Feed the Beast: Mastering Digital Content Management

Whether it’s a retail store, bank branch, restaurant or even an airport, crafting an impactful digital signage offering on an enterprise level has become a critical strategy for driving customer engagement, conversion and sustained business growth.

The synergy between captivating digital content and a well-thought-out operational approach creates a nexus that enhances the customer and associate experience and fuels ROI.

What’s required to be successful?

• A strategic and holistic plan for digital content from the start
• A clear outline of responsibilities for your marketing, operations and visual merchandising teams
• An agile program to use data analytics to refine and augment your content strategy
• A flexible budget for a consistent production of fresh content

The following is a guide for your content strategy, creation and optimization. 

Create a captivating content strategy: engage, entertain, educate, inspire & convert

1. Engage: It begins with capturing attention. Engaging content hooks the audience, drawing them into your branded environment on their shopping journey. This can include interactive displays, motion graphics to bring your brand messaging to life and personalized/localized messaging that resonate with your target demographics.
   
   
2. Entertain: Entertaining content enhances the shopping experience. Incorporate immersive elements like gamification or behind-the-scenes videos to keep customers entertained while they browse. Or bring them closer to your brand with QRs that link to social experiences and provide additional opportunity to capture impressions.
   
   
3. Educate: Knowledge empowers customers. Use digital signage to educate customers, from tactical uses like wayfinding, to more targeted uses like product features, benefits, promotions and how-tos. This informs and builds trust in your brand’s expertise. Make sure your customers receive all the information they need at the right time and provide a link to bring that information to their mobile phone for future reference.
   
   
4. Inspire: Your content should inspire a connection with your brand’s values and mission. Showcase success stories, community involvement and socially responsible initiatives to inspire emotional engagement. Highlighting employee stories, favorite products or services or “pro tips” help create a feeling of community and helpfulness.
   
   
5. Convert: Digital signage should have a measurable return on objective (ROO) and/or ROI. Implement call-to-action elements that nudge customers toward making a purchase. This could be through limited-time offers, loyalty program promotions or exclusive deals. Track, measure, adjust and evaluate for ongoing growth opportunities.
   

Sustaining the Strategy: Elevating Experiences, Delivering ROI

Now that you have an idea of how to create a sound content strategy for your digital signage program, let’s delve into how to sustain and evolve your content.

1. Consistent storytelling: Maintain a consistent narrative across your digital signage network. This reinforces brand identity and values, building a coherent and memorable customer experience. We love to see brands that take this a step further and create frameworks that are more localized to a market, region or specific venue, when necessary. Brand consistency doesn’t mean you have to have the same message on every screen.
   
   
2. Data-driven insights: Leverage data analytics to refine your content strategy. By analyzing customer interactions and preferences, you can optimize content for better engagement and conversion. Continually test and learn from the content. Which messages resonate and provide impact for decision making during different seasons? In different markets? For different or new products? By adopting a test-and-learn mentality, a world of data will be available to drive future content evolution.
   
   
3. Dynamic content updates: Keep your content fresh and relevant. Plan to regularly update visuals and messaging to align with seasons, trends and promotions. This not only prevents monotony but also encourages repeat visits. It’s also an area where AI can reduce workload, quickly refreshing on-message content that isn’t redundant.
   
   
4. Integration: Integrate your digital signage ecosystem with your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system to personalize content based on customer profiles and behaviors. This level of personalization enhances the shopping experience and drives sales. Integration with POS also allows unique opportunities to tie point-of-purchase messaging to provide additional value to customers.
   
   
5. Associate Engagement: Extend the impact to your associates. We have a customer-first mentality, but it’s important to remember that brands have two interconnected relationships: the customers they serve in-location and the employees who are the face of the brand to those customers. Equip employees with digital tools that enable them to access real-time information, making them better prepared to assist customers, communicate internally and upsell/consult effectively.
   
   
6. Measuring ROI: Deploy tools to help measure the direct impact of your digital signage on sales. This can be accomplished using digital integrations, in-location journey tracking and heat maps, and please…always listen to the voice of your customer(s) by doing intercepts for feedback. By quantifying ROO and ROI, you can refine strategies and allocate resources more effectively.

Developing and sustaining an enterprise-level digital signage program is an intricate fusion of creative content strategy and operational finesse by the internal business groups responsible for success.  

By seamlessly weaving together engagement, entertainment, education, inspiration and conversion, brands can unify static messaging like graphics, POP and digital signage into cohesive and symbiotic brand experiences.

The blueprint we’ve outlined not only elevates customer and associate engagement but can also yield substantial ROO and ROI.

In today’s ever-evolving branded environment landscape, customer experience is the compass that leads to success. Mastering the art of digital signage content in concert with static messaging in your branded environment creates seamless experiences that drive connection with your brand, increase engagement and inspire repeat customers.