Recently, industry veteran Linda Hofflander presented a Digital Signage Today webinar on some of the many ways companies can use digital signage to switch up their marketing and communications strategies. No matter the size of your company or the specificity of your niche, this powerful tech can help you boost workplace productivity, simplify communications, drive sales, and even attract new audiences.
Missed out on Linda’s words of wisdom? No worries – read on for a recap.
1. Drive Sales of Your Products or Services with Digital Menu Boards
It’s no secret that digital menu boards increase sales. But there are also tremendous cost savings to be had when switching to a cloud-based solution. Just look at what happens to annual expenses when migrating from paper-based to digital.
It’s extremely expensive to create, print, kit, ship, and get campaigns installed in the field. Depending on the size of their deployment and frequency of change out, some businesses spend anywhere from $2 million to $6 million just keeping content up to date. And all too frequently, campaigns don’t get put up or taken down at the right time.
In contrast, digital menu boards ensure total compliance and timeliness of content while cutting down on those exorbitant costs. Overall, digital signage solutions built for the foodservice industry can make your content work for you, rather than against you.
This is where dynamic content comes in. It’s challenging if you have hundreds or thousands of licenses to go in and update content individually. Instead, you’ll want a solution that allows you to automate the content updating, whether that’s images or POS pricing extracted from another source. It’s integrating it and making it smarter. That goes for everything from drive-thru menu boards to LTE-enabled mobile boards for food trucks.
When looking to make the switch to digital menu boards, particularly if you’re a small business, be sure to research what third-party integrations and templates are available for use with a particular solution. Skykit’s menu board solution, for example, comes with access to hundreds of premade templates – meaning there’s no tricky or tedious design work to be done on your end!
2. Simplify Employee Communications
Recent studies show that 60 percent of employees are feeling unengaged and disconnected from their companies. With many teams still in the process of returning to the physical workplace, there’s a huge opportunity for businesses to better engage with their employees.
Another staggering stat – it takes about eight months to get an employee fully onboarded, but 23 percent of employees actually leave their role before their first work anniversary. That much turnover is expensive. As you can see, it’s crucial to keep employees feeling connected and engaged at work.
Part of that involves having a strong corporate communications strategy. That means keeping your employees in the loop – sharing info from HR, publicizing different events and activities, showcasing successes, having a comprehensive training program in place, and even leveraging social media content.
Well-placed digital signage can help keep everyone in your organization on the same page. Whether it’s your company’s own live Instagram feed, key customer or partner spotlights, or the latest marketing campaign, repurposing and displaying your assets can do wonders when it comes to engagement or even just prepping your team for support calls, customer service needs, and sales meetings.
3. Boost Your Business Intelligence
Just about every company out there is swimming in data. Whether or not it gets put to good use is a different story. How do you take the info that’s already out there – about your business, your marketplace, your industry – and share that within your organization to drive ideas? One simple way to do that is with a display showcasing KPIs by department or other crucial metrics.
If you have the data, make the most of it. Consider setting up an “ideation station” in a central location to better share info with different departments throughout your organization. This simple setup can spark innovation – new products, campaigns, and more. Give people the data they need and the autonomy they need to develop new ideas and improve performance.
You can even take your data a step further by displaying your dashboards in real-time. With Dashboard Connections, you can integrate with popular tools like Salesforce and Tableau and stay up-to-date so that you can accomplish your goals.
4. Increase Customer Engagement
Digital signage can be used to educate, inform, entertain, convert, and sell to your customers. But above all, it creates an opportunity to engage. So never underestimate the potential of this solution, particularly when it comes to digital signage in retail marketing.
There are a variety of content triggers out there, from QR codes to motion and sound sensors. On the experiential side, we’re seeing more screens being procured to create an experience, rather than for direct promotion or sales. And those signs can get quite large! We’ve seen full wall screens used to create life-size experiences. Purpose-driven experiential TV is also getting big – news, weather, sports, and entertainment content is being used to further engage with the customer.
In the end, it’s about trying different things. As we emerge from the chaos of the past year, people are thinking outside of the box. So how will you enhance the customer experience?
5. Extend Your Reach with a 4G LTE-Enabled Digital Signage Network
Digital signage is an IoT (Internet of Things) solution – a place-based solution that needs a signal to function. Previously, businesses didn’t have the convenience of the same kind of consumption-based data usage plans available now. LTE is now an excellent alternative when WiFi or ethernet just won’t get the job done.
4G LTE signage networks are particularly helpful for regulated industries like state, local, and federal government, oil and gas, transportation, and healthcare. Businesses operating in these sectors need to be able to share data securely, without worrying about breaches or WiFi outages. Mobile-ready devices like the SKP Pro Mobile make that possible.
Location is another key factor when considering communication and marketing strategies. Rural environments often lack a strong WiFi signal, making it difficult to disseminate content. Once again, mobile-enabled devices can step in to bridge the gap and provide a reliable connection.
Get the Scoop on All Things Digital Signage
We hope this recap gave you some ideas for how you might revamp your own marketing and communications strategies. Keep an eye on the Skykit blog for more regular updates from our industry experts. And if you’d like to learn more about our digital signage solutions, don’t hesitate to reach out!
