to get creative to keep your customers interested long enough for them to make a purchase.
One way to do that is by making your business more interactive. When you give your customers hands-on ways to engage with your brand and its products, they become much likelier to stick around long enough for you to make a sale.
Digital signage is one of the most effective ways to build more interactivity in your business. Here are seven ways to do just that:
Digital signage offers many capabilities that will enable you to give your guests better shopping and ordering experiences. We’ll explore the main ones in this section.
First, you can use digital signage to teach your customers more about your products. By setting up interactive touchscreen kiosks throughout your store, your visitors will be able to look up the product information that matters most to them on-demand.
This not only makes it easier for your guests to get the information they need to make a purchasing decision — but it will also free up your staff to focus on essential tasks.
When you set up digital signage with touchscreens, you also make it possible for customers to place orders themselves. This can be a valuable and time-saving feature for restaurants and retail stores.
Instead of waiting for a staff member to assist them, your customers will be able to complete their purchase when they’re ready to do so.
Finally, digital signage also enables you to minimize the gap between shopping in your online store and visiting one of your locations in person.
This can have a significant impact on your business.
For example, imagine that a customer comes to your store and is disappointed that you’re out of their shoe size in their favorite design.
Without digital signage, you would need to convince them to go with their second choice. Or they would leave your store unhappy and perhaps make their purchase elsewhere.
With digital signage, the customer could place their order for their first-choice shoe directly in your store. That way, you get the sale, and they leave having purchased what they came in to buy.
Instagram has nearly 1.4 billion monthly active users. That user base alone makes it a fantastic platform for reaching out to your customers.
There are two ways to do this. You can either pay for ads on Instagram or develop organic Instagram marketing campaigns that don’t cost you a thing.
Digital signage makes it easier to generate free traffic for your business on Instagram. You can even use it to set up interactive social media boards in your business.
These boards feature your customers’ posts on platforms like Instagram when they use the right hashtag.
As more and more people see the social media board and try to get featured on it, the buzz will build around your company online. So by giving your customers a fun way to interact with your business, you’ll also increase your digital marketing footprint.
This tip is maybe the most important one for healthcare clinics and hotels. The check-in process at these businesses can be time-consuming — especially when you have a long line.
But digital signage resolves the check-in problem by giving your guests the ability to check themselves in. The benefits are apparent:
How much time do your employees spend giving customers directions and answering the same basic questions? If you’re like most businesses, the answer is likely quite a bit.
Digital signage can help you solve this, too. You can use it to set up interactive stations that allow customers to look up directions in large spaces and search for basic information about your business, event, or facility.
Did you know nearly 40% of the world’s population enjoys playing video games? Tapping into that interest could be just what you need to make your business more interactive.
Digital signage can help you do it. You can use this technology to set up engaging trivia games that also help to further your marketing interests.
For example, you could set up a game that quizzes your customers on your brand and its products. Top performers could earn a special discount.
Sometimes, the best parts about your products are also the toughest ones to explain. With digital signage, you can make it easier for your customers to understand what makes your products great with animated explainer videos.
Picture this:
A customer walks up to your product and isn’t exactly sure what it does or what makes it special. Instead of walking away, they press a button next to the product that activates a digital signage video with animations that shows them exactly what makes your product great. They consider buying the product instead of forgetting about it
This type of experience will likely play out hundreds of times once you add animated product explainers to your store. And even though you won’t convert everyone who watches them, you should still convert enough to have a noticeable effect on your bottom line.
About a third of all smartphone users scan a QR code at least once a week. With digital signage, some of those could be your customers.
This technology makes it easier to share interactive ads with QR codes. These are impactful because they help bridge the gap between your digital marketing efforts and your in-person ones.
You can direct the customers who scan your QR codes to your mobile app, email list, or a specific page on your website. By doing so, you can get them into your digital marketing funnel.
That way, you’ll be able to retarget the customer in the future regardless of whether they end up purchasing with you that day or not.
If your business is in a diverse area, you may not be reaching all of the customers that you can with your interactive displays if they’re only available in English.
Instead, it could be good to let customers choose between several language options the first time they engage with your digital displays.
If you want your interactive digital signage displays to be effective, you need your customers to use them. High-resolution images and videos can help you attract customers’ attention while walking around your store.
Another part of making sure that you reach as many customers as possible with your interactive stations is to have enough of them set up.
You won’t get as much as you could be out of this technology if you only have one or two in a large store. So instead, aim to have at least one digital signage kiosk in each section of your establishment.
Lastly, it’s important to do your research and make sure that you select a digital signage software provider who can help you reach your goals.
Not all types of digital signage software will let you utilize every strategy covered in this article. And you don’t want to invest time and money into a tool that isn’t a complete solution.
Engaging your customers with interactive digital signage can help you increase each visitor's value and free up your staff to focus on critical tasks.
UPshow makes it easy to unlock the full potential of this technology. With our solution, you get:
An impressive 97% of restaurants in the United States use POS technology.
However, how many of those are getting as much out of their POS software as they could? If you can use Toast POS integrations options in the right way, you can leverage this platform to boost your revenue and margins.
If you’re currently using Toast POS, or are interested in doing so, keep reading to learn how to use Toast POS integrations and leverage the Toast Partner Program step-by-step. Using the Toast 3rd party integrations feature you'd be able to optimize your scheduling, inventory, taxes, and more.
Looking for more detailed instructions for Toast 3rd party integrations? Keep reading. We’ve included everything you need to know in the sections below.
Becoming a Toast Integration Partner is easy if you already use Toast’s POS software. In addition, you’ll also need the following things to get started with Toast third-party integration:
You can technically get started with Toast’s integration program without screens; however – these enable you to pair your Toast POS system with technology, like UPshow's on-premise performance marketing cloud for screens, to use POS data to engage your customers and employees.
That can be more valuable than you think.
For example, you could use your POS system with UPshow's on-premise performance marketing cloud to:
First thing’s first. You’re going to need Toast’s POS software if you want to take advantage of the company’s partner integration program.
If you don’t have Toast POS in your restaurant yet, don’t worry. Getting started is as easy as:
Toast offers comprehensive customer support. When you sign up, you’ll have a single point of contact for payments and POS, meaning you can easily access the help you need to answer any questions or resolve any difficulties.
Once you’ve got your Toast POS system working, you’re ready to start working on the Partner Integration process. The first step is signing up for Toast’s Partner Connect subscription.
Toast subscription costs $25 per month per location, which might seem a bit pricey at first glance. However, you’ll get unlimited access to every Toast integration partner with this single fee, so the value quickly stacks up.
You can finally activate Toast’s partner connect portal now that you have a subscription.
To do this, start by logging into the back-end of your Toast account.
Then, use the navigation bar on the left-hand side of your screen to hit integrations, and then browse and purchase.
If you haven’t already signed up for a subscription, you’ll receive a prompt to do so in the activation process.
If you have a subscription, you should see a screen that lets you begin selecting your preferences for partner integration.
The next step is choosing which of your locations will become a part of the Toast Integration program.
This is straightforward. Just tap on the restaurants you want to include and hit “apply.”
Finally, you’re ready to partner up with companies that can help your restaurant thrive through your Toast POS system. There are currently a total of 56 integration options in the Toast ecosystem.
Here are some of the highlights if you’re not sure which Toast integration options will be best for your company:
Does your restaurant use custom-printed menus, PPE gear, sanitizer, or paper? If so, you want to take advantage of Toast’s special relationship with Staples Connect.
Through Toast’s Partner Integration Program, you can get up to 25% on essentials like these when you purchase them through Staples Connect.
That’s free money you’re getting back for items through the Toast Partner Connect program that you would have bought anyway.
Sling is another integration partner that’s worth checking out. It’s a company that offers employee scheduling software designed to help restaurants maximize productivity by optimizing the cost of labor.
If you’ve ever felt like you’re not getting as much out of your staff as you could be, Sling and Toast integration could help you solve that problem.
Popmenu is a company that offers interactive menu technology, mobile-friendly restaurant websites, and online ordering.
This integration partner could suit your restaurant if you’re looking for an easy way to engage with your customers who prefer to order online and with their mobile devices.
This list of useful integrations wouldn’t be complete without mentioning these popular delivery apps.
Getting your restaurant on DoorDash, Grubhub, and Uber Eats is critical to maximizing its reach. More than 100 million people in the United States use food apps like these.
Toast’s Integration Program makes it easier to manage your relationships with these delivery apps. With Toast Uber Eats, DoorDash, and Grubhub integrations you can take full advantage of food delivery companies without adding extra stress to your life.
Every restaurant needs a good accounting service. For you, that could be RASI (Restaurant Accounting Services, Inc.).
It’s an outsourced accounting agency that specializes in hospitality companies like restaurants.
The cool thing is that you can use feed data to RASI through your Toast POS system. This can make it a lot easier for you to get your taxes, payroll, and other critical financial tasks done correctly without taking a lot of time out of your busy schedule to make it happen.
Learning how to use the how to use toast POS system and becoming a Toast Integration Partner can help your restaurants thrive, but there are a few things you don’t want to overlook before getting started:
Delivery apps like Uber Eats, Grubhub, and DoorDash help restaurants reach more customers. Toast’s Partner Integration program makes it easy for restaurants like yours to engage with these platforms.
But you should know that you don’t have to pay a monthly Toast subscription fee to access Toast third-party integrations for these platforms.
So if that’s all you’re looking for, then you can avoid Toast POS integration costs to save your money by following these setup instruction guides instead:
Toast’s partner ecosystem can be overwhelming the first time you use it. If you try juggling too many new partners right out of the gate, you’re unlikely to optimize your restaurant’s relationship with them.
With that in mind, you may want to start slowly and only add more integrations once you’re confident that you’ve mastered the first few. That way, you can be sure that you’re getting as much out of every partner integration that you use as possible.
You need to have this setting activated to access Toast’s integration portal. So if the guide you’ve just read isn’t working for you for some reason, this could be your problem.
Here’s a screenshot, so you know what it looks like::
Some of Toast’s integration partners offer services beyond the cost of your Toast Connect subscription. If you want to use these tools, you may have to pay another Toast subscription fee for them.
You can get even more out of your Toast POS integration system by combining it with UPshow's on-premise performance marketing cloud for screens.
UPshow can help you:
Main Points
● Entertainment: UPshow's offerings are robust – over 500 entertainment channels, a curated healthcare pack with anxiety-reducing content and custom trivia.
● Design: UPshow offers robust content design options, including an in-platform integration with Canva and many pre-built templates.
● Ads: With UPshow, you never have to show third-party ads on your TVs.
● Promotions & Campaigns: UPshow improves patient care while growing revenue by running targeted on-screen campaigns with clinics' most important messaging.
● Measurement: UPshow captures analytics for all campaigns to gather insights for optimizations.
With 60% of patients saying that they’d like to use digital communication tools as part of their healthcare plan, digital patient engagement is a growing part of how we deliver healthcare.
Many companies say they can help you turn your digital engagement goals into a reality. Still, some technological solutions will prove more suited to your healthcare clinic than others.
If you’re looking for a patient marketing platform, UPshow may be the ideal solution. Our platform is straightforward, powerful and versatile enough to help you achieve all of your patient engagement goals.
Digital patient engagement involves providing healthcare tools and information to patients in digital formats.
The purpose is to meet patients where they’re at, whether on their mobile device, laptop or tablet. With so many of us using our devices throughout the day for work, family and more, it makes sense to allow patients to access their healthcare in the same way.
Here are a few reasons why accessible digital engagement is so important:
If you’re looking to prioritize digital patient engagement, there is a wide range of valuable tools and strategies available, from in-clinic education and advertising to digital portals and telehealth services.
In this section, we’ll outline the features that UPshow offers its healthcare customers and how you can maximize patient engagement in your business.
Patients' time in your waiting area is a great opportunity to educate them about important health topics, promote your health services and help them feel at ease with curated entertainment.
UPshow offers a range of entertainment options and channels, including:
When it comes to education, UPshow provides clinics with the opportunity to create custom content for patients’ specific healthcare interests and needs.
For example, you could:
Whether you want a template to get you going or the freedom to create your content from scratch, UPshow offers robust content design options. UPshow's in-platform integration with Canva enables customers to easily create displays and campaigns without ever leaving the UPshow platform.
Templated and custom scheduling – free of the restrictions that other patient marketing platforms may impose – means you can schedule content on your terms.
Plus, with UPshow, you never have to show third-party ads on your TVs. Several patient marketing platforms require a certain percentage of your on-screen content to be ads. UPshow believes you should only use your valuable on-screen real estate to promote your business and the messaging that matters most to you – no one else’s.
UPshow helps you improve patient care while growing revenue by running targeted on-screen campaigns with your most important messaging.
Not only does UPshow provide an in-platform QR code campaign creator, but we also encourage you to promote your services via campaigns. Plus, you can conveniently organize all of your current campaigns that you want patients to see on a custom mobile-friendly landing page. The benefits are huge: greater awareness of your services, more opportunities to grow revenue and additional outlets to provide value.
And what good are campaigns without results to indicate their performance? UPshow captures analytics for all of your campaigns to gather insights for future optimizations. Unfortunately, there are many patient marketing platforms that don't provide performance data to their customers.
Now that you better understand the value that UPshow’s patient experience platform can deliver for your clinic and your patients, we’ve outlined how you can get started:
Every good plan begins with a well-defined goal, and your digital patient engagement strategy is no different.
To get the most out of your efforts, you need to know precisely what you hope to accomplish. This begins with identifying pain points within your clinic – processes that staff or patients might have voiced frustration about or that are time-consuming, outdated or inefficient.
Are you hoping to create more ways for your patients to interact with your clinic from home? Or do you want to focus on digitally engaging patients while they’re in your waiting room? Is your clinic’s phone system constantly leaving patients on hold, or is your repeat prescription system overflowing?
Identifying where you hope to improve is crucial to implementing your overall engagement strategy to maximize your returns.
UPshow is at its best when you optimize the screens in your healthcare clinic with a lens toward patient experience.
For example, maybe you primarily want a way to share important health information with your patients while they’re sitting in your waiting area. If so, you would want to have large screens available for viewing no matter where a patient sits.
Good content is the key to any digital patient engagement strategy.
That’s why it’s essential to put thought and effort into creating the displays you’ll show to patients in your clinic.
Ideas for this include:
UPshow makes it easy to create content that will engage your patients, given that our software has pre-made templates that you can use to execute new ideas quickly.
With a wide variety of content customization features, UPshow has everything you need to create patient engagement content that stands out.
It’s unlikely that the first iteration of your digital patient engagement strategy will be the most optimal.
That’s okay! It highlights why it’s essential to continuously track your performance against your goals, analyze and adapt.
Whatever your goals are, periodically reviewing your progress can help you to iterate on what content you show, when you show it, and to who you show it, to maximize your results.
This iterative process of trial and failure is key to getting the most out of any new technology.
Are you ready to digitally engage your patients? If so, UPshow is here to help.
Our digital signage software is the perfect way to:
Today, 70% of organizations either have a digital transformation strategy in place or are working towards creating one. If your company isn’t, then it could fall behind the competition sooner than you expect.
That’s why focusing on your business’ digital IQ is so important.
Not sure what a digital IQ is, or what this might look like in practice? Not a problem – we’ll help you figure it out below.
By reading this article, you’ll learn:
Digital IQ is an assessment of both how well your company understands the value of technology and how well it integrates technology into its business.
To have a high digital IQ, a company needs to embrace technological innovations and utilize them in a way that helps the business make more efficient progress towards its goals.
Assessing your company’s digital IQ can be tough since there’s no standardized metric for doing so. Here are some of the common traits of businesses with a high digital IQ:
If your business does most of these things, that’s great – there’s a good chance that it already has a high digital IQ.
However, most companies find they are lacking in one or more of these areas. Don’t worry if that describes your business – it simply means that you still have room to grow.
When you improve your business’ digital IQ, you can look forward to a variety of benefits. Here are four of the most impactful:
Research shows that the average worker loses about 22 minutes per day to technology-related issues. That’s more than 95 hours per year – or over two 40-hour work weeks!
When your company-wide digital IQ goes up, these problems become less frequent. You don’t even need to solve them entirely to have a huge impact on organizational productivity.
Even if you can bring the number down to 10 minutes per day instead of 22, you’d be saving more than 40 hours per year in productivity for every employee in your organization.
It also becomes much easier to connect with employees, customers and other stakeholders when you improve your company’s digital IQ.
Technology can help you optimize how you communicate with each of these groups. This could make it easier for your business to build strong relationships with everyone that it needs to.
Technology can save you time, effort and money in nearly every vertical – from marketing to legal. Because of this, it enables businesses to be more agile when changes occur.
For example, a company without much technological knowledge may take a long time to fully embrace a switch to a new sales strategy, while one with automated technological processes in place could make the swap almost instantly.
Every company invests in technology in one way or another. They do so because they expect that, over time, the technology will pay for itself through a benefit like increased productivity or improved revenue.
While this may still be the case if your company doesn’t improve its digital IQ, your ROI on technology could go up tremendously if you work on boosting your digital IQ as well.
That’s because when your company has a higher digital IQ, it gets better at connecting technology to real-world use cases.
In other words, you get more out of the software and tools that you buy when you have a higher digital IQ, making it easier to get the ROI that you’re after.
As new types of technology are pioneered and released, they make the workplace increasingly more efficient. Companies that embrace new technology quickly are typically rewarded for doing so with competitive advantages.
If your business develops a high digital IQ now, then it will be able to take advantage of new technologies faster, helping it to thrive no matter what the future brings.
If your company wants to improve its digital IQ, then it’s going to need both some plans put into place and the right technology.
With that in mind, here’s an essential toolkit for boosting company-wide digital IQ:
Before you can boost your digital IQ, you first need to have a clear idea of where you’re starting from. There are several key questions to ask during this phase, including:
Answering these questions will give you a great idea of what your digital IQ enhancement strategies should look like.
Now you’re ready to create targeted strategies for upskilling your workforce. What that looks like will depend on where your company’s digital IQ currently lies and your long-term goals.
For example, you might want to focus on:
Once you understand what technology your company needs to master to reach its goals, it’s time to come up with a detailed plan to make that happen.
Company-wide digital transformation plans are important. But it’s important to remember that your business is made up of individuals with varying levels of technical skills and knowledge.
That means it’s also a good strategy to provide employees that need it with more personalized digital training. This can also be effective because not everyone in your company may need to learn how to use the same technology or software.
For example, someone in accounting probably doesn’t need to master CRM software. And a salesperson may not need to learn everything there is to know about data analytics.
Once you achieve your business’ ideal digital IQ, your job isn’t complete. You’ll still want to provide ongoing training to your employees to make sure that they keep their technology skills where you want them.
Some level of skill slippage is also to be expected. So it’s also a good plan to offer retraining and review modules on-demand. That way, anybody who needs a refresher will be able to get it without needing 1-on-1 training from another staff member.
The technology that you invest in will play a huge role in how efficiently you’re able to make progress towards your company’s target digital IQ.
If you pick technology with intuitive features and designs, your employees should learn how to use them at a much faster pace.
That’s why it’s important to not just look for the most powerful technology for your business but to also prioritize software and tools that your workers will be able to leverage to their full potential.
Digital signage can be an effective way to enhance your company’s digital IQ. With it, you can digitize all internal communications so that leaders don’t have to take time out of their days to do this manually.
Plus, digital signage is an extremely effective way to share crucial announcements and policy updates with your team. It can be useful to have this technology to communicate with your staff while you work towards a higher digital IQ.
Research shows that 94% of companies use cloud technology in one way or another.
However, only a small percentage of usage comes from cloud server digital signage.
Why is this significant? Simply put, cloud-based digital signage is a technology that can help save you a significant amount of time and money.
Interested? Keep reading to discover the benefits of using cloud server digital signage, how to unlock its full potential, and pitfalls to be aware of before you get started.
Cloud server digital signage is a platform that hosts all of your digital signage content in the cloud.
The company that you purchase the software from hosts the server where the data is kept. With this type of software, you can manage your digital signage content from anywhere and on any device as long as it has an internet connection.
Cloud server digital signage can help your company cut costs in each of the following areas:
Estimates show that the average employee costs about $725 per year in printing costs. Multiply that number across your team, and you’re potentially looking at a significant print spend.
Using cloud server digital signage can bring your printing costs down significantly – if not completely – depending on your industry.
Digital signage gives you an efficient, real-time way to share important information digitally with your team. In addition to communications from management, you can also set up your platform to allow employees to communicate with one another through it.
The net result is that you’ll be able to replace a significant amount of what you’re currently printing with a digital alternative and not only cut down on costs but reduce the environmental impact of using large amounts of printed materials.
Over time, this cost can contribute towards recuperating your initial investment in cloud server digital signage software.
On-premise advertising is essential for brick-and-mortar businesses such as restaurants and doctors’ offices.
Unfortunately, it can be expensive to create new physical advertisements from scratch every time you want to highlight a new product or service. This limits how agile you can be with your messaging.
Cloud server digital signage bypasses this issue completely by allowing you to seamlessly add, subtract and update your on-premise ads with the press of a button.
Not only is this a massive timesaver, but you won’t have to spend a dime to make the changes that you want to see in your on-premise ads, allowing you to assign your marketing budget elsewhere.
Research suggests that the average employee wastes about 94 minutes per day.
Much of this time waste occurs during the gaps between completing one task and starting another.
Cloud server digital signage can help you reduce or eliminate these gaps, as it’s an easy way to remind your employees what’s on their to-do list. You can also provide visual checklists of “downtime” or repeated tasks to help your employees to prioritize their workload after their main tasks have been completed.
You can also use the same platform to share real-time messages about your most pressing needs, schedule changes, large reservations, inventory alerts, and more.
Perhaps the best cost-saving feature of cloud server digital signage is the fact that you can access it on any internet-enabled device.
You can enjoy the full benefits of this technology without having to purchase an expensive new computer or tablet to do so. Simply display your signage on any existing TV or tablet, and control it from anywhere.
In addition to money, you can also save a good deal of time by investing in cloud server digital signage. Here are four opportunities for time-saving with this technology:
Cloud server digital signage lets you update your displays remotely from anywhere you have a solid internet connection. That means you don’t have to make a special trip to your business just to update your displays.
Plus, if you’re out of town, you can continue managing your digital signage software instead of leaving it static until you return.
Some business owners (like franchisees) manage a fleet of brick-and-mortar businesses. If that’s you, then manually updating your digital content across every location can be a huge time sink.
This is where cloud server digital signage comes to the rescue – seamlessly push out content updates across every branch with a single update.
Great displays are the cornerstone of effective digital signage.
That being said, putting together high-quality displays from scratch can be a time-consuming process – especially when you plan on updating yours frequently to reflect seasonal changes, deals and more.
Cloud server digital signage such as UPshow’s digital engagement platform fixes this.
With our software, you can choose from a host of engaging pre-built digital signage templates. That way, you can significantly shorten the design phase and get the content that you want to share out as soon as possible.
If you manage a large team, it can be difficult to make sure everyone on it receives your important announcements. You likely won’t have the time to confirm that every employee has heard them directly either.
Once you upgrade to cloud server digital signage, it’s easy to push out important messages to your entire team simultaneously, no matter where you’re located.
You can even integrate QR code links into your displays to allow your employees to quickly confirm that they understood your latest message with a short quiz.
Are you beginning to think that cloud server digital signage could be right for your brand?
If so, there are two major steps to getting started:
To get as much out of your cloud server digital signage as possible, you need to make sure that it’s easy for everyone to see the displays that you create with it. Choosing the right screen setup is how you ensure this happens.
Your screen needs will vary based on the nature of your business and your digital signage goals.
For example, a restaurant would want to have screens in all areas where customers congregate. It would also want screens in its back of house so that employees can see different, custom content you share with them while they work.
But a medical clinic may want to invest in touchscreens. That way, they can harness the power of cloud server digital signage to let patients check themselves into their appointments.
The software that you select will have a huge impact on how much you’re able to get out of cloud server digital signage.
Ideally, your software should have each of the following characteristics:
Though cloud server digital signage can help you save both time and money, there are some potential pitfalls to keep an eye out for while you adjust to it.
The success or failure of your digital signage setup, ultimately, comes down to whether people can see your displays or not. That’s why it’s important to focus on screen placement while getting started.
It isn’t enough to just hang your screens in the right places, either. You also want to make sure that they’re at the right angle and height. That way, your guests and employees will see them naturally without having to crane their necks to do so.
Your displays will only be effective if they both capture your audience’s attention and convey whatever you want them to in an intuitive way.
If you’re not super confident with your ability to create those types of displays from scratch, you may want to begin by relying a bit more on pre-built digital signage templates until you get your feet under you.
It’s also crucial to be proactive about display rotation management. If you’re showing ads for a deal that’s already passed, customers are going to start neglecting your digital signage displays. That’ll limit how much you can get out of this technology.
If you’re searching for cloud server digital signage software that has all of the features shown above, look no further than UPshow.
With UPshow, it’s incredibly easy to create, edit, and manage your digital displays. Our software is versatile enough to be beneficial for all types of companies as well, so you can use it regardless of whether you run a restaurant chain or an enterprise-level company.
A stunning 85% of global consumers have become “greener” in their purchasing decisions in recent years. Your fitness center can appeal to this growing audience by embracing a more sustainable business model.
If you’re not sure how to do that, don’t worry. We’ve got you covered.
Keep reading to find step-by-step instructions for building a more environmentally sustainable fitness business.
If you’re just looking for the headline information, here are the best strategies for going green as a fitness center:
We’ll provide more in-depth information on each of these strategies, how to implement them and why they’re effective in the sections below.
Investing in the right products, tools and technologies can make it much easier for your fitness center to go green. Here’s a list to get started:
Digital signage can be especially helpful for this transition. With it, you can eliminate your reliance on paper communications without sacrificing your business goals.
Recycling is one of the best things that anyone can do for the environment.
It extends the lifespan of the raw materials used to make many different types of products. And when that happens, less energy is needed to harvest those raw materials and make new products.
For example, it takes 95% less energy to recycle aluminum than it does to produce it from scratch.
Your fitness center can play a big role in this process by making it easy for guests to recycle their products in your facility. You can do that by placing recycling bins in easy-to-spot locations throughout your space.
Many fitness centers advertise classes, products and trainers. But you can also advertise environmentally-friendly practices to your guests in between these ads.
For example, you could:
Your fitness center likely partners with lots of different companies to secure its fitness equipment, machines and the products that you stock in its snack bar.
The types of companies that you work with speak volumes to your priorities as a business. And customers pick up on this.
If you choose to go with mass-produced, cheap products, then your fitness business will develop a reputation as a budget option that’s primarily concerned with finances.
But if you invest in high-quality, eco-friendly products, you can establish a completely different reputation for yourself. Your guests may begin thinking about your fitness center as a much more conscious company.
That can have a big impact on your bottom line since more than a third of global consumers are willing to pay extra for sustainability.
Paper products account for about 26% of total waste in landfills. So if your fitness business wants to become more environmentally sustainable, reducing paper waste is a must.
Digital signage makes this a lot easier to do. With it, you can communicate with your guests and employees in whatever ways you want without having to print flyers or takeaways..
For example, digital signage can be a more sustainable replacement for:
Using a smart thermostat can do wonders for your heating and cooling costs. That’s because these products give you more control over how you heat different parts of your gym at different times of the day.
With that control, you can reduce heating or cooling when they’re not necessary. That way, you’re not paying more than you should for these utilities.
This also has a big impact on the environment. When you use less electricity to heat and cool your space, you contribute less to the pollution of the planet.
Most fitness centers have a ton of electronic equipment running throughout the day. But when your fitness center shuts down at night, there’s no reason to keep these devices plugged in.
The Department of Energy estimates that the average consumer can save 10% on energy bills by simply unplugging their devices at night. Your fitness center may be able to save even more than that given how many devices and machines are powered by electricity.
Sure, it might be a little inconvenient to have to unplug and replug those cords at night and in the morning. But if doing so can save you money and help the environment, it’s worth making the effort.
This is another great way to become more environmentally friendly. By choosing the right lighting, you can bring down your energy consumption significantly.
That’s not just good for the planet, it can also be great for your bottom line.
The best way to do this is by investing in LED lights. These can be up to 80% more energy-efficient than traditional lightbulbs.
LED bulbs also tend to last longer than traditional lighting options. So you could do more than just bring down your energy bill, you could also reduce the frequency that you need to purchase new bulbs.
Traditional cleaning products can be damaging to the environment. Many are full of harsh chemicals that end up seeping into waterways and groundwater supplies.
You can boost your fitness center’s sustainability by opting for a natural alternative instead. Your environmentally-conscious guests will appreciate you for doing so.
Going green could be just what your fitness business needs to boost its bottom line and appeal to a broader audience. But as you make this transition, there are a few important potential pitfalls to think about.
Here are three things that could derail your progress while you transition to environmentally sustainable fitness.
Though it can be tempting to just start implementing environmentally-focused changes in a piecemeal fashion, doing so is rarely the best strategy.
You want to come up with an overarching plan before getting started. That way, you can make sure you’re using the optimal solutions before you start spending money.
You may need to spend a little extra upfront while transitioning towards a more sustainable business model. But you can get a lot of that value back by saving on your energy bill and appealing to a wider range of consumers.
The problems will only start to arise if you overspend during the transition phase. For example, you don’t need to purchase the latest eco-friendly machines to have a more sustainable business model.
Doing that may be great for the environment. But it could derail the financials of your transition plan and threaten the health of your business unnecessarily.
Digital signage software is an effective way to replace paper-based communication in your fitness center. But some digital signage software is more effective than others.
While you’re shopping for software, make sure you pick a provider who:
If you’re looking for digital signage software that checks all of those boxes, take a look at UPshow. Our software could be just what you need to successfully transition to a more environmentally-friendly business model.
With UPshow, you get everything that you need to communicate with your employees and guests in a paperless way. In turn, you’ll reduce your environmental impact and make strides towards hitting your sustainability goals.
Research shows that 83% of consumers wish that restaurants would use more environmentally-friendly practices. So if you want to appeal more to your customers, reducing waste and going green could be the solution.
We’ll give you an overview of how to do that below. Keep reading to find step-by-step instructions for becoming an eco restaurant.
Many restaurants use a ton of ingredients, eating utensils and to-go containers. They also tend to use a lot of paper products when advertising to consumers on-premise.
There are lots of opportunities to make your restaurant a greener business, including:
Digital signage, in particular, can be a very effective way to reduce your reliance on paper. You can use it as a replacement for everything from menus to communication with your back of house.
Part of going green is leveraging the right tools and technology. These are the items that will help you do it:
If you don’t want to invest in all of these technologies right away, that’s fine. You can pick and choose which ones make the most sense for your restaurant now and will always be able to add more later when the timing is right.
Digital signage can replace every type of paper product that you use to communicate with customers and staff. That’s a big deal when you consider that 26% of waste in landfills comes from paper products.
With digital signage, you can:
During COVID-19, we saw an explosion of demand for to-go options from popular local restaurants. That trend is expected to continue in the post-pandemic world.
It’s great for restaurants that can now reach customers that they might not have otherwise. But it also means that there’s going to be a much higher demand for to-go eating utensils, plates and cups – all of which have traditionally been made from plastic.
That’s why embracing paper or wooden versions of these products can be so helpful to the environment.
We’re going to need a lot of restaurants to make this decision in the coming years as to-go ordering becomes increasingly popular. Your restaurant can get ahead of the trend now!
Lighting accounts for nearly 5% of global C02 emissions on its own. That means another excellent strategy for reducing your environmental impact is to choose more environmentally-friendly lighting strategies.
One of the easiest ways to do that is by choosing LED bulbs over CFLs. LEDs use far less energy than CFLs. That efficiency translates into a lower impact on the environment.
But LEDs can also be helpful for your company’s bottom line. They can last up to 50,000 hours longer than CFLs. That means, by choosing them, you won’t have to purchase new light bulbs as often.
Composting is a practice that’s incredibly helpful for the environment. There’s no reason that your kitchen can’t start using it to contribute to healthier local soil and reduced waste amounts in local landfills.
If you’re not familiar, composting is the practice of recycling organic matter to be used later as a soil enricher. You can compost a ton of ingredients that your kitchen uses, including:
Purchasing local is another excellent strategy for boosting your sustainability. Local ingredients are better for the environment for two major reasons.
First, these ingredients don’t need to be transported across the country to reach your restaurant. That means less fuel is burned to get the food to your establishment.
Additionally, farmers who sell ingredients locally don’t typically use as much (if any) pesticides. That means there’s less damage done to the earth while these ingredients are created.
The chances are high that some local farmers in the area can supply your restaurant with high-quality produce – especially things like vegetables, onions and lettuce.
These may or may not cost more than ingredients from national suppliers. But research shows that customers are willing to pay more for dishes with local ingredients in them. So you may be able to increase your menu prices a bit to offset the extra costs.
Research indicates that an astonishing half a pound of food is wasted per meal in restaurants. That number includes both what the customer leaves on their plate and what kitchens waste while preparing the dishes.
On top of that, your restaurant will likely have excess ingredients that it doesn’t use. That means you could be wasting much, much more food than you realize.
There’s only so much you can do to reduce food waste in your restaurant itself. When you have extra ingredients, consider donating them instead of throwing them out.
Doing so will help people who are less fortunate while also making sure that the energy and fuel that went into getting these ingredients to you hasn’t gone to waste.
Traditional cleaning products are full of toxic ingredients that can pollute waterways and sources of groundwater. But you don’t need to use them to keep your restaurant clean.
There are tons of eco-friendly cleaning products out there nowadays that are just as effective as their toxic traditional counterparts. Consider purchasing these for your restaurant instead the next time you need a resupply of cleaner.
Data shows that producing a single serving of meat produces 20 times the greenhouse gas emissions of producing a single serving of vegetables.
That’s one of the reasons why vegetarianism has become increasingly popular. People who choose to live a vegetarian lifestyle contribute much less to the degradation of the planet with their eating choices.
With that in mind, your restaurant can play a big part in encouraging this behavior by offering more vegetarian menu items.
If every restaurant did this, then it would be easier for people to stick with being vegetarian. And when more people do that, less meat needs to be produced to feed the population.
Going green doesn’t have to be difficult. But some potential pitfalls can derail your progress. Here are three problem areas to watch out for while you make this change.
There’s lots of different digital signage software out there. But some are more effective than others.
You want to make sure that you select digital signage software that is capable of completely ending your reliance on paper for communicating with staff and customers.
Otherwise, you’re not going to end up using your digital signage solution and it’ll end up being a wasted investment.
Many restauranteurs worry about the finances of going green. It’s important to think about how your cash flow will change once you start buying local ingredients and using different types of products. But you can make these changes work for your budget with a little planning.
So make sure that you’re clear about what your finances will look like after you make these changes before you get started. That way, you’re ready to succeed from the beginning.
As a business, it’s always important to assess your progress over time. Doing so is the only way to understand whether you need to make changes to achieve your goals.
The same is necessary for this situation. As you work to become a more eco-conscious restaurant, make sure that you’re analyzing how these changes are impacting your bottom line.
Don’t be afraid to make changes if your initial strategies don’t end up working out.
UPshow offers digital signage software that can completely change the way you communicate with customers and deskless workers in your restaurant.
