The Data Works’ digital signage network for British Columbia Ferry Services (BC Ferries) regularly updates content, including ship arrival and departure times, on-board menu options and cross-promoted amenities.
In this sense, with predictive analytics, displayed content can include meaningful messages that address what viewers are looking for in the store or other environment, whether this means sales, offers, relevant news or other targeted content.
Taking this scenario one step further, some organizations are now combining their digital signage hardware and software with video analytics technology, which can aggregate anonymous data about the number of people viewing a digital sign, their average duration of attention and even their genders and age brackets. This approach is helping them gauge the effectiveness of their digital signage content and make changes based on who is viewing a screen at any given time.
Social media
The use of social media has grown exponentially in the past few years and continues to rise. Yet, similar to the adoption of digital signage itself, many clients say, “We know we need to incorporate social media into our strategy, but we are not sure how we want to do so.”
With employees talking about the companies they work for through social media channels and customers talking about the brands they use and enjoy, organizations need to connect with these communities—not only to listen to their experiences and opinions, but also to engage them further.
A digital sign can promote a company’s presence on Facebook, for example, and encourage viewers to ‘Like’ its page, perhaps by offering to share special offers and coupons. This can help lead to two-way communications.
Another option is to use on-site display content to invite visitors to ‘check in’ through an application like Foursquare. This can encourage repeat visits through various perks, such as naming a visitor ‘Mayor’ and displaying his/her name and face on-screen as such for friends and family to see.
Twitter also has a key place in a digital signage strategy, encouraging retail or restaurant customers to tweet about their favourite products or menu items.This can help a company feel more ‘local’ as it engages customers and increases their dwell times, which in turn can lead to additional purchases.
Montreal-based Telecine Multimedia has developed touch screens for Bombardier, allowing aircraft customers to interact with maps, product lines and features, customer services and facility listings.
Kiosks
Self-service kiosks are gaining prominence at various points of decision, especially in grocery stores, movie theatres, quick-service restaurants (QSRs), hospitals, hotels, transportation hubs and tourist attractions. Many users prefer kiosks over other transaction options because they are faster and easier and can deliver more accurate services for their needs. Organizations behind the kiosks, meanwhile, see them as a way to avoid increasing labour costs—or to increase levels of service in tight labour markets where it would be difficult to add employees anyway.
The key to a successful kiosk, much as with other forms of digital signage, is to present visually compelling graphics and related content to showcase products and services and make recommendations as calls to action. As an intuitively interactive medium, a kiosk presents the opportunity for an organization to collect valuable business intelligence (BI), which in turn can lead to better messaging based on client behaviour.
Mobility
Each year, the quantity of digital content accessed on mobile devices—rather than through standard computers—continues to grow. A natural extension of this trend is for individuals to use their smart phones to interact with digital signs, e.g. to find additional information, look up reviews and receive coupons.
In this way, organizations can use digital signage to extend their online efforts to communicate with their customers. Each interaction provides the opportunity to improve upon these efforts.
Quick Response (QR) codes have become one of the most popular forms of ‘integration point’ when it comes to connecting digital signage with mobile technology. Consumers will scan a code from a screen to download additional content. The advantage of this ‘pull’ strategy is it means a sign’s viewers will still retain related information long after walking away from the site.
Making connections
Across Canada, organizations large and small are using digital signage to deliver targeted messages, exactly how, where and when they want them delivered. In this sense, digital signs are much more than just posters or billboards. They are using content from a wide variety of sources, but also connecting with many other media.
By doing so, digital signage can inform, influence, provide direction, reinforce branding, track key performance indicators (KPIs) and yield many corporate benefits, as part of a highly impactful interactive communications strategy.
Oscar Elizaga is senior vice-president (SVP) for the Americas region for Scala, which develops digital signage software. For more information, visit www.scala.com.
