Communicate your stories over your digital displays:

As digital signage became more commonplace, the name morphed into a catch-all, generic term for all the different types of technology and processes being used in multiple ways to deliver digital signage.

Digital Signage Systems

Digital signage is a collection of harmonised technologies and systems, such as:

Digital Signage SaaS

While all the individual elements of the digital signage ecosystem are important, the SaaS digital signage platform is the most crucial element as this will be where you create, upload, schedule and then broadcast your campaigns across your screens.

Digital Signage Displays

To be able to run digital signage effectively, you will need at least one screen or display, as this is where your messages will appear. This could be an OLED screen, projector, TV or tablet/phone. Depending on your location, size, efficiency and durability will all be important factors to take into account when deciding.

Digital Signage Hardware

In addition to a display, you will need a digital signage media player (Cenareo offer free media players to every client), which will receive the signals via Ethernet or WiFi, convert them, and send them to the screen. Alternative solutions include Android and other propriety apps that you can download directly to the device or via an USB key.

Digital Signage Content

Content is often the hardest element to satisfy as you will always need to continuously create fresh content and the right messages to keep the audience engaged.

These are the top benefits of using digital signage software...

Digital signage software means creative work is less expensive

Compared to traditional static signage, it’s far less expensive to develop, change, edit and roll-out new adverts for digital screens. In practice, it means that you can run more targeted, local marketing campaigns via your digital signage software. Your digital marketing plan can include local and community events as well. The flexibility of digital signage has further advantages compared to traditional means, for example, you can create a campaign to sell ice cream for hot weather, or hot drinks for colder days in much shorter turnarounds. These campaigns can be triggered manually, or even automatically based on temperature feeds from local weather reports!

Interactive digital signage

Digital signage can be interactive and as such can be used to engage your prospects or clients as well as learn more about them via data-driven marketing. For example, you might run a social media promotion where customers can sign-up to receive email newsletters, or help out in a case study in exchange for a discount while customers are waiting to check out.

Digital signage reduces client boredom

The best thing you can do to improve a client's experience when waiting is to keep them busy and entertained! A digital screen gives them to be engaged with, and it's a lot less tedious to be in a queue if you’ve got something to watch, or distract you. As a result of digital signage, perceived wait times are reduced.

Digital signage network

The lead time on a print or poster advert probably averages at around eight weeks. For franchise restaurants such as McDonald's, KFC and the like, it’s maybe even longer. But digital signage is connected to the internet, and that gives you a digital signage network at your fingertips, to which current and relevant adverts can be rolled-out as easily as a social media post. It also means that you can run social media feeds, weather updates, blog posts; in fact, anything you can run on a website, can run on your digital signage network. You can also run extremely relevant and local ads.

Digital signage advertising

You can run relevant adverts depending on the time of day, the day of the week, month or local weather conditions. Lunch ads during lunchtime if you’re a restaurant, or if you have a retail accessories store, you might run ads featuring umbrellas on rainy days and sunglasses on sunny ones. Flexibility is one of the key advantages of digital signage software. Digital signage advertising also increases purchase amount and dwell time by 27% each in retail business. In terms of digital marketing tactics, it’s hard to get better bang for your buck.

Digital signage solution costs

While the initial start-up costs may be a little higher with a digital signage solution, you will be saving money in the long-term by reducing print, administration and logistical costs. As a one-off expense, digital signage equipment is broadly regarded as a capital investment and thus comes out of an operations or IT budget and not necessarily the marketing budget. Even better, there are no print costs or ongoing labour costs for changing the messages at point of sale. Digital administration can be done by one person in a centralised location, allowing you to easily update messages at all your retail locations at once.

We live in a fast-moving, 24-hour a day, non-stop world, where our senses are being constantly bombarded with messages. As a consequence, most people subconsciously filter out what they see and hear to take in only the most relevant snippets of information to them.

Is digital signage any different? In the past, digital signage suffered the same pitfalls as traditional medias, there were multiple pain points along the path to delivering content. Media storage, content creation, screen formats, system updates, a lack of screen reporting, landscape/portrait conflicts were just some of the many challenges facing marketers and campaign managers alike.

But things have moved on.

The potential of modern digital signage wasn’t fully realised until major developments had been made in the technological front. These included faster, and more reliable connections to the Internet and a substantial drop in the costs associated with data storage. These developments paved the way for digital signage software platforms and digital signage apps to flourish.

Clearly, if you can log into a control panel and change what’s showing on the screens across your screen network, remotely from the comfort of your chair in any location, then managing and updating new content on a fleet of screens become child’s play.

Arguably, key to the evolution of modern digital signage was the ability to use special apps for content creation. With a few clicks of your mouse you could include content that was already yours, or readily available from sources such as Twitter, YouTube, RSS feeds, or html links. Real-time content has come of age.

What is real-time content?

Real-time content is an up-to-the-minute relevant, live feed from a source. If you have ever been to a service station on a motorway and seen a map of the traffic flow on your journey ahead, or the weather report in that area, that’s real-time content. Real-time content is always searching for the latest and greatest, and the best bit is that it updates automatically. There’s no logging in, no hard refresh on the screen and no complicated content decisions. Real-time content is always refreshed, always up-to-date and always relevant. And when content is relevant, your audience is much more likely to be engaged.