10 Creative Digital Signage Ideas To Engage Any Audience

Oct 15, 2018 | Digital Signage

Dom Hinchcliffe

Dom Hinchcliffe

At TrouDigital, we dream about dynamic screens. We have digital signage ideas coming out of our ears…

Are you looking to up your screen game with some creative and dynamic content?

You have come to the right place. Here are 10 digital signage ideas that you can start implementing today to enhance your communication and engagement!

1. Voice activation
Voice activation is a lot closer to becoming a mainstream, everyday activity than a lot of people think! You may be familiar with an Amazon Echo or a Google Home, or with using Siri every now and then on your iPhone! But, voice activation is predicted to become even more common in our daily lives in the next few years. It has been estimated that by 2020, around 50% of all searches will be made by voice. Using voice can engage an audience, turn heads and create an interest. Voice is one of our must-share digital signage ideas for boosting your target audience engagement!
At TrouDigital, our developers can implement voice to your digital signage to transform the interaction your staff and customers have with your digital screen. Customers will gather around your screen to engage with content using voice-triggers, with commands ranging from “Play me the _ video” to “Show me the weather” or “What’s the latest news?”.
Just like with all the content you create on the Content Management System (CMS), voice interaction can be specialised for customers or clients, to respond to certain voice triggers. Voice can allow for fast engagement and can prolong the attention of your customers. The future is exciting. Even more so, from how close voice technology is. If you are interested in voice activation for digital signage, email info@troudigital.com to chat about your bespoke project needs.
10 Creative Digital Signage Ideas To Engage Any Audience TrouDigital 2. Touch screen functionality 
Touch screen digital signage is the definition of engagement. 
By turning your digital screen into an interactive advertising tool, you can bring your customers right up to your brand’s content where they can navigate and explore your media. Customers can easily find the content they are interested in by using your digital screen in a way they are used to!
A common difficulty is to hold attention after you have successfully obtained it. Touch screen digital signage provides the solution, by being fun to use and by creating interest from seeing others use it. This is one of our favourite digital signage ideas as touch-screen functionality opens up a whole new world of interaction with your digital signage.
3. Drop in a live news feed
Our live news feeds are achieved through RSS technology. RSS feeds are the perfect partner for digital signage that can engage your audience in any space, be it a waiting room, an event or in and around retail areas. Our handy RSS feed widget is a staple in our own creatives and we always show prospective businesses them in our demos. This is because RSS feeds makes it easy to add the latest news from sources such as BBC and CNN to your screen in a matter of seconds. Simply drag and drop!
Scrolling news and customised text always attracts attention and encourages a passerby to wait to read the information. It is also handy to stop your content from looking cluttered, as text can come from one side of the screen and disappear off into the next. RSS feeds can show the latest local news, the weather, up-to-date travel updates and much more.
4. Embed social media content

Nowadays, it is almost a necessity to have your business available to reach on social media. Wherever your customer could be looking, it is important to place your company there to increase brand exposure and to market your products and services. If you are already doing the work composing great social content, then why wouldn’t you show it on your digital signage too?
The great thing about displaying your social media on screens is it automates your content by automatically pulling in your latest images and text. This automation keeps your displays looking fresh and relevant, without creating your staff any extra work.
Our Twitter widget is our most popular social media integration. It can either be configured to imitate the style of an RSS feed with your tweets displayed as scrolling text. Alternatively, our “free form” option can be fully customised to include any attached images as well as your profile picture and handle. 
10 Creative Digital Signage Ideas To Engage Any Audience TrouDigital

5. Dynamic content
Leading on from the great digital signage ideas of RSS feeds and social media content, we also encourage the use of video and slideshows. Our custom widgets can incorporate stunning video and even slideshows of social media posts like your Facebook galleries. We all know that a picture can say a thousand words, so when you have a limited window of opportunity to grab the attention of a customer, we encourage you to use video too.
People take in information differently, so for those who prefer to watch content than to read it, show videos or tutorials of your products and services to captivate the attention of onlookers. This can be brilliant for highlighting promotions and offers, or to tell the story of your brand in a different way.
6. The countdown timer
This may not have been one of the most obvious digital signage ideas, but consider yourself walking past a company’s digital signage with a large countdown timer ticking down the seconds. It’s highly likely that it would first capture your attention, and second, make you wonder what the countdown is about. Countdown timers are a very simple, yet effective way to display promotions or offers and when they are going to expire soon. Use this as an effective sales tool to try and promote people to learn what your deals are and whether they can afford to miss out on them!
7. Interactive games
With the vast array of widgets at your disposal, we really have you covered from effective sales tools to fun ways to grab attention and get people over to your digital signage. Our solution even offers you interactive games, so you can play games such as Sudoku or even Tic-Tac-Toe with colleagues to keep up team morale (and healthy competition).
If you are in retail, having interactive games could lure families over where the children want to play the game. This could be a great chance for you tell the parents about your promotions in-store whilst they can’t leave their kids. Our digital signage ideas really have no limits. At TrouDigital, we kit you out with the latest widgets and tech, allowing your imagination to choose how you use your signage.10 Creative Digital Signage Ideas To Engage Any Audience TrouDigital
8. Slideshows
Unlike with a presentation tool like PowerPoint where all your content changes at once, our platform allows you to embed slideshows within a presentation. This enables you to segment up your screens and get different areas to rotate through media at different times. The result is a far more engaging presentation, eliminating static screens that get lost in busy environments.
Our slideshow widget is especially flexible as you can drop any other type of media into a defined screen area to add it to a queue. You have granular control over its playback too with the ability to set a play duration for each individual element. This feature opens up a range of digital signage ideas depending on your industry. A “meet the team” slideshow is popular in corporate settings as are scrolling menus for restaurant screens.
9. Branding
10 Creative Digital Signage Ideas To Engage Any Audience TrouDigital With our digital signage solution, you can dramatically increase the exposure of your brand by having your content in brand colours, with your logo and fonts so your message is always consistent.
Using your brand’s colours will engage attention and allow prospective customers to know a little bit about your personality from just one look. It’s always essential to display your logo, so customers can know who is providing the content to them and what they do. We make it so easy for you to use your digital signage as a complete branding tool through the use of templates, where your logo can be fixed on every creative and seen throughout the day at all times. We can also help you use the exact HTML colour codes of your brand, so your digital signage is congruent with all of your other marketing efforts.
10. Show clearly offers and promotions
With your digital content updating seamlessly with the likes of your RSS feeds and social media content, you can also use custom scrolling text tickers to clearly display your latest offers and promotions. There’s something about moving text that captures attention and holds an audience reading the full message. It’s also a great practical space-saving device that allows you to convey multiple offers using only a very small area of the screen.
Businesses from all sectors and not just retail will benefit from this promotional application, seeing a direct impact on their sales or service uptake. A great tip is to introduce a measurable discount code such as a hashtag that can be attributed back to the promotions displayed on-screen. When used in this way, your digital signage becomes measurable with proof of effectiveness to show your Sales Manager.


Thank you for reading our 10 digital signage ideas.

We hope this post has given you some food for thought and some new applications to go away and try yourself. If you would like some more information about the widgets we have for your disposal, please do not hesitate to get in touch.
If you are researching our platform for the first time, we can book you onto free and quick web demonstration with one of our trainers. If you are a current user, we can schedule in refresher training at any time. 
You will also find some helpful tutorial and explainer videos on our Youtube channel.

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