Article
Nov 30, 2018

6 Tips for Delivering Engaging Content in Digital Signage

Keep digital signage glitch free so when you have people’s attention, you make it count.

Remote Management Tactics

Understanding the best way to use digital signs to engage with customers, clients, or other audiences can seem like a challenging task. But it’s more straightforward than it first seems. After all, digital signage may seem high-tech, but it’s just another medium with which to communicate. There are a few simple rules for delivering engaging content to your audience – and some unique ways to get the most out of this platform by taking advantage of what makes it different.

1. Nail the basics. Whether you’re writing on paper, the web, or a digital sign, keep your message focused and relevant to your audience. You will only have people’s attention for a few seconds, so make it count. To that end, make sure your content is short and to the point—and while you don’t have to be (or hire) a graphic designer, you should strive to make the content pop visually, with bright or contrasting colors. If you include images, match the look and feel of your other marketing materials. Of course, have a strong CTA (call to action) that unambiguously lets people know what to do next, with a website URL, phone number, or some other way for them to react to your sign.

2. Share dynamic information. If you want to be engaging, you need to be fresh and timely. Thankfully, it’s often easier to update a digital sign than it is to refresh your business’s website or blog. With the right solution, you can automatically keep your sign up to date via Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM). The info you push to the sign can be almost anything, from weather updates to election results to more substantial blocks of text and you can monitor the performance of your digital signage remotely and even push updates, trouble shoot and automate fixes with RMM.

3. Share discounts and offers via text message. This is an area in which digital signs excel – you’re communicating one-to-many, but the nature of digital signage tech is such that everyone who sees your message can respond and have their own individual experience with you. If you’re a small business, for example, you can allow customers to send a text message to receive a unique promotion code or discount that could be used in-store. Just program the sign to display a message with a call to action to text a word to get a digital coupon, for example.

4. Go fully interactive. Once you dip your foot into the interactive waters with text messaging, you have the potential to really engage customers by establishing a two-way dialog. With the right software, you can let customers send text messages that appear on the sign itself. There’s some inherent risk in this – you can’t control what people will text – but Coca Cola successfully launched their “Share a Coke” campaign in just this way. The massive brand let people to text their names, which were then displayed on a giant screen in Time Square.

5. Make your content conditional. Even if you’re not manning the sign 24/7, your sign can make it look like you are. With the right conditional content – tied to an RSS feed, Twitter account, or the like, you can ensure your sign presents relevant information about what’s happening in the world around the customer. If it starts raining, your sign can advertise umbrellas, for example. If the local Democrat wins the election, you can offer one kind of discount and if the Republican wins, a different one.

6. Use dayparting to display different content at different times of day. Finally, dayparting – scheduling your sign’s messages – is a powerful tool for staying relevant and fresh. Restaurants will immediately recognize the value in showing a breakfast menu or promo early in the day, and then switching to the lunch and dinner messaging at the appropriate times. Late at night? Woo customers with the concept of a bedtime snack.

Find out how an RMM partner like Canopy can provide help with digital signage operations, reduce downtime and keep your signs running glitch-free.