Optimizing content for digital signage: 5 tips to ace content marketing

Optimizing content for digital signage is not a straightforward process. It takes time and experience to ace. Many marketers that start working the screens for the first time try to apply social media and internet tactics to make it work. But it’s a whole different beast and it should be treated with special attention. There are rules to follow here. 

This article will show you 5 best practices for optimizing content for digital signage.

1. Put yourself in the audience's shoes

Understanding the audience is a complex, sometimes painful task. Here businesses usually have two starting points. If you’ve been doing content marketing for some time now, you are sure to have an audience profile. This is easier for digital signage marketing, you’ve got a target. 

In case you haven’t been actively marketing before deploying digital signage, it’s your utmost goal to have as detailed portrait of your audience as possible. 

Now about the “putting yourself in the audience’s shoes” part. A good marketer should be able to predict how a targeted person will react to the content he’s planning to show. That’s exactly what you should do when optimizing content for digital signage.

Understand how your audience will react when seeing the things you’re planning to show on the screens. What will be the emotional response, how much time will the interaction be, and what actions will be done after seeing the content?

Going micro with your audience perception is the way to ace digital signage marketing.

2. Design for success

Bad content is a dealbreaker. Nobody deserves it. You shouldn’t be putting it up there. 

After all, you haven’t paid for digital signage to broadcast rubbish. You paid for digital signage to impress, drive sales, to sparkle excitement. Content is the bridge between your target audience and the ephemeral sale. Not only should it be good, but it should be awesome. 

We’ve seen it many many times. A company deploys screens. There are expectations about new technology. Then the company chooses to show mediocre content and everything just collapses. 

The audience should be respected. Show that respect by designing your content for success.

3. Experience economy rules

Welcome to a new era. The era of the experience economy. Here’s what it is exactly: 

an economy in which many goods or services are sold by emphasizing the effect they can have on people’s lives

Also, this: 

An experience occurs when a company intentionally uses services as the stage, and goods as props, to engage individual customers in a way that creates a memorable event

Key takeaways: customers care not only about the products, they care about the experience too. And you know what is absolutely fabulous at creating memorable experiences and events? You guessed it right, of course, we’re talking about digital signage technology. 

A digital signage content management system allows you to create content that engages with people. Interaction is at the core of the experience economy framework. Think feedback gathering with the QR code, interactive menus at the restaurant, robot waiters with screens, touch-activated kiosks, and AR and VR elements. 

Long gone are the times when it was enough to show a nice-looking image or a fun video to sell. Today it’s the age of experience, the customer wants brands to create thrilling stuff, to be cutting-edge, to go out of the normal. Screens and digital signage content management systems will help you with that.

4. Dare to be different

Continuing our previous topic, originality is a precious commodity when attention is super scarce. 

Digital signage gives you almost unlimited creative potential, use it wisely to create something that will be qualitatively and creatively different from the competitors. 

Take video walls, for example. With video walls, you can tie many screens together. Or you can make a custom mega screen. There can be various forms, approaches, and content directions. The main thing here is to be different. With the power of digital signage technology, you’re getting a powerful tool that unties your hands in the creative department.

5. Experiment, adapt, repeat

Content is an ever-changing concept. Don’t get into digital signage expecting a calm ride. To be successful, you gotta be ready to experiment, to show different things, to try different formats, to constantly move forward and push the limits. 

The great news is that cloud-based digital signage solutions are up for the task. Kitcast, for instance, gives you the creative freedom to produce a whole universe of content and change it within seconds. Also, you’ve got a great arsenal of ready-made templates in-app so you’re never running out of ideas. 

When there’s experimentation, inevitably there’s an adaptation too. Your content should be adapted to the market, to the changing needs of your audience, and to the global situation (like the COVID pandemic, for example). The flexibility of digital signage software allows you to do all that flawlessly and smoothly.