By Richard Slawsky | Contributing writer, Digital Signage Today
A digital signage network can be a big investment, but one that’s worth the money.
Study after study shows the effectiveness of digital signage. For a restaurant, installing a digital menu board system can boost sales of featured items by just a few percent to 30 percent or more. For a retail store, a digital signage network can be part of an omnichannel strategy to help operators compete with online retailers. And for advertisers of all types, digital signage improves recall and fosters engagement.
A 2019 report by Edison Research found that 65% of Americans say they recall seeing an out-of-home digital video display in the past 30 days. The highest recall for digital displays were in locations where they could immediately influence a transaction such as gas stations, convenience stores, malls and retail stores.
In addition, a third of people who said they recall seeing an ad on a digital display in the past month sought out more information about a product as a result of that interaction, Edison found.
But all too often, deployers of digital signage focus on features such as screen types, media players and other hardware. As a result, they tend to overlook the most important ingredient in a digital signage deployment: the content.
Whether it’s your own employees or your customers, you want your digital signage network to grab your audience’s attention and hold it long enough to make a positive impact. Of course, we aren’t all able to have our digital signage wrap around buildings in one of the busiest cities in the world. There are proven ways, however, to make an impact in your own lobbies, cafeterias, walkways, or wherever your target audience spends time.
Casino Video Wall Content from Render Impact by SPI on Vimeo.
Although many digital signage software packages include content creation tools, does it make sense to invest thousands of dollars in digital signage hardware, only to waste that investment by displaying content created using a template that wasn’t designed to stress the value proposition of your specific business? The answer, obviously, is no.
But choosing a content creation partner can be as difficult as choosing a digital signage hardware vendor. There are many providers in the marketplace, but not everyone will be a good fit.
“If you’re just a mom-and-pop shop putting up a couple of screens, you could probably do it yourself using the built-in software,” said Todd Rickenbach, operations manager at Allentown, Pennsylvania-based digital signage content designer Render Impact. The company provides content creation services for businesses and brands, large and small, creating dynamic digital signage content for thousands of screens that reach millions of viewers every year.
Because of that, the journey of choosing a content creation partner should begin with a few basic questions:
What’s your budget?
What are your goals?
What’s the timeline?
What’s their track record?
