From restaurants to healthcare facilities, digital signage is everywhere. Research shows that the global digital signage market is on the rise. As for its growth potential? A climb to a $27.8 billion valuation by 2026 is expected.
Businesses across every industry are continuing to discover that printed banners and ads no longer cut it. They’re impractical and ongoing use is expensive — not to mention environmentally unfriendly. Besides, they fail to meet the ever-changing need to keep customers in the loop about important announcements and product or service offerings.
Leaping from traditional printed signage to a digital signage solution doesn’t need to be complicated or break the bank. You can turn your TVs into dynamic and engaging digital displays easily with the right digital signage software powering your screens.
What is digital signage, and how does it work?
Digital signage defined
Digital signage is a display technology and communication channel shown on different display monitors and used by businesses to connect, engage and create an experience for their customers via on-screen multimedia (i.e., webpages, videos, audio and more).
Some of the ways businesses use digital signage include:
- Engaging business customers, students or patients with diverse content
- Disseminating educational resources
- Marketing and advertising purposes
- Maintaining continuous communication
- Soliciting customer feedback to inform business initiatives
How digital signage works
If you’re eyeing the TV screens in your business and wondering if they can accommodate digital signage, much less how digital signage works, you’ll want to start with the basics.
To turn your TVs into digital signage, in addition to an Internet connection and any necessary hardware, you’ll need digital signage software that creates value and provides:
- Cloud-based functionality
- Easy-to-use, intuitive content-creation capabilities
- Interactive display capabilities
- A content management system (CMS)
- Access to critical insights and analytics
How to turn a TV into digital signage
Start with the right software
The last thing you need is for your TV transformation process to be complicated or create more work (or a headache) for you and your team. The right digital signage software solution will always give back to your business.
Focus on investing in digital signage software that offers the following capabilities and features:
- Tools to help you assess and manage promotional and marketing materials and campaigns
- Easy-to-use intuitive content creation capabilities
- Ability to create content ahead of time with playlists that you can schedule to release any time you want
- Remote screen monitoring
- Real-time analytics to measure performance and engagement
- Around-the-clock support
Set up your power source
When setting up hardware and a power source for digital signage, it's important to make sure that the hardware is properly installed and that the power source is reliable. First, you will need to determine whether your hardware works with your signage software. Once you've figured out your hardware requirements, the next step is to install the hardware. This includes mounting the display, connecting all necessary cables, and setting up any necessary software.
Next, you need to choose the right power source for the digital signage system. This includes selecting the right voltage and amperage, as well as choosing the right type of power supply. It is important to make sure that the power source is reliable and can handle the load of the digital signage system. You also need to make sure that the power source is protected from any potential power surges.
Once the hardware and power source have been installed and set up, it's time to set up your digital signage software. This includes setting up the display resolutions, brightness, and other settings. You also need to install the necessary software for the digital signage system. Finally, you need to ensure that the system is connected to a wireless network with a reliable connection.
Monitor your performance
Digital signage can play a significant role in your marketing strategy. Once you get the ball rolling with content creation and displays, you’ll want to monitor how they perform so you can optimize over time.
For instance, if you advertise your clinic’s latest product offering or a discount on a future service, the digital signage software you choose should offer on-screen analytics to follow customer engagement, interaction time and more.
Choosing the right smart digital signage system for your screen
Now that you know how to turn your TV into digital signage, you’ve opened your business to a world of possibilities.
Easy content creation
There’s no need to continue ordering batches of printed wall displays to meet your marketing demands. Not only should content creation be convenient and on-demand, but it should also be easy to navigate. With UPshow’s in-platform Canva integration, your business can design content any time you need it, in-house.
UPshow can tackle your content needs by giving you access to the following:
- Templates specific to your industry (or a blank canvas) to expedite the content-creation process.
- Videos, music and royalty-free photos to optimize your content and appeal to your customers' wants and needs.
- A QR-code technology campaign creator to help you build customized marketing campaigns and more.
Advanced entertainment options
UPshow will turn your TVs and screens into an entertainment epicenter. The type of entertainment you display will depend on your customers' interests. UPshow’s advanced entertainment options have a little something for everyone, including:
- More than 500 entertainment channels
- Hyperlocal sports channels
- Curated channel packs, from kid-friendly entertainment to hospitality-oriented, along with healthcare and more
- Premium audio via curated music stations
Robust insights and analytics
Access to key insights and analytics is necessary to reach and ultimately engage your customer base effectively for the long haul. You’ll see what they’re clicking and opening and how much time they’re spending or engaging with (including what they’re clicking out of or otherwise ignoring).
As a result, you can step back, analyze and re-strategize to publish the content they want and pave the way to driving better business outcomes for your company.
With UPshow’s digital signage analytics, you’ll benefit from the following:
- Attributing value to each of your campaigns and determining your ROI for your company, corporation-wide or at the franchise level.
- Tracking customer or employee engagement by adding tracking code to your content.
- Recording engagement from all of the QR scans you create on the platform.
- Gaining a clear understanding of how your customers interact with your content front of house and your employees back of the house.
- Viewing geo-specific performance to assess how your campaigns fare at different locations.
- Adding a JavaScript snippet to your critical landing pages and web destinations to gather and transfer conversion data to UPshow’s platform.
- Filter, sort and download your data into a CSV file for in-depth analysis and easy sharing
UPshow can make all of your TVs stand out
The last thing you want is to use your TVs for nothing more than playing a random talk show or, worse yet, taking up space and collecting dust. Instead, consider your digital screens an opportunity to deepen and maintain a long-lasting connection with your customers.
With UPshow’s on-premise performance marketing cloud, you can turn your TV into digital signage and so much more. Sign up for a free demo of UPshow today, and learn how to take a meaningful digital experience for your customers and transform it into a revenue-generating initiative for your business.
