Marketing efforts have shifted from traditional print advertisements and mailers moving to on-screen interactive messaging. If you’ve been lagging on getting on-board with digital signage, it’s time you considered the benefits of an engaged audience. The ease with which you can update your campaigns, and the net return-on-investment to traditional marketing initiatives has never been more effective than with interactive digital signage.
1) Cut Costs
Traditionally, signage served the function of answering questions consumers may have had about a product by providing information geared towards influencing a purchase decision. The message was clear, but stagnant, and could not be updated with the newest information, and the designing, printing, and installation processes made it costly and time consuming. Anything time sensitive could be lost, or old messaging could remain prevalent in a location where the signage wasn’t managed properly by onsite staff.
The ease with which digital signage can be updated cuts out those installation costs, making it easy for your marketing team to focus on creating relevant and real-time messaging for your audience.
Once you’ve decided on messaging and created a campaign, installation is as simple as scheduling and publishing it from your desktop, allowing for on-the-fly updates as the promotion or offer changes.
While the initial investment in the screens themselves may seem steep, revisiting printing and installation costs and doing a simple cost-analysis will prove that over time your digital screen will be paying for itself. Multiple retail case studies have found that after installing a digital display, 30-60% in marketing costs were saved over time.
2) Boost In-store Engagement with More Product Offerings
Digital signage isn’t going away, but being able to incorporate interactive signage into your marketing strategy shows ingenuity above and beyond the obvious examples such as maps, directories and kiosks. Grabbing a customer’s interest starts before they enter the store, and a FedEx survey reported that 76% percent of consumers have entered a location because of an interesting sign.
In order to keep customers engaged, retailers have begun using the digital screen to implement the “endless aisle.” While actual square footage may be limited, the online store can provide shoppers with everything they could ever want.
Integrating the in-store shopping experience with the online allows for a well-rounded and completely immersive experience, something shoppers will remember.
- Staples installed kiosks allowing users to purchase any item from their online catalogue while in store. Ensuring that in-store shopping visits aren’t wasted trips when an item isn’t in stock or available only online. Combined with next-day home delivery, it simplifies office purchases and releases the stress of back-to-school shopping.
- In 2013, New Balance teamed up with the Times Square Foot Locker to install a customizable kiosk allowing shoppers to create their very own, completely customized pair of New Balance 574 sneakers that would then be shipped to their home.
- Smart Glass fitting rooms are enabling retailers such as Bloomingdale’s to solve the age old dilemma of customers needing an alternate size or colour while in the change room.
Installing a touch screen in their change room, Macy’s shoppers can easily call an attendant, scan the item they’re looking for, and even find suggestions to complete the outfit. Reducing the frustration of the fitting room means less shoppers abandon items that didn’t fit, and the upsell feature installed increases the value of the sale.
There are so many things that you can do with interactive digital signage that you can let your marketing team’s imaginations run wild during the brainstorming process. Once you’ve found an amazing concept, the limitations are minimal and completely adaptable.
3) Generate Excitement Through Digital Campaigns
Events, corporations, marketers, and retailers throughout the world are employing digital signage to supplement their marketing efforts and increase brand awareness. Interactive digital signage evokes an emotional response from a user, and encourages them to interact with the brand on social media.
- One of the top reasons that a consumer will follow you on social media is because you’ve already proved that you can provide interesting content.
- According to a study by Aberdeen, customer retention rose by 30% once digital screens were installed.
- As many as 66% of retailers had a social media strategy for 2014 that allowed them to take advantage of the 40% of all social media users who have sought out an item that they first “favourited” or “liked” online.
- The Aberdeen Group’s research on early adopters of digital signage found that consumer satisfaction rose by 46% after the implementation of screens at the point-of-sale.
Generating excitement, much in the way that New Balance was able to do with their customizable sneakers, allows for product enjoyment to build. Customers who truly appreciate the ease of use of an interactive display will be sure to tell their friends about their experience, not to mention that a truly interactive display that revolutionizes the way consumers go about their everyday life has the potential to attract media attention for you and your brand.
Emotions play a big role in determining one’s view of your brand, and creating brand advocacy through word-of-mouth endorsements is integral to any business plan.
- A resounding 92% of people trust word-of-mouth marketing, making every mention and every exciting shopping experience integral to developing brand ambassadors.
The benefits that brand advocacy, social media interaction, and therefore an increased brand awareness can have on the future success of inbound marketing are factors that every marketer needs to consider for your own brand and how it effects your ROI says Zamir Javer, CEO of B2B Inbound Marketing Agency JumpFactor.
4) Tracking the ROI on your Digital Installation
Investing in digital signage displays is a great way for marketers to reach out directly to the consumer, but ensuring accurate collection of data is key to learning how to best utilize the tool for your brand; based on campaigns, time of day, viewership, interactions, and, of course, purchases. Spanning a number of industries, marketers have seen increased interaction and purchasing because of the implementation of digital displays.
- Info Trends reports that digital signage increased brand awareness by 47.7 percent in a retail environment, resulting in an increase 31.8 percent sales volume and 32.8 percent more in-store traffic.
- A 2014 Infosys study concluded that 86% of consumers said they would be willing to pay up to 25% more for a better in-store experience.
ROI can be tracked in a number of different ways to suit your business needs and campaign goals:
Interactive Selling
Just like we talked about with the smart fitting room, and the New Balance sneakers set-up, customers who can interact with your screen, purchase directly from it through customizable options, or purchase items from an online catalogue can see immediate ROI. Tracking this is as simple as recalling how many more, or specific, units were sold once the display was installed.
Ad Sales
Immediate ROI can be seen through the potential use of ad sales on your digital display. Charging a vendor for screen space is a great way to recoup some of the installation costs of the actual screen in your retail space.
POS sales
Sales or margin growths can easily be calculated based on before and after installation numbers. Allowing customers to skip the cashier is preferred by 20% of millennial shoppers, while 85% have used a self-serve kiosk. Concessions per person for Cinemark have climbed for 32 straight quarters after the installation of self-service kiosks. Of these shoppers, sales increases have been seen of up to 33%.
Cross Promotion
Upselling can see huge purchase benefits to installing digital signage, as 60% of purchase decisions are made at the point-of-sale, and customers say that images are more influential in their purchase decisions. We’ve already discussed a perfect example of a company doing this right, with the Macy’s smart glass fitting room showing accessories to match the item a customer is trying on.
Factoring in the cost savings, increased engagement, brand awareness, and proven successes of installing an interactive digital signage display, start considering what you can do to embrace the future of retail marketing.
Baanto’s Shadowsense™ technology is capable of achieving all of these goals for your company, whatever your industry, has a lifespan of over 200,000 uses, and is durable enough for even the toughest situations. From the classroom, to an airplane, to a busy retail environment, it’s guaranteed to stand up to the test of your customers. Curious about the expertise behind our Shadowsense™ technology and how it can work for you? Check out our resources section for insight into how we make touch screens work for your marketing and business needs.