Investing in digital signage for pubs helps to create a more customer-friendly social environment leading to subsequent sales.

We are already accustomed to seeing screens in pubs displaying sports and news. As a result, we are almost conditioned to have at least one eye on them whilst we destress in everyone’s favourite venue.

Digital signage for pubs presents an opportunity to capture this attention, enhance customer experience and boost profits. A digital screen placed in the window, on the wall or behind the bar offers solutions to a number of problems that any public house may face…

1) Promoting upcoming sports fixtures

Rather than competing with whatever existing sports screens your pub may have, digital signage is a brilliant accompaniment to them. With the sports calendar becoming busier and busier year upon year it is important to keep customers engaged and aware of the screenings of each major event.

Every game or race matters to someone, so the scheduling feature on our software is a sure fire way to keep even the obscurest of fans returning. For example, when the Premier League fixture list comes out in July, the software would allow you to schedule the screens to display promotions for the big games for the entire season. Going one step further, you could schedule promotions for the Champions League Final on the 30th May 2020 as early as now (March 2019).

Understandably, this saves you the cost and time of printing posters week in week out or writing on chalkboards that only get rubbed away by mistake. It allows you to efficiently grab the focus of fans from all walks of life, as you can simply and remotely ensure that all fixtures that you wish to be promoted are promoted.

2) Drinks offers and promotions

Whilst the pub is the obvious place to gather and chat for people from all walks of life, its purpose is lost without its product – a beverage. It is therefore vital to steer customer attention towards the drinks that you want them to buy. A bold display is sure to catch attention. Digital signage for pubs is therefore the perfect way to grab the customer’s gaze and entice them to the bar. An attractive ‘2-4-1’, student discount or just cheap drinks offers are only going to help generate business if they are visible.

The pub may offer a seasonal promotion, such as Christmas offers. In which case the software would allow you to schedule the promotion as far in advance of December 25th as you’d like, at a time suited to every pub’s individual needs. Alternatively, offers on different days of the week can be programmed using the same feature, for example, there might be a 20% off on selected drinks on Tuesdays offer that ought to be promoted on a Tuesday. In this instance, you would schedule the promotion to appear on Tuesdays and you could do this remotely anywhere using the programme which can be accessed via our website.

Pub promotions are not just limited to drinks and food either. Screens can help raise awareness of all sorts of facilities, for example, an underused dart board, games room or function room. The signage can help not only promote them but also with wayfinding, directing people to their whereabouts.

3) Local or national advertising

Adverts are a fool-proof way to ensure your return on investment with digital signage. An obvious concern would be bombarding patrons with lots of advertisements, but as little as devoting 10 seconds in every minute to an advert is more than enough to cover the cost.

Local advertising is increasingly popular with small businesses turning their backs on traditional media and looking to be more creative. Pubs often form the heart of the community and as such are a great place to promote businesses. They constitute hot property, as they are such a melting pot and hive of activity. This means they have a large and diverse amount of footfall, making them an attractive place to advertise. Smaller pubs can still attract local businesses, perhaps those of their patrons, whereas larger ones may consider adverts that lend themselves to the target market, perhaps drinks adverts. We’ve written an actionable guide on how anyone can generate upwards of £330/month on a single screen.

4) Personalised messages

Given its familiarity to so many, a pub is the perfect place for functions and gatherings in all manner of guises. The pub can play host to wedding receptions, birthday parties and work socials.

There is no better way to be hospitable to guests booking the pub as a venue than to have personalised birthday, congratulations, or just welcome messages visible upon arrival. Not only does this allow guests to feel as though they have been valued, but also makes it clear to other members of the public that there is a private function going on. Taking this idea further, you could get the guests to email in any photos or videos as well, so that you could schedule them to appear throughout the evening as a slideshow.

4) Pub hosted events

Pubs are the venue of many beloved past times, none more so than the pub quiz. Nationwide, people long for that time where they get to show their intellectual worth over a pint and some pork scratchings. With such anticipation surrounding something so simple, it’s important people are aware of when your events are. Digital signage is the perfect way to do this.

Furthermore, our cloud-based software means you could quite feasibly publish a leaderboard and results on the screens. This could be as simple as congratulations to the winners each week. Alternatively, if you wanted to increase competition and the chances of people returning to your events the following week, you could publish an ongoing leaderboard on your screens, with a tally of results for quiz teams, skittles competitions, darts competitions, pool tournaments, table tennis tournaments or whatever events the pub chooses to host each month or so.

If the pub has capacity for other activities for example in a function room, then digital signage can provide information on the activities in there. The screens would provide a similar service to help boost the engagement with those functions.

5) Time, weather, news and social media

Still looking for more ideas? Well, our software has a variety of widgets that you drag and drop onto the canvas when designing your displays. They perform a range of functions that add to the utility of digital signage for pubs.

Whilst the pub is the perfect setting to forget your woes, it’s important for customers to feel connected to their wider surroundings. Creating an environment that they feel comfortable spending time and money in is pivotal to maintaining their custom. Alerting them to the time, weather and ongoing news events helps customers maintain tangible links with the ‘world’ and are therefore less likely to have the urge to leave to ‘rejoin society’.

Social media is a great way to engage with customers. The software provides the ability to display your Twitter, Instagram or Facebook, displaying the content the pub may have and also encouraging people to follow the pub online. Furthermore, it’s a great way of letting regular customers feel valued as they would love to see for example, their posts ‘retweeted’ by the pub and displayed on the screens.

6) Specials board

The final thing to consider with regard to digital signage for pubs is food. The specials board has received terrible PR as of late, many people believe it to be just a concoction of yesterday’s leftovers. It is therefore important to glamourise the specials and encourage people to order them.

Many pubs have a specials board that they update daily on a blackboard. This is a laborious process for a member of staff physically on premise.

It makes perfect sense to have these specials on a screen that is not only more engaging, but that can be programmed remotely and ahead of time. This could save up to an hour every day.

A screen can change as regularly as the specials change and can be accessed via the cloud-based system as and when it is needed. They can be updated easily depending on availability of ingredients and would be on the same software as any allergy information, so it is easy to corroborate the two. Taking your specials board digital might be a worthwhile reason in itself to modernise if it sees an uplift in specials sales.

The increasing popularity of digital signage for pubs is understandable given its versatility. If you think it’s time that your pub invested, get in touch today!

Call us on 02380 981110 or email info@troudigital.com.