7 up-to-date hints to refine your digital signage in 2022!

When you get involved in digital signage, you obviously want it to have an effect on your profitability and pay off in the long run. The content you share must be perfect, the screens must fit well and you wish to create a high level of engagement. The only question is: How can you optimize this? In this blog, we provide 7 recommendations on how to optimize digital signage in 2022.

1. Optimise your branding

The first thing you should definitely work on as a company is your branding. Set yourself apart from the crowd to be recognisable in the industry. Be consistent in branding across different areas and complete your marketing orientation. You should also be consistent in combining your marketing tools. This includes creating uniformity in fonts, digital screens and your social media feed. But also pay attention to emails, templates and so on. Try to use brand guidelines to make yourself stand out in front of your target audience. By following these, your name will be more easily associated with what prospects are looking for. Define a niche market, use colours in your logo or words in a catchy slogan that immediately draw the attention of a niche. In this way you develop a branding support and make yourself recognisable. So, think carefully which ingredients you can put together to achieve a successful branding recipe.

2. Use bold fonts

When publishing content on your screens, you want to avoid that your message is not easily visible or readable. Therefore, always use bright colours to make your screen content stand out. Make sure these colours are bright and complementary to make it more visually appealing. Find the ideal combination for your house colours and keep in mind the message you want to convey. You should also emphasise the use of bold fonts. This is much easier for people passing by to read and also from a further distance. When using thin, curly fonts, you get the opposite effect. If you cannot make a specific font bold, adjust the font size. There are numerous programmes and tools that can help you experiment with colours and fonts such as Canva or other (web) apps with colour pickers or an eye dropper tool.

3. Select the right screen

Choosing a suitable screen is an underestimated aspect when elaborating a digital signage project. Do not skip this step! The following criteria should be taken into account when selecting a screen:

1. Brightness of the screen

2. Screen orientation

3. Screen size

4. Touch screen options

5. Cost effectiveness

If you go through this list thoroughly for each component, you will certainly choose a screen that will lead to a successful campaign. Selecting a screen also strongly depends on the sector you are in. It goes without saying that digital signage in the hospitality industry has a different look & feel than in the business world.

4. Use templates

Templates make it easier to draft creative content. They also make it more user-friendly, especially if you use a programme like Canva. You save more time by creating templates in advance. For your digital screens, you can create different templates according to the screen content you want to share. This ensures more efficiency in your working methods. The infomation you want to share on the screens can be informative but also inviting for instance to attract people to an event, newsletter or simply to the checkout with one of your products in their shopping basket. This is why templates come in handy, as they are also structured by theme, layout, etc. With a template, all you have to do is change the text and images. In a short space of time, you can create a brilliant design. A scientific study has shown that devising and designing content is one of the most time-consuming tasks as a marketer/communications assistant in more than half of the cases. Templates contribute enormously to minimising time consumption and are therefore at the heart of successful communication.

5. Aim for the sharpest display resolution

Today, everyone is used to high resolutions and the average person is already familiar with the latest technological developments. 4K or even 8K screens are not unknown to many people. We are getting more used to pure and super-sharp high definition images. Lower quality therefore often falls by the wayside. This principle also applies to digital signage. When casting images or fragments of low quality, aspects may be more difficult to see for the viewer. You run the risk that your message does not fully reach the recipient or even gets lost. Follow these recommendations to make the most of your digital signage campaign:

Only use high-quality images. This is even more important if it is used as advertising material. You look more professional and if your campaign is not successful, you know immediately that it was not due to the visual quality.

Ensure sufficient storage space. Images with higher resolutions take up a lot of storage space. Always upload the images in the format that you will directly cast on your digital screens. You can also upload an image in a personalised format of your choice.

Use a stock image website like Unsplash or create your own images. Most quality smartphones come with a sharp camera that will only narrow the gap with professional cameras.

6. Implement a 'call to action' button

This is also a key element we want to emphasise. You should preferably consider a Call to Action that tells the user what to do. This can be buttons with text like: 'click here', 'buy now', 'call', or 'book a demo'. A CTA should be able to provoke a gesture from the user or reader that ensures more engagement. Make sure there is no confusion. Some forms of content do not require a CTA. Scientific research has shown once again that the presence of a CTA button increases conversion by +/- 83%. For Ecommerce there was a 22% rise. Finally, it also appears that when CTAs appear as buttons instead of plain text, conversion increases by about 45%.

7. Alternate between various content types

The way you want to share content depends largely on the medium. Depending on your objectives and audience, you can refine your content. Ensure enough variety from time to time to avoid messages being perceived as repetitive. Variation is the key to keep your digital signage screens up-to-date and not constantly repeating themselves. We inspire you with some content types you can implement in your digital signage campaign(s):

o Videos

o Animations

o Limited offers

o Countdown timers

o Live feeds

o Social media

o QR codes

o Reactive content (personalised via number plates or RFIDs)

o Strong branding

o Company messaging

o Questions

o Reviews

How digital signage is used across industries

This list shows content shared in various industries using digital signage. Get inspired by it:

o General information such as - date, time, weather, and traffic

o Football clubs - upcoming matches, video interviews, highlights, food menus

o Airports - departure times, delays, navigation with kiosks

o Real estate agents - live property feeds

o Car dealers - pictures of cars they have in stock, price, specifications

o Internal communication - wellness tips, help numbers, important business messages from managers (information cascade)

o Production - machine performance, KPIs

o Marketing - products, discounts

o Universities - deadlines, upcoming events, initiatives

What's next?

If you have thoroughly read everything, you will recognise the elements listed below. Go through each element and decide which is the best option for your digital signage campaign. What are your objectives? What is your budget? Depending on your ambition, you can check what fits within that framework for each component:

- Branding

- Bold font

- Choosing the right screens

- Templates

- Image quality

- The CTA

- Content types

Based on "Top 7 Digital Signage Considerations for 2022" 03-02-2022 ~ L. Gilham ~