3 Unbeatable Reasons Why Digital Signage Is The Way To Go For Your Budding Business

Featured article by Shirley McLean, digital signage expert 

As a business owner, there always comes a time when it is necessary for you to increase your footprint in order to increase the rate of footfall at your store, which by extension increases your gross sales, having a positive impact on your profit. In such a case, you must seriously consider the power of advertising to increase your reach. This decision must be driven by evidence based information on which medium has the best Return on Investment, ROI, otherwise your efforts will be dead in the water.

When choosing advertising channel or medium, there are a couple of reasons that you should bear in mind if you are to have the desired outcomes. The main reason that should be at the forefront of your mind, quite apart from your allocated budget, is to find out the impressions per one thousand that you will receive on your advertising platform and how quickly you can have your campaign up and running. The truth is that time is of the utmost essence in such a scenario.

Affordable Option

In the case of digital signage, there are built in advantages that you cannot find anywhere else and this means that you need to do a little digging to find out just how much attractive and more importantly, how affordable this channel has become in the past 2 years or so. You see, previously, it was extremely expensive for businesses, especially SMBs, to go through with such a campaign because the costs of setting up even one single unit would set you back a couple of hundred dollars at the very least.

This was because of the reason that the players were fragmented and the solutions as a whole were dependent on a vendor offering bespoke hardware and the accompanying software that tied you in with that vendor for a lifetime. Therefore, even if you needed the media on the signage changed, say from text to video, you had to call the vendor to send in the technicians to change that. Every little change required the presence of technicians and all this cost you extra money and time.

Gives The Best ROI

That was then, this is now. Thanks to the profusion of the internet and a noticeable shift in thinking, from locally hosted solutions to cloud based platforms that operate on the Platform as a Service, PaaS, model, the solution is hosted in the cloud and you can access your dashboard from any place on earth, remotely, on any device that is connected to the internet. The barriers to entry in using this digital signage medium have been significantly reduced.

Without taking too much time, let us explore why this medium beats any other, hands down;

– Cost – Thanks to the lowering of costs of LED displays across the board in the past couple of years, the player hardware, the harmonization of standards and turnkey solutions that can be accessed through the internet, we have a perfect storm of ingredients that have made this the go-to solution for enterprises, big or small.

Most digital signage service providers offer their services for free, the only barrier is for you to have the digital monitors and the digital media player and you will be good to go in less than 20 minutes flat.

This freemium model allows you to have some limited functionality, but in many cases this solution is a good stepping stone to more advanced functionality. These solutions start off at a mere $300 one-off payment; no other solution can beat this. It offers the biggest return on investment, it is 90% cheaper than any other medium.

– Management – These digital solutions are very distinct from any other medium due to the fact that they can be accessed through the internet. Once you sign up for such a solution, you can use your credentials to gain entry into your dashboard and manage your platform.

On your platform, you will find templates, which are ready to deploy solutions that you can customize quickly by inputting your name and the details of your business in a flash. In fact, you can do live editing, and view your changes as you go. You can change the medium from video to audio or text at the touch of a keyboard.

– Attractive – Studies have indicated that people will spend 33% more time in a store that uses digital signage besides the items on offer. Of course, more time spent in your store is directly correlated to the conversion rate.

If you are dentist or a bank, studies have shown that time seems to be compressed by up to 35% if you choose to use digital signage at the reception area. This means that they will be the physiological effect that time spent queuing was shorter than it actually was in reality.

Author Bio

Shirley McLean is a digital signage expert who runs a consultancy out of Chicago, US. She has been active in this space for the past 23 years and has witnessed the evolution of this medium to what it has become today.