|
Digital Media: Hyperlocal Delivers Relevancy |
|
In the quest to attract and hold attention, consider what you can do to deliver information that your audience cares about.
A new buzzword is making its rounds in professional media circles these days that's pertinent to successful digital signage. That word, "hyperlocal," at first glance seems a little strange, but when you consider what it's driving at it should make all the sense in the world to marketers who concentrate their efforts on digital signage.
The prefix "hyper," in this instance meaning extremely, is added to the familiar concept of local to draw the distinction between something that's in your city vs. something that's in your neighborhood or something that's in your vicinity vs. something in close proximity.
Squeezed by new competition from non-traditional media, such as blogs, Web sites and even mobile phones and PDAs, the pillars of local media, including newspapers and TV stations, have begun dabbling in hyperlocal news coverage on their Web sites to win back audience and remain competitive.
For marketers relying on digital signage to advance their communications goals, hyperlocality is an important concept to grasp and leverage. Imagine you are given the responsibility for marketing at a retail store specializing in camping, fishing and hunting equipment. Some informal research showed 80 percent of customers fish, hunt and camp in the country. It also revealed 60 percent of those customers take a fishing, hunting or camping trip within five days of their visit to your store.
In this example, it's clear that the county where the store is located and adjacent county would be considered "hyperlocal," especially when compared to all of the destinations an outdoorsman could visit -everything from a hunting expedition in the wilds of Alaska to a rubber rafting trip on the Colorado River.
With those two critical pieces of information -where the customers go and when they go there- it would be relatively simple to build in "hyperlocal" outdoors information into the shop's digital signage playback to help build and hold the attention of patrons. For instance, state or county conservation department data might reveal lake levels, average water temperatures and other information for area lakes likely to be visited by fisherman shopping at the store. Similarly, weather information and forecasts are widely available that could used to help shoppers determine conditions before they head for the great outdoors.
The same concept could be applied to other retail businesses, schools, hotels and nearly any other digital signage application imaginable. For any given digital signage application there is likely to be some sort of available "hyperlocal" news, information or data that will give patrons an incentive to look at the digital sign and in so doing see the other marketing information that's also being presented.
This all boils down to building digital signage content that is relevant to the intended audience. A great place to start building relevancy is determining what's of interest to the people entering your establishment. In many cases, an element of what's interesting will be related to your "hyperlocal" locality. Use that to your advantage when developing digital signage messaging. Not only will you attract the attention of your intended audience, but you'll give them a reason to take a second or third look.
Syndicate David's articles
|
|
Digital Media: How Sticky is Your Content? Part II |
|
How to attract more than a single glance at your digital signage content.
Like that sticky bakery tissue I wrote about in my last column, digital signage content is at its best when it's something with which people have a strong attachment.
In other words, effective digital signage content gives its intended audience a reason to take glance, and another and another. Digital signage pages built with stickiness in mind tap into a subconscious longing on the part of a viewer for something that's relevant, interesting and fresh.
The term "sticky" and the concept of "stickiness" as relates to content have come out of the realm of the Worldwide Web, but it's really nothing new. Media of all sorts have used content that's desirable to consumers as a means to build and retain an audience since shortly after Gutenberg began printing Bibles.
The fundamental step towards building stickiness into digital signage content is recognizing one simple fact: Most people in any given society share common interests in some very basic things. For instance, is it going to be hot or cold out today? Sunny or rainy?
Beyond these are topics like news, sports scores, stock market averages and traffic reports that many, but probably not as many as the previous example, find interesting and worthy of frequently checking.
Integrating these sorts of elements into a digital signage page can be powerful. Consider the findings of a recent survey from the National Center for Atmospheric Research of Americans about weather forecasts. Fully 90 percent of American adults said they obtain forecasts daily -many doing so more than three times per day. With that sort of natural stickiness, weather forecasts, conditions and warnings seem like a logical place to start for digital signage content designers looking to attract repeated attention from their audiences.
A weather element built into digital signage pages targeting the general public, such as grocery store shoppers, makes complete sense. But remember, there are other special-interest topics that have as much stickiness to viewers of niche signage. The trick is matching the content to the desired audience's interests to get them to take a second or third look. For example, quotes on soybeans, corn and other commodities wouldn't likely attract a second glance from the general public but would have a high degree of stickiness for farmers visiting a farm implement dealership. Ditto for visitors in the lobby of commodity exchanges.
Thus, the first step to adding stickiness to digital signage content -whether for the general public or a niche audience- is ensuring that it's relevant to those whom it's directed. The next is making sure the data upon which you‘re hoping to build stickiness is not static. Remember, creating stickiness taps into the desire of the audience to check back for something new and fresh. Don't waste your time in regards to building stickiness with data that doesn't change.
A third important ingredient to the stickiness recipe is making sure the content you hope your audience finds sticky is available or attainable. What good would it be to design mountaintop weather conditions into digital signage content for a ski shop at the base of the mountain, if it were impossible to set up and maintain the instruments necessary to collect and deliver that data?
Intentionally adding on-screen zones to digital signage content for sticky content that attracts viewers over and over again is a smart strategy. All that's required is making sure the content is relevant to the desired audience, changes often enough to tap into the desire to take another glance and can be obtained from a data provider, collection instrument, via the Web or from some other reliable source. With those pieces in place, building stickiness into digital signage content is doable and a worthwhile endeavor.
Syndicate David's articles
|
|
|
Digital Media: How Sticky is Your Content? Part 1 |
|
Are you giving your audience a reason to take a second look at your digital sign?
Congratulations. You've completed your first digital signage playlist. Lots of interesting pages with attractive graphics, easy-to-read text, and a neatly placed logo.
You sit at your desk marveling for a moment, considering what you've accomplished. Sipping your hot coffee as you review each page one last time, you reach into the sack you grabbed earlier in the morning at the corner bakery for your favorite pastry -a freshly baked cinnamon bun drizzled with delectable sugary glazing.
Inspecting your pages, you bring the bun to your mouth. Right before sinking your teeth into it, you see the glazing has affixed the bakery tissue used to remove the treat from the bakery display case to your pastry. Without a second thought, you peel the sticky, thin paper away, take your bite and imagine your boss's delight at seeing the product of your digital signage labor.
As you reach down to click through to the next page in the playlist, the tissue -stuck to your finger by the sweet bun glazing- tags along for the ride. You notice the unwelcome passenger, but not before clicking your mouse and smearing the sticky substance from your finger and bakery tissue onto the mouse button. Agitated, you grab the tissue with your other, clean hand, peel the bakery tissue from your mouse and finger and throw it down on your desk.
Calming down, you grab a cleaning wipe, pick up your mouse, rest your elbows on your desk and carefully clean up the minor mess before noticing the time and racing off to your boss's office for a meeting to review the new digital signage content.
Upon entering her office, she catches you off guard with her observation. "I've reviewed your digital signage presentation," she says in a tone signaling her dissatisfaction. "Tell me, why on earth would a customer ever give our digital signs a second look?" Before you can answer, she instructs you to give it another try. "Build in a reason to keep them coming back for another look," she advises.
As you acknowledge her request and turn to leave, you hear her say. "By the way, what's that stuck to your elbow? It looks like a piece of tissue paper." As you close her office door, you see the bakery tissue glued to your sleeve and realize the only thing sticky about the content you dealt with today was the glazing of the cinnamon bun you removed from the bakery bag.
What are the things that can make your digital signage content sticky? Like Web developers looking to attract repeated visits to their sites, digital signage content developers must remember the importance of earning a second, third and even fourth look from their audiences.
What content can you develop or tap into that sticks in your viewers' minds, not unlike the pesky bakery tissue did to everything it touched? What steps can you take to create or tap into existing desire on the part of your viewers to glance at your signs whenever they walk into your shop, sit in your service area or traverse the aisles of your store?
Those are the types of questions you should be asking yourself as you contemplate creating your digital content. Please stick around, because I'll address some of them and give you a few concrete suggestions about making your digital signage content sticky.
Syndicate David's articles
|
|
Kiosk News: Bright Days Ahead For Self-Service Kiosk Applications |
|
A new study projects substantial growth in self-serve kiosk revenue between now and 2013.
Transactions completed by consumers in North America using self-service kiosks are projected to more than double over the next few years, according to a new research study from IHL Group.
The report, “2009 North American Self-Service Kiosks,” forecasts the value of self-service kiosk transactions will grow from $775 billion this year to more than $1.6 trillion by 2013. According to Lee Holman, lead retail analyst of the IHL Group, the ongoing recession is contributing to the growth of self-service kiosks as businesses and institutions turn to the technology to keep labor costs in check. Also helping to propel the growth is consumer acceptance of self-service kiosks as what he termed “a way of life.”
In particular, retailers, restaurants and transportation authorities can expect to see continued double-digit revenue growth from self-service kiosk transactions, said Holman.
The report is outstanding news for the digital signage market. As I’ve written about before in this space, pairing traditional linear digital signage with interactive capability is a powerful tool for anyone who has a message to deliver and a transaction to conduct.
That’s because such hybrid interactive digital signs can be used to promote events, merchandise and services as normal digital signs do, and with the touch of finger be transformed into interactive mode supporting self-service transactions for the very items promoted in the normal, linear digital signage presentation. For example, imagine digital signage kiosks strategically positioned around a shopping mall promoting what’s showing at the mall cinema with movie trailers, text, graphics and animation. After attracting the interest of passersby, some will decide to act on the impulse to watch a movie. With a clearly visible instruction to touch the sign to select a movie and buy tickets, the sign switches to interactive mode offering the customer the opportunity to browse movie times, select a show and purchase a ticket –maybe even dispense a coupon for concessions too.
All that’s needed to turn a linear digital sign into an interactive self-service kiosk is the right software, someone to build, test and deliver the branching and transactional aspects of the interactive presentation and any one of several different technologies that recognizes a touch to the screen as an interactive input.
One particular hybrid interactive digital signage application in a suburb of Wichita, KS, takes interactivity to an even higher level. The Walnut Valley Garden Center in Andover, KS, is using interactive digital signage to provide customers with self-service guidance on completing landscaping projects, recommending garden products based on their specific project and fulfill orders on an expeditious basis. The garden center application illustrates another important aspect of digital signage-based self-service kiosks not covered in the IHL Group report. Specifically, hybrid, interactive digital signs can be used to enhance efficiencies in areas of business such as customer service, order processing, inventory control, marketing and personnel allocation. Taken together, efficiencies in these areas can have a real impact on the bottom line of a business.
That’s a substantial bonus for businesses that stand to benefit from a more than doubling of self-service kiosk transactions over the next few years. Isn’t it time you joined the digital signage revolution?
Syndicate David's articles
|
|
