Digital signage is a marketing solution that can work for nearly any company. You can use it to connect with your customers, keep them entertained and let them know about your latest offerings.
But if you’ve never used digital signage before, you may not be sure how to begin using it. We can help with that. Keep reading to learn:
- What you need to bring digital signage to your business
- How to create eye-catching digital signage content
- How to manage your displays to optimize your outcomes
Start by understanding your goals
The first thing that you’ll want to do is figure out what you hope to accomplish with your digital signage displays. You might want to improve the efficacy of your in-venue advertising if you run a casual restaurant. Or maybe you operate a healthcare clinic and you want to make it easier for your patients to check in.
It’s okay to have multiple goals for your digital displays as well. Digital signage is great at satisfying multiple purposes at the same time.
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter what your goals are. You just need to articulate them so that you can figure out which digital signage solutions are right for you.
Here’s what you need to get started
There are three essential components in every digital signage setup. Here’s a quick look at each of them.
One or more screens that can connect to the internet
The first thing that you need are screens that can connect to the internet. There are lots of different options to choose from, including freestanding displays, digital posters and outdoor digital signage.
You can also connect tablets to extend your digital signage system into the palms of your visitors’ hands. These can be a good option for businesses that plan on offering games through their digital signage.
As you think about which screens are right for your business, you should think about where you’re going to place them in your business. Make sure that you put the screens in locations that have heavy traffic and in places that are easy for your guests to see without having to crane their necks.
Digital signage software
Next, you need digital signage software to connect all of your screens to a single system. This software is what you’ll use to manage your in-venue advertisements, entertainment channels and interactive applications.
Once again, there are a wide variety of digital signage software solutions for you to consider. But UPshow could be your ideal solution.
Our platform makes it easy to manage your digital signage campaigns from the cloud. We even provide more than 500 channels of OTT entertainment for your guests to enjoy. With UPshow, you get access to everything that you need to run a successful digital signage campaign in a single place.
A device that manages the digital signage software
This last piece is pretty self-explanatory. You just need to have an internet-enabled device that you can access your digital signage software from. A simple PC, tablet or smartphone should do the trick.
Touchscreen or no touchscreen?
Before moving on, it’s important to mention that you should decide whether or not you want to use touchscreen devices to display your content. Some types of businesses will benefit from using touchscreens.
For example, if you’re a healthcare clinic that wants to allow patients to check themselves in for visits, touchscreens would be essential. But if you’re a restaurant that wants to display a dynamic digital menu board, investing in touchscreens would likely be a wasted expense.
Understand your audience and what they want
Ultimately, companies use digital signage because they want to form tighter connections with their audiences. That’s why you need to consider what your audience cares about before setting up a digital signage strategy.
More specifically, you need to relate what your audience desires to your own business goals. Imagine that you run a supermarket and your goal is to increase your profits by stepping up your in-venue marketing efforts through digital signage.
To do that, you might tap into your customers’ interest in finding the best deals on the most widely-used products. You could use your digital displays to not only highlight your best sellers but also to show your customers where they’ll find them.
In this scenario, you’ve aligned your desire to boost your profits with your customer’s desire to save money while getting your best products. That’s what creating a successful digital signage strategy is all about.
How to build your digital signage content
Another factor that you’ll need to think about is how you’re going to create the content that you display on your digital signage screens. This can feel overwhelming if it’s not something that you’ve done before. However, in practice, the creation process is pretty straightforward.
First, let’s take a look at some of the types of content that you can display with digital signage:
- Slides — Businesses use slides to highlight special offers, digital menus and promotions.
- Videos — You can play a wide variety of video content through your screens, including YouTube videos, OTT TV channels, local news and regional sports.
- Social Media — Some companies display their customers’ social media pictures on their screens. This can be a great way to improve your connection with them.
- Company Information — Businesses also use digital signage for internal purposes. You can use yours to share important project updates, Trello boards or health and safety information with your employees.
- Games — Trivia games are a great way to use your digital signage to keep customers engaged while in your venue.
Once you figure out which type of content you want, creating it will be easy. Often, your digital signage software will come with templates that you can use to quickly add new slides to your rotation.
For example, UPshow makes it easy for you to make use of all of these content types on your digital displays. Our cloud-based management software will take care of most of the work for you. And our representatives can provide you with additional guidance if you want to go above and beyond with your content displays.
Come up with a display schedule and management plan
Finally, you’re ready to figure out what your display schedule will look like and how you’re going to manage it moving forward. You don’t need a complicated strategy for this.
Digital signage software like UPshow is very easy to manage. Once you get an initial line-up of displays set up, you can begin rotating through them on an automatic schedule that conforms to your wishes.
Then, as you want to advertise new products or new forms of entertainment for your guests, you can just add those to your existing rotation. Be sure to nominate someone on your team to oversee your content schedule. If you’re using your screens often, you’ll find this is a full time job.
How to tell if your digital signs are working
At this stage of the process, you’ve done everything necessary to begin using digital signage in your business. But you also need to develop a way to determine whether the strategies that you’re using are achieving the goals you had when you implemented them.
You can do this formally or informally. For example, after adding digital signage to your business, you might begin to notice that fewer and fewer customers are complaining about long wait times.
Or you might find that the entertainment that you display through your digital signs is keeping customers in your business longer. You don’t have to track these metrics. You should just begin to notice them automatically.
But if you’re looking to bring a bit more rigor to the process, you can do that too. One method of doing that is by tracking your return on objective (ROO) before and after adding digital signage to your business. This can include tracking metrics like:
- Awareness of new products and services
- Easier customer navigation of your venue
- Better inventory management
- Increased employee engagement
- Faster patient check-in time
Ultimately, you’ll just want to figure out which business objectives you want digital signage to help you with and then compare your progress towards those objectives before and after you add digital signs to your facility.
Rely on UPshow to get you started with a customized digital signage strategy
Digital signage is a great investment for companies across many industries. We hope that the information above has given you a framework that you can follow to add it to your business.
However, if you want to optimize the performance of your digital signage, it can be helpful to receive some guidance from an expert. That’s where UPshow comes in.
We’ll provide you with a custom demo that shows you exactly what our powerful digital signage software can do for your company. You’ll get the opportunity to ask your questions to one of our representatives and they can help you discover the right way to use our solution with your screens to achieve your digital signage goals.
