If you haven't thought about including digital signs in your retail stores or restaurants, you could be missing out on the advantages these interactive systems offer.

Having a digital signage display in your store is a great way to capture your demographic target audience, but how do you effectively use it?

If you're not familiar with electronic signage, here's everything you need to know about including these multimedia systems in your public space.

What Is Digital Signage?

Digital signage, otherwise known as electronic signage, is the use of a TV, kiosk, or LCD monitor to display video content pertaining to your business, cause, or campaign.

No one size fits all when it comes to these media players. Their use is entirely flexible, making it appropriate for a range of businesses to enjoy and use in their area.

Types Of Digital Signage

Interested in implementing interactive digital signage? Let's go over all the different ways you can use a digital signage system to bring more value to your business.

Highlight Promotions

If you have any upcoming sales or promotions you want to make your customers aware of, a digital signage screen is a great way to let your patrons know. Not only does this spread more awareness, but it gives customers a better experience to engage with your promotion in an exciting way.

Put simply, digital signage screens capture attention. You can also use special graphics, ads, or product tutorials as an interactive way to promote your sales or specials in-store. If you really want to encourage customers to take advantage of a certain promotion, a digital signage ad can do the trick.

Pictured: An example of promoting a special offer in a bar using Loop TV’s built-in digital signage as entertainment plays on the majority of the screen.

Interactive Games & Features

One excellent way to make your customer’s experience memorable and unique is with interactive features integrated with your digital signage software. Giving your customers something to interact with as they sit in your waiting room or enjoy a drink can help enhance their experience.

You could display trivia, email subscriber forms, fun facts, and more. Not only will these options enhance your customer's experience, but they can also help you collect customer information to spread more word about your business through email marketing.

Provide Entertainment

As already mentioned, one of the biggest components of digital signage is the option to display a range of content in your store. Digital signage can give you a whole realm of new entertainment to bring to your businesses instead of the same old music playlist playing through your store's speakers.

Using Loop TV, for example, you can play music videos from the world’s largest music video library fully licensed for business. You can also display sports highlights, cute pet videos, movie trailers, bite-sized “fail” videos, and much more.

If you're looking for a way to make your business's atmosphere more enjoyable and unique compared to your competitors, digital signage can surely give you the edge you're looking for.

Promote Upcoming Events

Digital signage is great for keeping customers in the loop when it comes to upcoming events. This feature of a digital signage solution can fit any business's needs. Instead of posting flyers or posters in your store, you could create an audible short production broadcasting the upcoming events for your business so your customers can save the date.

Using a video wall to showcase your upcoming events also gives you the flexibility to add certain graphics, pictures, or videos to further market the upcoming event. If you run a bar with an upcoming trivia night, for example, you can intrigue your customers with a short video that will give them a taste of what the night will hold. One more example: If you're a retail store with an upcoming sale, you can create a video highlighting certain products you want to move fast.

Wayfinding

If you're a bigger business like a mall or corporate office, your guests can sometimes feel lost in the massive building, and asking for directions can feel very intimidating and embarrassing. One way to reduce this and ease your patrons is to have a wayfinding feature in your digital signage system that informs your guests of where they are and how to find specific stores and offices. Including several video walls in your location will make the wayfinding process easier for your guests.

Display Menu & Product Information

Displaying a digital menu may be the most common way to use digital signage. A restaurant can use a video wall to post a digital menu of their restaurant instead of passing out the foldable, flimsy menus. It may also be worthwhile to include nutrition information or other food product information to help your customers make the right choice.

But it’s not just appropriate for restaurants – retail stores can use this feature too. A computer repair company could display their own menu of service options, for example.

Best Features To Have In Digital Signage Software

Now that you know more about what digital signage is and the ways you can use these systems, it's important to know what features to look for in a digital signage system.

Here are the top main features to have in a digital signage software. These features can help you get the most out of your in-store digital marketing plan.

Image & Video Content Display

This is the most fundamental feature. Digital signage would not be what it is without the ability to display videos or image content. Whether it’s customized ads or entertaining video content, this feature will likely be the one you use most.

Easy Scheduling

If you plan to have several people in charge of scheduling the content, easy scheduling features can save you a lot of headaches and time. This will also help if you have more than one location using the same digital signage system and you want them to show the same pieces of content.

Pictured: The scheduling/content building screen on Loop TV’s digital signage feature.

Easy scheduling from anywhere can create unity in your store's system to make sure everyone who walks through the same company in different locations sees the same message.

Multi-Layout Display

If you would like to display several advertisements at once or several images and pieces of information, a feature with multi-layout options can give you that flexibility. Depending on the layouts available, you can display information such as the temperature, time, company news, and other vital pieces of information you would like those in your business to be aware of. Not only does this help keep everyone up-to-date, but it can also enhance your marketing depending on the information you choose to display.

How Can Digital Signage Help Your Business?

Digital signage is a major breakthrough in the realm of digital marketing since it allows you to advertise to and entertain the people who visit your business.

These signage screens can elevate your business in numerous ways. The first is that it will visually set you apart from other stores and quickly grab your customers' attention. It is a memorable way to advertise your products or message.

It is also very easy to update content and continue streams of promoting your digital entertainment. You can easily switch between video to picture content for whatever fits your needs best in real-time.

If you need to relay something to your customers quickly, such as a big sale, digital signage gives you that flexibility to make the necessary adjustment fast so your customers get the message.

Overall, digital signage helps to enhance awareness in your store. Instead of relying on a static picture or poster, you can use an interactive, interchangeable system in a bigger and bolder way. That's because video magnifies your message, unlike traditional marketing.

How To Find The Right Digital Signage Solution

Interested in using a digital signage system in your business? You might be wondering where to start.

Here are a few questions to ask yourself before you start to look for a system to promote your digital images:

• How many digital screens are you planning to use?
• What is the budget you're working with?
• What type of content are you planning on showing?

It is okay if you plan to bounce around in content. For example, if you're a bar or restaurant, you may want to display content relating to your restaurant that promotes the specials or menu, while on other screens, you may want music videos playing for your guests to enjoy.

Let Loop TV Enhance Your Customer’s Experience

Are you ready to enhance your customer's experience? You can get started with your digital signage content today with Loop TV... for free!

Loop TV offers free digital signage for any business. Our system has the largest licensed library of music videos on hand that you can run in your location, but that's not all our system has to offer.

On top of music videos, we offer non-music video content ideas such as sports, lifestyle & news, and fails to keep your guests entertained in their wait time. But if you're not looking for music videos or other video content, we still have what you're looking for.

Loop's digital signage system also has a number of practical features that will improve your customer experience. You can digitally display your restaurant's menu, highlight promotions, promote upcoming events, and more.

There are multiple types of ads you can run with Loop TV and various ways to set up your digital marketing tactics. We offer video, image, web, text, and RSS ads that can run continuously, or between a certain set of videos. The choice is yours!

Scheduling your digital ads with Loop TV is easy and the results are amazing. With the varying ways to use this feature, you can even create ads to fit your back of house needs and send reminders or messages out to your employees.

Getting started with your Loop TV display screen is simple and easy. After you fill out your business information on our site, we will send you your free Loop player to connect with your digital menu board.

(Click here to get Loop TV for free!)

From there it's simple. You can start scheduling the videos you want on your playlist!

Give your customers an experience they will remember and get your free Loop player shipped to you today.