The Role of Digital Signage in Digital Marketing

by Peter Scully, Guest Contributor

​In the early days of digital signage, the displays were often viewed as being, essentially, the digital equivalent of paper, but now companies of all sizes are increasingly realizing that digital signage can do much more than just display static text and pictures and that integrating them fully into your digital marketing strategy can pay major dividends.
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Attention-grabbing displays
It seems hard to believe now but there was once a time when display advertising of any sort was a novelty. By this point in time, however, the novelty has long since worn off, in fact, today’s consumers are becoming increasingly adept at “tuning out” advertising, which means that modern businesses have a wafer-thin window of opportunity to grab a person’s attention in the first place and then to convince them that the content they are watching is worth more of their time.

There are basically two criteria to fulfill in order for marketers to have a chance of succeeding in this. One is that they have to be creating great content and the other is that they have to be displaying this great content to its best advantage. The first point is totally within the control of your marketing team. The second will be taken care of with digital signage.

Enables innovation
The freshest and most original content will eventually become stale and therefore dull, which is why marketers are continually looking for ways to keep it updated. Digital signage really does allow them to exercise their creativity to the maximum as it can support all kinds of content formats, both visual and audio as well as software applications. These options are only set to increase in the future as displays with what are currently more advanced capabilities (such as touchscreens) come into the mainstream.

Cloud-based solution
Even smaller companies can benefit from connecting their digital displays to the cloud. While it may be feasible, in theory, for them to make their content refreshes manually, for example by changing out memory cards, in practice, doing it remotely via the cloud is generally faster and easier. For larger companies, cloud-based solutions offer a whole host of benefits, many of which revolve around the need to maintain a cohesive digital-content strategy over more than one location, while still potentially offering local outlets some degree of flexibility to customize it to their own requirements.

Massive flexibility in use
Many companies, especially ones which have been around for a few years, will have a good idea of what they can expect at any given time of year and therefore will aim to manage their business around its natural cycles.

This has obvious advantages in terms of resourcing and budget-management, however, this approach can lead to missed opportunities due to companies promoting products and services at around the right time rather than at exactly the right time. Digital signage offers companies the best of both worlds in that they can still plan their content schedule well in advance, but they also have the option to update it quickly in response to real-world events.

Author Bio:

Peter Scully is a marketing consultant for Display Technology, a TFT and touch screen manufacturer and distributor, which part of the global Fortec Group, based in Germany.

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