5 Ways to Gain Cash Flow with Digital Signage
Forming strategic partnerships with local businesses is a direct way to generate income. The idea is simple — you advertise their products and services on the screen, and they pay you for the exposure.
However, you want to make sure they offer content that appeals to your audience. It might be an obvious choice, such as a local coffee shop near a college campus, or a quick and affordable lunch option near a corporate center. Alternatively, the ad may need more adjustments to fit your audience. For example, if you’re a K-12 school, it might not seem like it makes sense to work with a local car dealership because the kids can’t drive. But staff and parents do, as do seniors who get their driver’s licenses.
You can display a one-time static ad that appears in the regular playlist rotation for one price. For a bit more, you can show short video ads. You can offer long-term campaigns, daily or short-term specials, and even branded screen layouts. If you have the skills, you could even create an ad for your local partner (e.g. your school has AV students for some hands-on practice). Even if they create their own ads, you want to make sure they meet your overall appearance and design guidelines. Creating templates for partners simplifies the process while ensuring consistent design standards.
You also know when the traffic for certain digital signs is highest and may adjust your price range accordingly – higher visibility signs cost more, as do displaying ads during peak traffic times. Some offers can even be specific to specific times of day, such as lunchtime at a café. Digital signage display is known to drive impulse purchases (19% of consumers say they have made an unplanned purchase of a product they saw digitally advertised). Digital ads are 34% more effective than traditional ads.
The use of specific, targeted codes can help you and your advertising partners track the success of digital signage advertising, as well as special loyalty programs tailored to your audience.
People today love information. Your interactive digital signage can go beyond just telling people what products and services are available, and go much deeper. Where do cafes get their gluten free cheesecake? Why are fair trade products a good idea? Why is this 401k better than that?
People love it when you give more than they expect. They might not care the first time they see the news, but with repeated exposure, they might start to care. You can even use your electronic digital signage effectively to change behavior and prompt people to prefer one thing over another.
Interactive digital displays allow you to provide more information, with the added benefit that people can decide how much information they need on a given topic. You can also incorporate wayfinding to make it easy to find what you just convinced them they want.
Include messages that encourage people to actively engage with what you have to offer them and your organization. Ask them to leave a comment on a website or social media page, take a photo and share it, invite others to participate, etc. If they like what you do and the way you do it, they will become advocates for you and your brand.
Likewise, interactive digital displays and kiosks make it easy for people to instantly interact with your other online portals. Having a digital signage app that delivers content and connections directly to their mobile devices helps create a cohesive web of interactions that enhance your brand image and let more people know who you are and what you do What. Word of mouth is still the best form of publicity – getting people talking about you, even online.
Once you pay for your digital signage system, the only maintenance costs are hardware and software maintenance and updates, and electricity.
Not to mention that digital information is easily updated – details change, or you repeat a promotion or initiative. Using a cloud-based system, you can literally update messages from any network-connected device. Imagine how easy it is to walk across one of your digital advertising screens, see a message, realize something needs to be changed, pull out your smartphone, log in, make the change, schedule the change, and watch the new message instantly on your on the monitor. What used to take hours now takes minutes.
The advancement of technology has made the hardware improve all the time. In fact, a study a few years ago found that LED signs cost less than 10% more per 10,000 impressions than any other form of advertising.
Real-time metrics can give you precise information about who is doing what, when and how. Some touchscreens will let you know exactly how many interactions there were on the screen, which areas and buttons were pressed the most, etc. This is invaluable information that allows you to continuously tune and improve your digital signage products.
Having an effective call-to-action also allows you to accurately track the effectiveness of specific messages, so you can repeat successful messages and campaigns and improve underperforming ones.
Once you take a look at everything a digital signage system has to offer, from a way to actually make money in the short term, to long-term savings, brand awareness and loyalty, and the ability to fine-tune your offerings, you’ll see that no other form of communication can beat the cost That effectively reaches as many people as possible.