3 digital signage advertising lessons

We are almost halfway through 2018, and we are seeing many new opportunities to succeed or fail with digital signage. This is especially the case when you are advertising a particular product or service on your displays. While digital signage can provide a great many advantages, it cannot automatically make your advertising successful.

In order to be successful, you need to keep a few basic advertising tactics in mind: know your audience; know your engagement goals and know your platform.

Know your audience

Audiences will not automatically accept a message just because you repeat it enough. Let's use Youtube advertisements as an example. When an advertisement starts to play during a video, most users are just eagerly awaiting the chance to press the skip button, and some will even install ad blockers to remove them. No one feels like dealing with an irrelevant advertisement that interrupts their experience.

While digital signage isn't as intrusive as a Youtube ad, if it doesn't fundamentally speak to an audience's wants and needs, they are going to ignore it, plain and simple.

First, you need to have a clear idea of who your audience is, where they live and what they want. Once that is down, you can consider the best way to engage them.

Know your engagement goals

How do you want your target audience to interact with your message? Are you aiming for just a simple like on social media, or a purchase? You need to have a clear idea of your goals and how you intend to reach them.

For example, let's say you are a washing machine manufacturer and you want to demonstrate its abilities and give a positive brand impression. You might consider engaging with your audience through an interactive game, such as this deployment by Whirlpool.

Or, let's say you want to use your digital signage to guide a customer's journey throughout a store towards featured products. To do that, you need to understand where customers dwell and how to draw their attention, such as through videos or mobile messages.

However, all these efforts will flop unless you clearly understand your platform.

Know your platform

There are so many times when I look at a display and I think to myself, "What a waste." For example, a mall I visited shoved their digital signage into the bathroom area and gave it the same content as its billboard, which was only 10 feet away.

This is just one example of retailers choosing a good platform but failing to take advantage of it. If you are using digital signage, billboard content won't work. Also, if you are using a video wall, web content won't work.

You need to carefully understand your platform's capabilities and what content will look best on it. For example, if you are using a 4K display, you will want to invest in 4K content creation, otherwise, you spent all that money for nothing.

Lessons learned

At the end of the day, digital signage doesn't change the rules of advertising, it's just one more tool in your tool box. If you use it effectively, it will reward you. If not, well, we all know how New Coke turned out!

Image via Istock.com.