It is no secret that people are drawn to interesting and engaging photos, videos, and multimedia. Our brains are wired to respond to visuals; they process visual material 60,000 times faster than text.
This allows us to consume large quantities of visual media in short amounts of time.
Almost all businesses and brands know this and use visuals to engage their customers and potential customers through multiple platforms outside of their store.
But all smart businesses and brands know this and use visuals to engage their customers and potential customer through platforms — inside of their store.
They do this through digital signage, and you can too. Here are thirteen ways you can use digital signage to bring the benefits of this visual platform to your business.
Attract With Digital Signage
Digital signage is an effective way to reach customers already inside of your business, but it can also be a way to pull customers into your location.
1. Create a Window or Street Display – If there is a large amount of foot traffic that passes by your business daily, capture their attention with a captivating digital sign that faces the street through a window or is physically placed on the sidewalk. You would consider paying to put messages on a billboard. So why wouldn’t you take advantage of the free advertising space that is directly in front of your location?
2. Show Off Your Other Properties & Platforms – When people are inside of your business, make sure to show off other properties that may interest them outside of that location. This includes both physical and digital properties. Display your social sites so that your customers can connect with you online. If you have another location or offering that is not available in that location, explain how customers in your store can access it elsewhere.
Educate with Digital Signage
Once you have customers in your store, take the opportunity to educate them through digital signage.
3. Showcase Your Products and Services – Put your business’s best, most popular, or most valuable products and services front and center by featuring them on a prominent digital sign. The benefit of featuring products and services through digital signage is that you can easily update your information as products or promotions take new priority.
4. Display Product Demos – Directions on a box or sign can only say so much. Use your digital display to show a product in action or create a short infomercial. This is a great tactic for products that offer visual results, are difficult to describe, or are new to the market.
5. Share News About Your Brand or Industry – For businesses and brands in rapidly-changing world, use your digital signage to share news, updates, and policy changes with your customers. Don’t restrict it to news that directly affects your business. You can include any type of news about your industry as a whole.
Entertain With Digital Signage
Entertaining customers can increase the amount of time they spend in your establishment and make wait time seems shorter — something very important for businesses that require customers to wait for their service to be completed or wait in lines.
6. Build Relationships by Telling Your Story – Consumers, especially millennials, like to know who they are doing business with. Put a face to your brand by telling the personal story of how you got started or sharing a behind the scenes look at your team or processes.
7. Show Off How You Do Good – Millennials also like brands that aren’t all about the business. A report on millennial purchasing habits found that more than 85% of millennials correlate their purchasing decisions to the responsible efforts a company is making. So if your business has philanthropic roots, share the story in a compelling way.
8. Display Social Streams – Share posts from social media streams as well as content created by your followers. Curate content created by your customers when running social media contests (wherein users post photos or comments with a select hashtag) or when hosting an event (with a designated event hashtag). Consider having a person monitor the stream and approving posts before they are visible on the screen to avoid automated posting of inappropriate content.
9. Show Custom Television Feeds – Turning on a TV in your waiting room can entertain your customers but it does nothing to reinforce your branding or business. Use digital signage to create Private Label TV which allows you to select from a library of popular content to align with your branding and add a custom frame for your programming that also aligns with your branding and business goals.
Promote & Sell With Digital Signage
Increase your sales by bringing to light information that your customers can’t easily find or read on the product label.
10. Highlight Promotions – Stop wasting money on ordering new print signage every time you start or end a promotion. Use your digital signage to make real time updates, quickly change promos based on inventory, and easily revise marketing campaigns to maintain cohesive messaging.
11. Show Testimonials & Reviews – People trust and value customer reviews. In a survey by Bright Local, 88% of consumers said they trust online reviews as much as personal recommendation. So don’t keep all of your reviews online. Let customers in your store see what other happy customers are saying about you by sharing blurbs or video testimonials of satisfied customers on your in-store display.
12. Bring Services and Products Out of the Shadows – If your business is primarily known for one or two main services or products, use your digital signage as a way to promote your lesser known offerings. Customers who already value you products will likely be interested in your other offerings, so make sure they know about them.
BONUS: Create Additional Revenue Stream
Digital signage in your business is free advertising for you, but it can be paid advertising for other businesses.
13. Show Ads for Non-Competing Businesses – Offer up some of your digital signage real estate to other businesses or brands that align with your target audience. This is a great way to generate an additional revenue stream while still adding value to your audience — as long as the business or brand is not a competitor.
Still having a hard time visualizing just how brands and businesses can effectively and creatively use digital signage?
Check out a few video samples of digital signage applications.