You might not think digital signage advertising or digital screen advertising is for you – that you’re too small or in the wrong industry. We are certain this isn’t the case. Today we’re explaining how to generate a side income for your business or for yourself.
Drawing on real case studies, we give you a breakdown of real figures. How much it costs and – more importantly – what revenue it can bring in.
If you are interested in digital signage advertising screens, read on or give us a call. If you are looking to power a larger network of digital signage advertising screens such as x10 or even x100 this, we’ll explain why digital advertising screens are ideal for scaling.
Read through to the end of this guide (or skip ahead) and we’ll give you actionable advice to test this all out – with zero risk.
In this guide, you’ll learn:
- Increasing revenue with digital advertising screens
- How to make advertising effortless
- How to make advertising zero risk
First off – can digital advertising screens work for anyone?
Yes. Advertising is simply about attention. If you are running a business, you have access to an audience, whether it’s your existing customer base or prospects. Get their attention and you’re in business.
You don’t even necessarily need a physical premise like a restaurant or shop. You could be an online business that pays to install digital advertising screens in locations targeted for an audience or chosen by footfall. Don’t just think billboards – you could approach other small businesses and offer to pay for screen installation in their window. The trade-off? With digital screen advertising, give them a cut of ad revenue or invite them to show their own marketing content on the screens. This works great for businesses based in remote locations, looking to tap into concentrated audiences.
Increasing Revenue With Digital Advertising Screens.
Pricing sponsorship on your digital advertising screens can be tricky. Industries with more expensive products or services will obviously pay a higher premium; larger networks attract bigger deals, and factors such as the frequency of footfall or content impressions all play significant parts. It’s easiest to start with covering your costs and then scale up, depending on the ambition of your revenue targets. The below case study assumes as cost TrouDigital’s essential signage license, which comes to £48/month (more on this later). The case study helps give you an idea of how you can run your own advertising screen/network. Please note: the one-off price of the media player at £185+VAT is not included as this would not be a recurring cost.
CASE STUDY (Running Your Own Advertising Network):
I run a hotel and want to generate revenue on a screen in reception. I could cover the cost of my signage license with a single advertiser at £50/month.
As a hotel, my ideal sponsors would be local restaurants or organisers providing events or entertainment to my guests. That way, the adverts would be genuinely useful to my customers. What’s more, my customer base is their target audience so the proposition, even for the tightest of sponsors would be an attractive one.
From the advertiser’s perspective – say a restaurant – a £50/month sponsorship fee would be covered if their adverts only generated a single dinner sale all month. Using this, we have a base point for a starting sponsorship package.
My hotel might also want to offer two higher sponsorship tiers, priced at £100 and £200/month respectively. The £100/month package would include longer advertising slots, more frequently played; while the £200/month package would exclusively provide full-screen coverage – I could even throw in sponsored social media promotions (at no cost to me).
My local zoo might be a prime candidate for this premium slot. One family of four visit a month from my hotel’s advertising would cover their sponsorship cost. That family recommends the zoo to their friends with kids and the ROI rockets.
TOP TIP: Offer tiered packages to accommodate all budgets, and introduce an element of exclusivity to key sponsors. You might want to reserve full-screen media coverage to only your top package, with the lower tiers receiving ‘partial screen’ coverage.
Breaking down the numbers to highly achievable targets
In the above case study, we have been careful to use very achievable sponsorship figures. Even with just one digital advertising screen, you could potentially charge a lot more. If the network was 10 screens, or even 100’s if you’re dealing with nation-wide companies, the numbers become an entirely different conversation. Let’s keep things simple. The great thing about digital signage advertising is scale.
Our hotel would cover the cost of one signage license and full TrouDigital support with an advertiser or two – but the beauty of the platform is they could have ten, even twenty sponsors. When you’re giving away 10, 30, 60-second slots in an hour-long playlist, there’s plenty of screen time to play with.
Our Realistic Case Study – Ad Revenue Breakdown Template
- Bronze Tier x7 Slots @ £50/month = £350/month.
- Silver Tier x2 Slots @ £100/month = £200/month.
- Gold Tier x1 Slot @ £200/month = £200/month.
- Total Ad Revenue From 10 Sponsors = £750/month – Subtract Signage Licence & Advertising Support x1 @ £48/month.
>>> Total Advertising Profit = £702/month. <<<
That’s £8,424/year in profit, starting with only modest pricing, a single screen, and operating under-capacity in terms of the number of advertisers. Anyone can achieve these numbers.
How to make digital signage advertising effortless
You like the numbers. You are worried this will involve a lot of work. We have good news for you. Through digital signage software and digital signage scheduling you are able to schedule your advertisements to play when you want. Once scheduled sit back, relax, and let the software do the work. That £48/month fee we mentioned earlier? That pays us to support any issues you may run into (this rarely happens!).
TOP TIP: When possible, consider repurposing an existing TV that’s going to waste. This can save you the largest cost of digital signage and helps the environment too! Industry secret – in most deployments, consumer-grade screens are more than adequate and a lot cheaper than commercial equivalents. However, if you’re looking for some sleek looking advertising screens and digital signage hardware make sure to ask our experts.
In some cases, we offer bespoke fully-managed solutions. Our team could even take care of your advertisers’ content on your behalf. We would schedule all third-party media to spec. You only have to worry about your own content.
For most purposes, our £18/month standard signage package will be more than sufficient to get you started in advertising. It will equip you with everything you need to generate revenue and we are always a phone call away for support or advice.
Sound good? Here’s how you make this project zero risk
We want to wrap up this digital signage advertising guide with some action you can take right now to try this model yourself. As promised at the start, TrouDigital has perfected a way for you to test the revenue-generating capacity of digital advertising screens, without any risk or commitment.
Before you even invest in screens or sign up with us, we recommend you be completely transparent with potential advertisers: explain you are looking into launching a unique ‘channel’ and want to give them the chance to secure screen-time in advance. Pitch them a hypothetical three-tier package, with the estimates figures designed to get a feel for the budget of potential sponsors.
Consider this highly effective market research!
There’s no need to purchase your first display, or pay us anything, before you are totally convinced advertisers are interested, and that digital advertising screens will be profitable.
