Posted on 22, November, 2022
Last Modified on 13, December, 2022
Shop Products from This Article
Are you considering outfitting your business with digital signage, but still weighing the benefits of upgrading your displays against the high price tags you're seeing - especially in comparison to the static sign holders you've been ordering for years? While the entry level cost may seem daunting for many businesses, digital solutions have proven, in many cases, to be value drivers in the medium-to-long term by reducing printing costs, eliminating labor costs, and helping your team gain operational productivity. With a little number crunching, you may find that your business does not need to make a choice between digital technology and a balanced budget.
To start, consider a few key questions:
- How much does your print program cost per month on average? Assess your time, labor and installation costs, and of course, those invoices for print materials.
- Is your team conducting repetitive tasks that could be achieved with media or interactive applications? This could include informing guests of scheduling changes, dispatching new promotions, or performing check-ins. Think of any opportunities for your customers to self-service, as many will opt to do so. It may be difficult to quantify the dollar value of these savings for small businesses, but start by collecting data over the course of a few standard weeks.
- Are there internal efficiences that can be gained with dynamic displays that present critical data, ordering information, safety messaging, status of delivery drivers or company events? Talk to your staff and take some time to observe where digital signage could have prevented a lost time event, a lost customer or employee turnover.
- How comfortable is your team with digital technology and what is the scope of use? Digital signage solutions can range from novice-friendly plug & play kiosks with signage template software, downloadable applications, and built-in content management, to large-scale integrated systems that may require external support and additional costs.
No More Print Posters
Digital signage has eliminated the need for print advertisements and window displays. For example, with digital solutions, there’s no need to wait on your supplier for your next round of window posters when you can easily create and display your promotion in seconds. The opportunity cost of you and your staff's time is valuable, and this eliminates resources spent every time you need to change promotions, along with reducing the risk of typos, imperfections and delays. If you frequently need to quickly change messaging or update existing promotions, digital signage will save you costs in the long run.
Say It With a Screen
Digital signage has made customizing your content faster, easier and more cost-effective. Implement effective promotional campaigns utilizing multimedia advertising, including images, videos, and audio files that help you engage more productively with customers. Using content management systems that sync and deploy content between devices and display your promotions with just a few clicks helps to optimize your time spent, leaving more time available to find more revenue streams or handle the holiday rush.
Digital signage can also adapt your content to visitor times, allowing you to target the right customer segments and increase your ROI on ad campaigns and promotional spending. Utilize slideshow apps and content management systems to effectively get your message across to the right customer at the right time.
Improve Internal Communication
Digital signage is not only a strong advertising tool but can be used to improve employee workflow and quality of work. Display easy-to-edit schedules, objectives, and work tasks behind the scenes for your employees and simplify the work process with compatible software or workflow apps. As we mentioned before, you can display content across multiple devices to cover the entirety of your office, warehouse, or facility and keep everyone informed. In periods of economic downturns, when topline revenue is falling, making every dollar spent count while running your business is extremely important and with labor generally being a large cost, you want to make sure you are fully optimizing your workforce for efficiency and productivity.
Increase Customer Retention and Grow your Topline Revenue
As any business owner will tell you, it's cheaper to keep an existing customer than acquire a new one. Touchscreen kiosks and interactive apps are the future when it comes to engaging your customers. Using touchscreen digital signage, customers can interact with your kiosks and use apps for wayfinding, online ordering, and general store information, making you easier to work with than the business next door. Investing in the relatively fixed cost of digital signage kiosks gives customers additional ways to interact with your business and provides more engaging content than static print media which costs time and money to produce.
Will Going Digital Help You Save a Buck?
Digital signage isn’t the solution for every business but is always worth the research to learn how it can produce savings for you. While some digital devices may seem costly up front, a little discovery into your current costs and the capabilities of digital signage can estimate the value you'll get, on top of the customer confidence that comes from being a digitalized business.
Step 1: Assess your current costs to the highest level of accuracy you can.
Step 2: Find the digital solution(s) that will replace the functions leading to those costs.
Step 3: Compare the current costs over the lifetime of the digital solution to the outlay of the digital solution today. Make sure to factor in any known or predicted inflation in future costs. If it is a particularly large expenditure, you may want to incorporate time value of money or the opportunity cost of other projects.
A few extra tips:
- Protect your investment - accidents happen, and a major one on an expensive kiosk will add to costs. Many digital devices come with a factory warranty, but if an extended one is available, work it into your calculations.
- Start small and take it one step at a time: Try solving for one of your costs with digital signage and use this test to determine how effective this solution can be for your business.
- Keep learning. The digital signage industry is evolving rapidly and new cost-saving solutions are constantly being developed. Check back often to see if there is a good fit for your current needs.