Digital Signage for Businesses: Is It a Worthy Investment?

In the world of business promotion, what matters most is the promptness, clarity and attractiveness of the message that is being relayed to the target market. Over the years, many forms of signage have been used by businesses to get their messages to potential customers. For instance, over the past centuries, several decades ago and even now, wooden boards and vinyl banners have been used. However, they have had major shortcomings in getting the message across. This, however, is about to change with the emergence of digital signage which is an invaluable gem in the promotion industry.

What does it entail?

Digital signage is a sub segment of signage. It employs the use of technologies such as LCD, Projection and LED to display media content such as videos, digital images, and live stream media among others. This magnificent functionality is powered by some powerful technology like Open Pluggable Specification (OPS) that greatly enhance the deployment, component design and implementation of digital signs.

Some digital signage platforms offer interactivity that is conferred by the Interactive Digital Signage technology, while others can take in environmental cues to determine which promotional messages to display (thanks to the context-aware digital signage technology).

Where is it used?

Since its inception, digital signage has gained milestones in terms of its adoption by many business firms and other institutions. In fact, the industry is growing faster than was expected, which greatly emphasizes the role that this tech plays in business and institutional management and development. Highlighted below are just but a few of the sectors that have massively embraced digital signage:

• Restaurants – Digital signage is mainly used by hotels and restaurants for menu displays. Additionally, it can be used to promote any offers that the restaurant may be having during the particular meal time or within a certain time of the year. As such, a digital menu board offers a suitable replacement to the traditional boards that had to be manually updated every meal time.
• Shopping malls – Shopping malls, both the large ones and the small ones, are fast incorporating digital signage technology in their day to day activities. It is almost becoming a frenzy as the millions of customers that often throng these malls are also taking up its use. For instance, extremely large shopping malls have interactive touchscreens that act as pathfinders to the various sections of the mall. This has aided in reducing the confusion that often confounds those who are not so familiar with such malls.
• Airports – Among the most prominent users and the first adopters of this technology are the airports. It has traditionally been used in the display of flight schedules, the various destinations that are plied by the airway, promotional materials by the businesses that operate within the airport and notifications of arrivals and departures. This technologyhastherefore proven to be an invaluable asset in promoting order and certainty in the entire air transport industry.

It is also projected that the use of digital signage will aid in reducing the congestion that is often seen in extremely busy airports such as Heathrow to cut the cost of architectural readjustments. 

• Promotional agencies – The use of digital signage in the world of products and services promotion is rapidly facing out the use of huge billboards. This is because it offers more interactive, attractive and appealing promotional content. This a common scene in all the major world cities. Large screens displaying promotional content can often be seen at the places where they can attract the most traffic such as city squares.
• Banks – These financial giants have embraced the use of this tech in the display of exchange rates, real time interest rates and rich information sources regarding useful financial products and services. It is also being incorporated into digital banking to enable consumers to have the in-branch banking experience even when doing their transactions digitally.

What advantages does it offer?

The widespread use of digital signage definitely suggests that it offers numerous advantages to the businesses that use it. This alone can explain its rapid adoption in many business fields. Here are just but a few of the numerous advantages that it offers:

• Easy visibility – Digital signage boards are easily seen even from afar. Their fluorescence confers them clear visibility despite the lighting conditions. This also confers attractiveness and can therefore marshal a huge traffic of customers to a business premise if it is well-designed.
• Cuts down on employee overheads – This advantage is particularly eminent in the hospitality industry. Before the adoption of this piece of technology, most hotels had to manually change their menus and ask customers what their meal preference was. This required so many employees that had to work and be paid fulltime, thus increasing the cost of doing business. However, with the use of the digital signage, menus can now be updated at the click of a button and customers can make their orders digitally. The result is lower operation costs!
• Remote changes to the content – The content displayed on the digital signage boards can be changed remotely since changes can be made via the internet. This can be done electronically and managed using any HTML-compliant browsers such as Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox.
• Low setup costs – There are so many companies that offer this service and the stiff competition and rapid advances in other spheres of digital technology have led to a decrease in the cost of using this technology.

Digital signage can be used by both business entities and administrative institutions for displaying public information and product information, navigation, brand building and events updates. It is therefore definitely a revolution in how digital display of information to the general public and business customers will be done.

Author bio: Karen is a Business Tech Analyst. She is very responsible towards her job. She loves to share her knowledge and experience with her friends and colleagues.