The Blueprint for Success: Building Your Digital Signage Strategy

Announcement

This article will provide businesses with a detailed blueprint for developing a successful digital signage strategy, encompassing everything from setting objectives and understanding the audience to choosing technology and measuring outcomes, ultimately enhancing their marketing and operational effectiveness.

Introduction

Today, digital signage has taken the modern business world by storm, offering a unique and malleable way to incorporate several digital marketing strategies. A well-planned digital signage strategy can enhance communication with customers and clients, increase engagement levels, and build sales for your company. But in order to achieve all of this, you need to build the right type of strategy.

Building your digital signage strategy

So, how do you build your digital signage strategy?

Setting Clear Objectives

Start by defining your goals. Any effective strategy needs clear goals that relate to the purpose behind what you are displaying. Ask questions about whether you are trying to provide information like a wayfinding station, raise awareness about company-wide policies, or advertise recent promotions.

1. Is your digital signage content strategy designed to provide a wayfinding station in the middle of a mall or shopping center that also offers paid-for promotions by individual companies?
2. Is the objective of your digital signage strategy to raise awareness about company performance, upcoming certifications that are due to expire, or employee of the month?
3. Is your goal to provide education while also increasing visibility for key information?

Audience Analysis 

Knowing your audience is imperative when creating a digital signage strategy. You need to figure out who you are trying to reach with each targeted campaign. Figure out demographic data like age, interests, and median income. This will inform other data, such as shopping habits, the time of day customers tend to need specific services, and beneficial loyalty programs.

1. Timing is very effective when it comes to the display of your digital signage content, so you need to know when your target audience is most likely to be near the signage.
2. A good digital signage marketing strategy will deliver content that builds engagement, which, for some demographics, might include focusing on the sustainability efforts of a given brand, but for others, might instead focus on affordability.

Content Strategy Development

When you develop your content strategy, it needs to have clear direction. You need to determine things like what you want to show, where you want to display it, how frequently you want that advertising campaign to last, and so on.

1. When developing your content strategy, you need to determine things like how many pieces of content you want to be displayed and the way in which you want that information laid out on your digital signage. 
2. Your content strategy should include which pieces of content you want to be displayed on which signs and at what points during the day.
3. You'll need to incorporate engaging, dynamic content that shows things like up-to-date social media feeds, weather, or other pertinent business information in a continually changing way.

Choosing the Right Technology

Your digital signage strategy relies on the right technology, and that extends to the right software and hardware. You'll need to consider external hardware to support the message, which might involve things like speakers if you plan to use digital signage with audio. You'll also need to consider the right type of software for displaying your content or managing it.

1. You'll need to determine what power source you want to display your content, including the software and computer hardware.
2. You'll need to choose the scalability and cost-effectiveness of the technology you choose.

Integration with Marketing Efforts

Your digital content needs to be integrated with all other marketing efforts. This can be tied to other digital strategies as well as in-person strategies.

1. Consider incorporating live streams of social media pages to raise awareness and interaction with your social media page.

Placement and Installation

Most customers will engage with content for an average of 6 seconds so it has to be something that is easily readable. The way in which you place and install your digital screens can increase the visibility of your message by placing it in such a location that it's at eye level for people who are passing through or tilted from an angle installed on the ceiling for those who might be seated in a lobby.

1. You'll need to streamline your messages in such a way that they are most easily read. Where you position and install your screens will determine at what level they are based on whether a customer will be standing and looking up from a line or a chair or moving across a grocery store floor or retail floor.
2. You'll have to consider angles when you install your digital signage based on where they are being installed. Stand-alone kiosks don't need to be put at an angle, but screens installed near the ceiling need to be tilted so that customers don't have to crane their next to view the content.

Measurement and Optimization

In order to review the efficacy of any given plan you'll need to properly measure your KPIs and from there, optimize your strategies. Digital content should be an ever-evolving strategy which can only be achieved by first knowing your goals and then changing them accordingly based on the performance of individual metrics.

Some goals can include how much your sales have increased as a result of digital signage marketing strategies, how many more customers have signed up for loyalty programs, whether an on-sale item increased in sales after a digital promotion, what level of engagement you have seen on your social media accounts since adding them to your digital signage feed, and so on. By continually reviewing these metrics, you can modify your digital signage strategies on a regular basis. 

Conclusion

Having the right digital signage marketing strategy can make a significant difference in customer engagement, sales, impulse buys, and brand awareness. Start planning your digital marketing strategy using the blueprint offered. If you are looking to dive deeper into digital signage, don't be afraid to reach out for a consultation.

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