4 Reasons Why the Most Affordable Form of Advertising for SMB Firms Is Digital Signage

The use of digital signage has exploded over the last few years due to a combination of factors, which make it an affordable option for a vast majority of the population. This sub section of signage uses various technologies such as LED, LCD and digital projectors to display digitized content such as images, text, information and streaming media. They are easy to setup and manage with the option of managing them locally or over the internet. The net result is that it has now become increasingly possible to customize this media, such that you can get a solution for your needs at a fraction of the price that it cost just a few years ago.

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Let us quickly explore what digital signage is and why it has taken over as the technology of choice for most businesses. Due to the ease of set up and other related costs, this technology has been widely adopted in areas as diverse as public transportation, museums, restaurants and the hospitality industry, retail outlets and in corporate branding. In these locations, it is used for providing direction in marketing, exhibitions and of course in outdoor advertising. If projections of the future are anything to go by, it is conservatively estimated that this industry will grow by slightly over 60% to USD $ 25 billion from 2016 to 2018.

A Cheaper Option

Before digital signage came of age, the costs associated with setting up a digital signage campaign were largely defined by the scarcity in the number of experts and by extension the specialist firms who had the ability to see this type of technology through to completion. The set up costs, especially when it came to purchasing the necessary equipment were very high since each vendor had their very own set of software and hardware to deploy for the solutions. This meant that if you needed a technology set up for your purposes, you had to rely entirely on the technology of that particular vendor and this led to unnecessary vendor lock in.

It meant that if you needed to change even one letter of the signage, you had to call upon the services of the firm’s technician in order to administer such a change and the net result was that it was extremely expensive and time consuming to manage any such solution.  However, the current reality is far removed from that past. This is largely due to the fact that most of the existing digital advertising solutions are reliant on Content Management Solutions, CMS’s, for their effective and efficient running. A content management system is defined as the set of processes and technologies which support the collection, management and publishing of information in any form or medium, which in this case is the digital signage. 

Ease of Use

The whole idea of a CMS is to make it easy even for the technically challenged to be able to set up and manage all their digital content from one central location on the fly. Meaning that they make it easy for one to have a complete solution up and running for their businesses within a time as short as 3 hours at most. Secondly, you do not need bespoke digital display hardware in order to run the software but rather, you can use any type of hardware from any vendor of your choice since all major flat panel manufacturers have come up with a set of solutions that adhere to a set standard that makes it a breeze to run your solution across a diverse set of hardware environments.

So we have a perfect set of ingredients that make this technology manageable and affordable across the board. These technologies use cheap hardware, whose prices keep reducing every other day, which make it easy for amateurs to run the solutions out of the box. But the one defining feature which has separated digital signage from the rest of the pack is in the use of templates. Templates are at the very backbone of digital signage solutions and they are a topic worth exploring further. A digital template can be defined as a pre-built document template, which has been designed to be used for a specific purpose, in our case digital signage, which can be customized for use in specific circumstances.

Complete Solution

In this case, a digital signage template can be defined as a complete solution that can be used in the following areas; restaurants, institutions, outdoor and indoor advertising among a host of many other options. The templates are easy to edit using off-the-shelf software, so all you need to do before they are ready for use is to simply edit the text, images and video to suit your needs.

In conclusion, a digital signage is not only a cheaper but a viable option for anyone who is interested in running an advertising campaign.

• Cost – It is quite cheap to set up such as solution when compared to other advertising solutions. Prices start at a mere USD $ 300 per annum. This cost covers the purchase of the display hardware and media player and paying for access to your dashboard, which is served as Software –as-a-Service, SaaS, solution.

• Setup – The system is a simple plug and play device, where you do the cabling much like you connect your TV set to your set top box. So you can use any display panel like the ones that you use for your TV to connect and have a digital signage solution up and running within no time at all.

• Ease – Thanks to the use of common place hardware, CMS and the ability to operate the software from anywhere on the planet contingent upon having a working internet connection. It has become easy even for novices to manage this solution without having to undergo a steep learning curve.

• Management – You can change the video, audio or textual information on your digital signage platform at the click of a button and have all the changes made in real time all across the network.  Some SaaS platforms give you the ability to manage more than 60 digital displays remotely from one panel.

Author Bio

Magesa Konizawa is a digital signage expert, who has been active in the industry for the past 28 years. In which time he has been pivotal in creating and standardizing the use of templates in the making of digital advertisements.