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Digital Menus: Menu Boards Can Serve Up Tasty Profits For Restaurateurs |
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Digital menu boards provide restaurateurs with a host of advantages from paring back printing expenses to capturing new sources of revenue.
In today's economy, restaurants that can respond quickly and effectively to newly presented opportunities have the greatest chance of success.
Consider the local deli, fast-food eatery or even the most upscale of restaurants. These businesses must promote their constantly changing menus with up-to-date entrees, appetizers, desserts and pricing. With food items and pricing possibly changing everyday, the old approach of displaying printed menus on stands outside of an establishment, using kindergarten-style plastic lettering pushed into grooved boards or even relying on professionally printed backlit signs suspended from a wall behind the counter are old, tired and less-than-effective. Enter digital signage.
Digital signs allow restaurateurs to respond quickly to changes in pricing and menu selections. They make highlighting new specials and promotional offers at a moment's notice practical, providing added marketing flexibility. They also reduce the expense of printing new signage. Together those benefits can significantly impact the bottom line.
But the benefits don't stop there. Consider that unlike printed signs, digital signage is not static. It's easy to add motion and even audio to a menu board. Imagine hearing the sound of a searing steak on the grill as an image of the chef grilling the steak comes up on the sign. Try that with print.
The good news for restaurant owners is that special-purpose digital signage software exists that makes creating attractive, effective digital menu boards fast and easy. Often, such applications bridge the gap between other software commonly used to manage a restaurant, such as spreadsheet applications, word processing software, XML sources and even Web sources, and the digital menu board.
The software serves as a data conduit, extracting menu items and pricing from spreadsheet applications and automatically populating attractive digital signage templates for display on digital menu boards.
Such software also lets restaurant chains tap into the power of networked digital signs by supporting centralized management of multiple digital menu boards in a digital signage network. Nationwide, regional, local or even restaurant-specific changes can be made to digital menu boards from a central control point.
Digital menu boards also open up the opportunity to benefit from new revenue streams for restaurateurs. Consider the possibility of securing advertising revenue or some other promotional consideration from vendors, simply by offering space and time on the menu board.
On the level of an individual restaurant, this opportunity could mean a restaurant owner selling advertising to other businesses in the area or perhaps bartering advertising time on the display in exchange for goods or services for the business. For larger restaurant chains, there is the potential to tap into regional or national advertising revenue for commercial playback on screens across the entire network of signs.
In today's challenging economy, businesses need every advantage they can get to stay ahead of the competition. Something as simple as replacing traditional menu boards with their digital equivalents may be just the thing to tip the scales in favor of one restaurateur vs. another. Digital signage-based menu boards may provide the added boost needed to respond instantly to changing costs, eliminate certain printing expenses and generate added interest from customers as well as revenue from non-traditional sources.
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Content Management Software: Dayparting Opens New Opportunities to Marketers or Advertisers |
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Scheduling messages to match changing demographics throughout the day is a powerful tool for marketers and advertisers who use digital signage.
Hotels, individual retailers, malls and many other venues where digital signs are often found share a common characteristic: changing demographics and/or desires of customers throughout the day. Savvy marketers can take advantage of the ease with which digital signage messaging can be changed and scheduled to tailor messages to these different demographic groups that wander by their signs throughout the day.
The concept is known as "day parting," something that TV programmers have been doing for decades. This valuable tool has only recently become available to out-of-home marketing and advertising professionals as the tools to change messaging based on the time of day have become available.
Perhaps an example best illustrates the concept behind dayparting. Imagine the lobby of busy hotel catering to business travelers. Near the elevator a digital sign keeps guests informed of hotel amenities and services. A smart marketer has seized the opportunity to daypart messaging on sign by enticing early morning elevator users of the current breakfast menu. As the day progresses to the time business people leave for their appointments, the sign reminds them that office supplies are available from the hotel business center. As lunch arrives messages promoting the hotel restaurant's buffet are interspersed with digital signage pages promoting hotel amenities. As evening approaches, the messaging changes to promote a duet promoting in the hotel lounge. Dayparting can be used in a similar way in a retail store to appeal to different groups of shoppers who peruse the aisles at different times of day.
Digital signage opens up this approach to marketers. Before digital signage, changing messages throughout the day was inelegant at best and impractical at worst. Printed placards and signs -prone to tatters and tears- would have to physically be swapped out several times a day to accomplish the same sort of result.
Day parting is appropriate in lots of other digital signage applications as well, such as at malls, in retail stores and in an emerging new sector for digital signage applications: transportation. Consider how mall traffic changes throughout the day. Even before the retail shops are open, many malls serve as a track and social center for retirees to get their early morning walks in before starting their day. As stores open during the weekdays, shoppers are most likely to be adults, many of whom don't work or are getting off from an early shift. As the day moves on into the afternoon hours, teenagers will begin to appear as school dismisses. In the evenings, mall visitors are more likely to be folks coming home from work or visiting after dinner.
How could marketers possibly hope to tap into demographic-specific marketing opportunities with static, printed signs in this instance? Conversely, how could they possibly ignore the chance to cash in on dayparting their messaging to match the shifting demographics of mall visitors throughout the day?
Many of today's digital signage media servers come with software that makes scheduling messages to match changing demographic audiences a breeze. Doing so gives out-of-home marketers and advertisers the chance to tap into dayparting to increase sale opportunities and better serve the informational needs of their audiences.
Too often, people tend to look to the future weighed down by the past. While past experience can be a good teacher, it shouldn't blind one to the opportunities that arise from new approaches. Dayparting is one of the many powerful opportunities presented by digital signage, and it's there to be seized for those who recognize its potential.
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Digital Media: Goals Define Successful Measurement |
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Success is within your grasp with digital signage if you know precisely what you wish to accomplish.
Perhaps you've read a few interesting articles about digital signage and have the notion that getting your message out with this exciting technology is a great idea. Or, maybe you work for an organization where a key manager has done the same thing, except that manager is delegating the responsibility to you.
If so, may I offer a bit of advice? Know the precise purpose of your digital sign or network of signs. It's tough to state this anymore bluntly: You will waste thousands of precious dollars, hundreds of hours of unproductive work time and aggravate managers, co-workers and even yourself, unless you have an exact, clear understanding of what you wish to accomplish with this new communications tool.
It's not good enough to "sort of" have a goal. You must know up front -before you ever spend a dime, take the time of your co-workers asking for help, or even pick up the phone to call a digital signage vendor- what it is that you wish to accomplish. My reason for feeling so strongly about this advice is simple. Success with digital signage will only come to those who can recognize it.
Without understanding precisely what you wish to accomplish, you will never be able to judge how well your sign is performing. Increasing sales, raising awareness, communicating effectively, improving your organization's image are all fine goals as far as they go. But they aren't specific enough.
Why? Because without quantifying these goals, without measuring the status quo pre-digital sign -whether it's sales volume, profitability, consumer perception, level of knowledge- and without measuring the results post digital signage installation, you'll never know whether your individual digital sign or network of digital signs network has achieved its purpose.
Once you've identified your goals, write them down. Schedule a meeting with your management team and discuss these written goals. Ask for management's input in further honing these goals down to a sharp edge. By involving management in this early phase before a single monitor is purchased or a single cable run, you are getting them to invest themselves in the success of this project. Be sure to have your management sign off on the specific goals you jointly identify.
Doing should insulate you from misunderstandings about the nature, purpose and value of the digital signage installation down the road. However, let's be clear. Management isn't signing off on achieving these goals. That's your job. It's simply confirming in writing that these are the goals for the project so you have a quantifiable, measurable goal to achieve.
Digital signage is a powerful communications medium. It can inform, brand, sell, educate and entertain. It can attract attention, build interest, brand a product, explain a concept and even give people a reason to stop what they're dong and pay attention. In fact, digital signage literally can do hundreds and hundreds of different things. But the one thing it cannot do is succeed without a clear understanding up front about what defines success.
If you are seriously considering adding a digital sign to your organization, the first step is defining your goals. Doing so will make it possible for you and your new digital signage system to succeed.
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DOOH: Opportunity In The Face Of Recession |
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A downturn in economic activity demands marketers re-evaluate how they use their resources to maximize return on investment.
It often seems that everywhere you turn the latest economic report shows weakening: higher home foreclosure rates, a teetering financial system, government bailouts, lower gross domestic product, the list goes on and on.
However, a new report focused on digital signage shows robust growth in the number of displays sold in 2008 for use as digital signs and predicts that while the market may hit a rough spot next year, significant growth will return in 2010 and beyond.
Despite an economic cold wind this year, the digital signage market has remained strong and is due to grow with 1.1 million new displays being put to use in signage applications, a 34 percent increase in display unit growth from last year, according to the study from MultiMedia Intelligence.
The Scottsdale, AZ,-based market research firm forecasts that by 2012 the digital signage market will account for the use of nearly 2.3 million digital displays. The report, "Network Digital Signage: Infrastructure, Displays, Software and Technology," contends the effects of the global economic downturn will sap the growth in new digital signage hardware deployments next year, but will resume a robust growth rate in 2010, turning in a double-digit increase.
While the report and the general economy point to tougher times next year, this should not be a signal for marketers to panic. Rather, times like these demand re-evaluation of marketing strategies, tactics and budgets because it's likely that old communications methods will no longer the right solution for today's economic reality.
Digital signage is likely to fare much better than traditional media during this re-examination for three reasons. First, digital signage gives marketers the opportunity to reach consumers at or very near the point of sale. When and where shoppers are most likely to make a purchasing decision, digital signage can be there to influence the buying decision. That fact alone makes digital signage an attractive alternative to traditional media.
Second, digital signage can reduce expense and increase market responsiveness. Rather than making recurring purchases of printing services, digital signs can be updated with a few keystrokes. A closely related, added benefit is that by relying on digital signage rather than print, marketers can be far more responsive to changing consumer desires and tap into those trends long before it would be possible to print, distribute and display a traditional sign.
Third, a slowing economy is likely to make digital signage systems and networks less expensive to deploy. If consumers pull back on spending next year, display manufacturers that have been ramping up capacity to anticipated strong consumer demand for high definition televisions may find themselves exposed with excess capacity and product. Responding with lower unit prices will make deploying flat panels in digital signage applications less expensive.
For marketers facing a downturn in the economy, digital signage offers an opportunity to be more effective with their messaging -reaching shoppers where they make their purchases-and with their media budgets. A contracting economy should concentrate the minds and efforts of marketers on how they achieve their communications goals with limited resources, and there's no better way to that than with digital signage.
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