This blog outlines our top 8 content ideas you need to include on your digital signage displays. We’ve put together an actionable list with facts and statistics to help you start increasing the effectiveness of your digital signage today.
1. Social Media Testimonials And Reviews.
For organisations around the world, social media has become an important part of marketing strategy. It gives organisations a way to directly connect with their customers and show off who they are. As the popularity of social media continues to explode, organisations seek new ways to harness the power and benefits of the platform.
In a study, Jimenez and Mendoza (2013) found that customer purchase intentions are positively affected by the credibility of reviews. WordStream has highlighted the importance of social media reviews and how they can add credibility and even a more natural feel to your marketing. With this in mind, customer reviews and testimonials should be an integral part of your marketing strategy.
It’s common knowledge that placing customer reviews on your website or sharing testimonials on social media is essential. But how can you extend this to your offices or physical stores? Digital signage is a great medium that allows you to display live social media feeds. For example, having a screen in a car showroom playing a continuous cycle of testimonials live from your social media account. Potential customers in the showroom will see these reviews (which hold a high level of credibility) and may increase their purchase intentions. Seeing a large number of organic, real, and truthful social media reviews could be the element that sways them from a maybe into a yes.
We’ve put together a handy guide for social media digital signage, including a great infographic outlining some top social media statistics.
2. Price Discounts And Special Offers
We all love a bargain. Whether it’s buy one get one free, 50% off, or even free delivery, we all want to take advantage of discounts and offers. Even better, it’s almost always a win-win. The customer gets some money off their purchase and the organisation is more likely to get a sign-up or close a sale. Price discounts and offers are usually easy to find online, with website pop-ups offering 10% off if you sign up for a newsletter or a banner advert saying students get 20% off. However, in retail stores, these deals and offers can be hard to find, hidden on labels, or are on old posters that aren’t engaging enough.
The importance of price discounts being used to increase purchase intentions has been highlighted by Lee and Chen-Yu (2018). The authors outline how purchase intentions are increased by discounts due to a perceived monetary gain experienced by customers. In other words, when a customer sees a price discount they can actually see it as them making money. This makes them more likely to make a purchase. Statistics show that around 93% of customers will use a discount code throughout the year. Furthermore, 75% of customers will actively seek discounts before making a purchase. These statistics alone highlight the importance of discounts and how vital they are in the sales process.
Yoast has also highlighted the importance of urgency in relation to discount codes. They explain how discounts that are only available for a certain amount of time create a sense of urgency and cause a FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) for customers who won’t want to miss out on saving money. This in turn is likely to increase purchase intentions.
With all these points considered, discount codes should definitely be part of your digital signage content, especially if you’re looking to increase sales. Making sure pricing discounts and special offers are made obvious in your store is vital for customers who are seeking some money off. For example, a customer may be looking at a £50 pair of jeans and think it’s too much. However, if a bright eye-catching screen shows a buy one get one free or 25% off, the customer may see this as a monetary gain and make the purchase. Without seeing the digital screen promotion, the shop may have lost the sale. Go a step further and include a countdown timer with limited-time deals to create urgency.
3. Loyalty Programs
Loyalty programs are another important aspect of an organisation’s marketing and should be promoted on your screens. They have the power to drum up repeat business and keep customers coming back for more. There is an ocean of different types of loyalty programs. This includes points-based programs, purchase volume-based programs, etc.
Forbes has outlined some great statistics that highlight the importance of loyalty schemes. Including:
- 90% of companies have a loyalty program.
- 52% of consumers join loyalty programs from brands they frequently purchase from.
- 50% of consumers want to earn rewards on their purchases.
- 22% of consumers are satisfied with the level of personalisation they get from loyalty programs.
- 36% of consumers will choose to shop in a store they can get loyalty points or rewards.
- 57% of consumers will spend more money with brands they are more loyal to.
- 71% of consumers believe loyalty programs play an important role in their brand relationship.
- Purchase intentions increase by 15% if a consumer is part of a loyalty program.
- The number of items per order can increase by as much as 319% when a loyalty program is present.
- 73% of consumers are more likely to recommend brands to others when a good loyalty program is in place.
- 79% of consumers are likely to keep purchasing from a brand with a loyalty program.
These are just a small number of brilliant statistics provided by Forbes that really prove the importance of instating a loyalty program at your organisation. With figures like these, your loyalty program needs to be promoted to as many of your customers as possible to increase satisfaction, revenue, word of mouth, and repeat purchases.
With these figures in mind, your organisation needs to be promoting its loyalty programs on its digital signage. When customers see all the brilliant benefits there are they will want to sign up. After this, their brand loyalty will increase, they will be more satisfied, and they are likely to spend more with your company through increased order size and repeat purchases. To make this purchase frictionless, include a QR code on your screen that links straight to a sign-up page. The customer can sign up in seconds and start reaping the rewards of becoming a loyal customer.
4. QR Codes
The popularity of QR codes has exploded in 2020. With the introduction of the NHS’ QR code-based “track and trace” service, nearly everyone has become familiar with QR codes and how they work. Simply scan a QR code with your smartphone camera and you’re taken directly to a webpage, app download or even your social media.
This growth has been shown further by Medium. In 2019 QR code reach grew 28% and the number of QR code interactions grew by 26%. This clearly demonstrates QR codes are continuing to be an effective and important communication method between organisations and their audiences.
There are many great uses for QR codes, including “scan to learn more”, “sign up here” or even sending users to a specific webpage. With a QR code, there are no limits to what can happen when you scan a code. For example, Amazon Go is built on clever QR code integration.
Extending QR codes to your on-screen content is a great idea. It can increase engagement and add another layer of functionality to your marketing campaigns. For example, you may have content relating to your loyalty program that says “Sign up today and get 20% off your first purchase”. With this message alone, customers may not know where to go or may forget about the offer when they leave the shop and go about their day. However, if you include a QR code that links to the sign-up page, the customer can scan the code and sign up in seconds. Of course, there is an unlimited number of uses for QR codes that can transform the way your organisation operates. That’s why we highly recommend getting creative and experimenting with them. However, they are a must-have for your digital signage content.
Want to use QR codes on your screens? We’ve put together a step by step guide for how to use QR codes on digital signage displays.
5. Weather Content
The weather can’t be that important, can it? Wrong. Did you know that changes in weather can affect sales by as much as 23.1% (Badorf and Hoberg, 2020)? Diving deeper into the effects of weather on sales, rain clothing, and accessories like umbrellas experience an increase of 21.3% when there is bad weather. Furthermore, good weather was found to increases summer clothing sales by 12.5%.
With this information, you could argue that displaying a live weather forecast could become a valuable part of your marketing strategy. For example, your screens could show that in 2 days’ time the weather is going to hot for 4 days. From this, you can tailor promotions for items that relate to hot weather. E.g. BBQ sales, summer clothing, and ice-cream. When customers see the live weather forecast they will want to prepare for it. You can go a step further and place a screen next to the ice cream freezer during summer with an offer saying ice-creams are 10% off when purchased on hot days.
6. Personalised Messages
In marketing, personalised messages are becoming more common. We see them in our emails, on on-demand streaming, and even on drinks cans and there’s good reason for this.
HubSpot believes that one of the reasons behind the excitement and preference behind a personalised experience is that it makes the consumer feel more in control. HubSpot highlight that this is because when a user gets a message or product that is tailored to themselves and not the same as everyone else, it increases their feelings of being in control.
In addition to this, Smart Insights draw attention to how 72% of consumers revealed they will only engage with marketing material that is personalised to them or their interests. To put it into context. For that group of 72% of consumers, if the messages were not personalised to them, they would not have engaged with the marketing messages. That means the organisation just lost 72% of prospect consumers.
From this data, personalised content and messages should 100% be included in your digital signage content strategy. Whether this is a hotel tailoring specific content to individual guest’s rooms, a personalised welcome message in a lobby, or even personalised content that is triggered to play when users tap a card, there’s a lot you can do.
7. Videos
According to WordStream, 51% of marketers said that video content has the best ROI amongst media. Furthermore, WordStream highlight how marketers using video content saw revenue grow as much as 49% faster than those who didn’t use video and that 64% of customers decided to make a purchase after watching branded videos.
Videos can also help improve customer’s brand message recall. Customers will retain 95% of a marketing message when watching a video where as in comparison to text they will only recall 10%. According to Wistia, the best length for a marketing video is 2 minutes, which gets about 70% engagement.
When it comes to video content for your screens, there’s so much you can do. Either display engaging customer testimonials to build credibility and trust. Or you can simply display your favourite marketing videos to drive sales or increase brand awareness. Whatever kind of videos you want to show, with statistics like these you’ll definitely want to make videos a priority for your digital signage content.
8. Branding
Brand awareness is an important component of the success of your organisation. Brand awareness plays a critical role in the consumer’s decision-making process. Being able to easily recognise your brand can lead to increased purchase intentions, trust, credibility, and even loyalty.
There are a number of proven ways to help increase your brand awareness. This includes having a clear/impactful logo, brand messages and slogans, brand colours, and even sounds and jingles. When these factors are used consistently together, potential customers will start to recognise your brand more and are more likely to keep your brand top of mind. For example, if you think of running shoes, you may first think of Nike.
According to Forbes, having consistent brand colours can improve your brand recognition as much as 80% and consistent branding across all your channels can increase revenue by 23%.
With these figures in mind, it’s a no brainer to include your branding on your screen content. If you want to increase your brand awareness it is critical you include consistent branding across your screen content. This can be done by featuring your logo on each creative, having brand colours in tabs or backgrounds, and even featuring brand jingles. If you don’t include your branding on your screen content, your digital signage messages may look out of place and customers may not think they’re from your organisation.
Still got an appetite for content ideas? Check out our 20 Digital Signage Content Examples To Follow For 2021.
