The car business is changing in many different ways. That means your dealership is going to need to adapt if it wants to remain competitive. Adding digital signage to your business could be just what you need to do to make sure that happens.
Digital signage can help turn your dealership into a more informative, helpful and useful place for your customers to be. We’ll tell you why that’s true below while also giving you step-by-step instructions for adding this technology to your dealership.
How to streamline your car dealership with digital signage
We’ll dive into the specifics below, but for now, here’s an overview of the step-by-step process you’ll follow to add digital signage to your business:
- Set the goals that you want to achieve with digital signage
- Buy the hardware that you need to hit those goals
- Pick a digital signage software provider
- Create the displays that you’ll show with digital signage
- Share the displays with your customer, monitor their performance and adapt them as necessary
What you need to get started
Every digital signage system is made up of three components:
- Screens (like televisions, tablets and kiosks)
- Digital signage software
- Media players (only needed if your screens can’t connect to the internet on their own)
The specific screens that you need will vary based on your goals. We’ll give you more information on selecting them in the sections below.
Step 1: Decide what you’ll do with digital signage
The first step towards streamlining your dealership with digital signage is figuring out exactly what you’d like to do with that signage. The answer that you give will determine how you need to arrange your digital signage layout to achieve the best results.
There are lots of different things that you can do with digital signage in a car dealership. Here are three examples to get you started.
Dealer showroom signage
Digital signage is the perfect way to make your dealer showroom stand out. You can use it to:
- Highlight ongoing promotions
- Show exhilarating driving footage of the cars you sell
- Play customer testimonials
- Help people learn about your cars’ best features
Features like these could help customers stay in your dealership longer. And that could be a key step towards converting a higher percentage of your visitors into paying customers.
Waiting area entertainment
When someone shows interest in buying one of your cars, the last thing that you want to do is stick them in a waiting room. But you may have to do that periodically when all of your salespeople are busy with other customers.
When this happens, a customer may get fed up and decide to leave your dealership and go elsewhere. But that’s much less likely to happen if you have an entertaining and comfortable waiting area for them to hang out in.
Digital signage makes this much easier to set up. You can use your digital signage screens to show live streaming entertainment like news and sports, and even have trivia playing.
The best part is, you’ll get to control the commercials that are shown in between this content. So you can easily advertise to your visitors while you entertain them.
Touchscreen kiosks
Touchscreen kiosks are a cool way to let customers personalize their car-buying experience. With them, a visitor can:
- Customize the cars that you sell and see how they look
- Learn more about the technical specifications of your various models
- Educate themselves about the benefits of choosing your brand
It’s another example of how you can use digital signage to help your car dealership achieve its goals.
Step 2: Buy and install the hardware you need to achieve your goals
Once you’ve figured out what you’re going to do with digital signage, it’s time to purchase the hardware that you need to make that happen.
This could include buying:
- Televisions
- Touchscreen kiosks
- Tablets
- Monitors
- Media players
- Cords
You probably won’t need all of these things. But it’ll be important to make sure that you buy enough hardware for your customers to enjoy your digital signage no matter where they are in your dealership.
Step 3: Choose the right digital signage software
The software that you choose to power your digital signage solution is just as important as the hardware that you select.
With the right software, you can bring your full digital signage vision to life. But weak software could place an artificial limit on how much progress you’re able to make towards your business goals.
That’s why you should take a serious look at UPshow’s digital signage software. It features everything that you need to help your car dealership hit its goals, including:
- Tons of pre-made display templates
- Powerful software for creating customized displays
- More than 500 channels of live streaming entertainment
- Easy tools for tracking your performance
Step 4: Create your displays
After you’ve installed your hardware and set up your software, you’re ready to begin creating digital signage displays. These are what your customers will see when they look at your devices.
Here are some strategies that you can use to make sure that your displays are as effective as possible:
- Understand your audience and what they care about
- Ensure your displays are visually interesting
- Add a strong call to action to your ads
- Use clean, engaging fonts
Step 5: Monitor your performance and adapt
According to Neilson, the average return on investment for marketing expenses is just $1.09 for every $1.00 spent. That means if you want your digital signage campaigns to be effective, you need to go beyond what the average company does.
It’s why it’s so important to monitor the performance of your digital signage displays and adapt them based on the information that you find.
For example, you might notice that a display with a specific call to action isn’t performing as well as a similar one with a different CTA. This could tell you that you should be using the higher-performing CTA across more of your ads.
This process of gaining gradual insights into your digital signage campaigns and adjusting is essential to getting as much as possible out of this technology. If you don’t do it, then your upside with digital signage will be limited.
Things to be careful of
While digital signage can be a super powerful way to streamline your car dealership, adding it to yours won’t automatically improve it. You need to make sure that you avoid the following potential pitfalls if you want to optimize your usage of digital signage.
Over-stimulating your car shoppers
You can do a ton of unique and interesting things with your digital signage. But you’ll need to exercise some restraint to avoid overwhelming your audience with a flurry of videos, images and ads.
The best way to do this is by being strategic about how many screens you place in your dealership and where you place them. Make sure that the screens are easy to see from most places but also that there aren’t so many as to be distracting.
Failing to tie digital signage displays into your other campaigns
When you install digital signage in your car dealership, it’ll be important for you not to think of it as an isolated medium. Instead, this technology should fit into your existing marketing strategy.
You can do that by looking for opportunities to connect your digital displays with your other marketing efforts.
This might include:
- Sharing a QR code for customers to download an app or sign up for an email list
- Creating displays that follow up on advertisements customers might have seen on TV
- Offering customers discounts for engaging with your brand on other platforms
- Flyers or takeaways featuring the same trackable custom QR code you can advertise on-screen for a particular action, like leaving a Google review for your business.
Not taking any risks with your displays
Your customers have probably seen thousands of advertisements for cars during their lifetime. If they just see the same boring ads in your dealership, then you’re not going to get very much out of your digital signage.
That’s why it’s important to take some risks and get creative with your displays. Sharing imagery and videos that truly engage your audience is key to tapping into the full benefits of this technology. And the only way to do that is by showing your customers something they haven’t seen hundreds of times already.
UPshow makes it easy to streamline your car dealership with digital auto signage
Are you ready to add digital signage to your car dealership? If so, UPshow can help you make it happen.
Our software is packed with features that help you engage, inform and entertain your audience. It’s the perfect way to unlock the full benefits of digital signage technology.
