LED Signs Definitive Guide

Walk into any restaurant, hotel, retail store, movie theatre, health club or any such organization and it is highly likely that you will be greeted with an electronic sign that is either promoting the brand, advertising products, inviting you to interact with the display or providing you with directions inside the organization.

This is the world of digital signage – A new and powerful medium of communication that reaches out to people whether they are travelling, waiting, shopping, and going to school and more.

Retailers have successfully used LED displays by placing them at the right locations and displaying the right content. By doing so, retailers are enhancing the customer shopping experience – showcasing new inventory, informing about promotions and giving customers new ideas that drive sales.

Transportation – at airports, train stations and subways, digital displays inform travelers regarding schedules while also advertising relevant products and services.

Educational environments – communicating with students, replacing bulletin boards and printed calendars, and playing an important role in the emergency alert system.

Restaurants – streamlining the ordering process and allows customers to interact with electronic signs using their smart phones.

Hotels – providing guests with useful information about activities and services in and around the hotel and also providing way-finding information to guests.

It is agreed that the initial investment cost for LED Signage is quite high. However, there is plenty of research and calculations that show you how fast you can not only recover the investment cost but also increase your profits as a result of electronic signs. In fact, signs are proven to be the most effective and yet, least costly form of advertising methods for small businesses. Here is an example of a calculation that will show you how quickly you can get your ROI and see better profits.

A car dealership is estimating a 5% increase in business as a result of the latest investment in a programmable LED sign. Profit margins on the sale of new cars range from 2 – 4%. So we will assume a 3% margin for a new car that costs $30,659 = $920 per car. The estimated increase in business means that if 60 cars are sold previously, the new sales figure would be 63. Therefore, monthly profits increase by $2,760. Hence, the investment of $50,000 for the LED sign can be covered in 18 months.

In today’s digital world, traditional advertising has many disadvantages:

• expensive and quite wasteful
• cannot guarantee that the correct target market is reached
• is transmitted based on another person’s orders and schedule. If you are on a contract basis, any urgent messages cannot be sent across.

Internet Advertising is another popular method with which targeting specific audiences is possible but also carries the risk of being collected with a lot of other unwanted advertisements. Due to this “noise”, internet users probably won’t even notice your advertisement or may have instructed their browsers to block all advertisements.

LED signs on the other hand are better in many ways:

• LED displays are not just signs; they can be embedded into almost anything – an elevator, a fuel station pump or even a vending machine.
• Electronic signs are more than just a one way flow of information – people can interact with these signs by way of touch screens or via their mobile phones.
• Smart digital signs allow to gather information such as audience analytics. Information such as age and gender can be used to create more relevant content, better product placement and store design. In fact, the content on the screen can also be changed based on the demographics of the person.
• Because LED displays are so mainstream, you can use your investment as a means of creating additional revenue by choosing to accept third party advertising.

Increased turnover: Sale price on a particular item, countdown discounts, and cross-sell messages are the kind of content that are clear calls-to-action.

Brand awareness: Content on some LED signs are catered only towards building a business brand and encouraging customers to have a better opinion and experience in conjunction with that brand.

Source: www.digitalsignagetoday.com

Advertising: Owners of LED screens can sell or rent part of the real estate on the screen to third parties for advertising their products in return for a price. For example, screens in public places may be funded by local attractions such as restaurants and theme parks. Restaurant LED signs may also have beer companies purchasing ad space from them.

Engage and entertain customers: It is a known fact that if you are given something to occupy yourself with while waiting, the wait feels shorter. LED signs can accomplish this task by providing entertainment and lifestyle content to make a waiting customer feel better.

Internal communication: Indoor LED signs used within an office, institute, or organization can thoroughly improve communications. Recognizing achievements, boosting morale, and improving organizational processes are just a few types of content that these electronic signs could host. Furthermore, by integrating business processes with LED screens, real time information regarding inventory can be displayed. Any emergency situation such as a machine break down or fire alert can immediately be displayed on LED screens in relevant departments of the organization.

Public announcements: programmable LED displays can also be used to broadcast evacuation orders and time sensitive information in ways that cannot be ignored by the public. This benefit is most valuable in educational environments. Today’s tech savvy youth respond better to information exaggerated on a larger scale

• What is my audience?
  It could be your employees, customers, visitors, or all of them
• What information am I going to communicate?
  Current information such as news and weather conditions, product and service information, communicating with your organization (alerts, sales figures, production statistics, etc.), instructional messages (directions and schedules), or a combination of these.
• What is the purpose of the solution?
  • Lowering Costs: if your current system for advertising relies heavily on expensive and less efficient methods, LED signs can help you save up on a lot of those costs.
  • Information or Directions: wayfinding and other information regarding particular events taking place on site is a classic usage of digital signage, particularly in places like hospitals, airports, schools and large retail complexes.
  • Increase turnover: with electronic signs, people are made more aware of your products and services, new offerings and promotions. This is a proven way of increasing sales. Furthermore, by linking your signage with inventory, real time stock information can be given to consumers.
  • Merchandising: virtual product presentations are helpful to provide a 360 degree angle of the products, get more information and place orders through the kiosk itself.
  • Better customer experiences: interactive screens provide quick access to information such as “how to” videos and other important details.
  • Enhancing your brand: make use of advanced technology such as 3D glasses, HD video quality and large stage rental LED signs to create a lasting impression of your brand.
• What content will be displayed?

Having a clear cut content strategy is as important as choosing your hardware and software.

• What do you plan to show on the LED screens?
• Who will manage the content?
• How will you determine if the content is appropriate or not?

Your content strategy will play a major role in determining the success of your digital signage investment.

• Are the content contributors from multiple departments? If so, how many parties are involved and where are they located?
• How frequently will the information need to be updated?
  It could be live streaming, daily updates, hourly, weekly or monthly looped updates.
• What will the end result of my LED sign project be?
  Here you have to consider physical location, size, resolution, and orientation of the LED display. You also need to think about how the display will be mounted, how the power will be connected and any other such customized requirements.
• Flexibility of the campaign:
  • Consumer expectations are always evolving. As a result, your content has to vary accordingly in terms of interactivity and the types of analytics used for example.
  • If you are aiming at keeping the software and image quality the same for about 2-3 years, all other devices will have to cater to only a minimum specification. This means that you will be under-utilizing your entire system.
  • Today your objective might be towards driving sales but a few months’ later ambience or education may be your focused objective based on the traffic flow of your brand. Your campaign should be able to deal with these changes in objectives.

A good tip to keep in mind here is that it will be more effective to change software frequently than to change the entire hardware platform. Hence choose carefully in terms of flexibility of hardware and software.

Creative content is the key to successful digital signage because this is what people see when they look at your LED sign.

Hence a well thought out, long term content strategy is critical. How do we begin mapping this strategy?

• Content can take the form of:
  • Slides – easy to create using programs such as MS PowerPoint
  • Pictures
  • Graphics – logos, illustrations, icons, etc.
  • Animated graphics – modifying your graphics to make them move
  • 3D graphics – facilities for 3D graphics that do not require special glasses is now available
  • Video – LED signs are just like a television screen, hence people expect to see videos
  • Live Feeds – live information from broadcasting networks can be streamed
  • Database content – information such as event schedules, prices, stock availability and so on
• The amount of content you need depends on:
  • Operating environment
  • Objectives
  • Budget
• When establishing content strategies, dwell time should be considered. “How long will a typical viewer spend with the content you display”?
  • A sign in the waiting area of a health clinic for example can show a content loop of about 10 minutes, considering the average wait time per patient is 15 minutes.
  • If your LED sign is in the pathway of a busy mall for example, a good idea would be to display a collection of images, each lasting for 5-7 seconds, considering the average attention span of a person walking by would be 15 seconds.
• Frequency of visits is another factor to keep in mind.

Let’s take the example of a gas station:
The average customer spends 3 minutes at a gas station while his tank is being filled and visits the station once a week. In this situation, it is advisable to have a 3 minute content loop on the LED gas price signs and to make sure the loop is changed once every five days.

• Additional content factors:
  • Less is more. Your audience should interpret your message as fast as possible. If it takes too long, you might lose your audience.
  • Look out for ways to display you LED sign content to guarantee that viewers will notice your message at least 2-3 times.
  • When creating extended loops, vary the timings of the segments and mix them into one loop. For example, one segment could be 30 seconds, the other could be a minute long, and the third could be two minutes long.
• Content for different purposes:
  • Drive sales: highly focused product pitches to attract the customer
  • Inform/educate: two minute presentation segments with useful and relevant information would be ideal
  • Entertain: eye catching content that is also humorous and engaging. As for timing – a few seconds to a couple of minutes would be sufficient.
  • Ambience: produce unobtrusive content that will be appreciated and can engage viewers
• KEY CONTENT RULE: Create a mix of content to keep customers engaged.
  A collection of advertisements for example will bore customers away.
• Cater content to your audience:
  • Age: the pacing and style of content will differ for older audiences compared to the younger ones.
  • Gender: are you targeting both males and females? If so, create content accordingly.
  • State of mind: is your audience relaxed (standing in a long queue) or focused on getting somewhere (catching a train).
• Scheduling your content based on your target market is also important. Let’s look at some examples:
  • A restaurant might learn that their customers during the day are older than those during the night.
  • A bank may discover that on Friday’s they have customers mostly visiting to cash paychecks.
  • A retailer may have different brick-and-mortar stores catering to different demographic audiences.
• Creating and developing content is possible in two prominent ways:
  • In – house: some organizations have the relevant expertise in their existing staff to create LED sign content. Someone with a photography hobby could take professional photos of the products for example. Another who has the knowledge of operating graphic design software such as Adobe Photoshop can edit the photographs and create the advertisement.
  • Outsourcing: if your advertising is already handled by another company, you could consult them for help with your electronic sign content (but only once you have established your key objectives).

People have been seeing screens in public places for a long long time now. You shouldn’t be sending out the wrong message by displaying beginner level content.

Once your content is ready, you need to consider things like:

• Should the same content appear on all LED displays at the same time?
• Should the same content appear all day, every day?
• How is interactive digital content managed?

Managing and scheduling content is certainly a challenge. Apart from that, you also have to think about how time consuming it is to regularly come up with new and original content. But don’t fret because efficient software is available to handle these kind of tasks. This software is referred to as Content Management Systems (CMS). Basic functions of this software will include:

• Adding content to be played
• Organizing content into libraries
• Sending content to LED displays

Content creation is as simple as dragging and dropping your content into sophisticated software programs that can come up with a playlist to schedule the content as per your requirements.

What does this mean?

Highly programmable software allows sign owners to schedule their content based on daily or minute-to-minute needs. For instance, breakfast specials could be displayed in the morning hours while snacks can be advertised in the evening or late night hours. Hot beverages can be promoted when the temperature is dropping and vice versa for cool beverages. If for example, the weather changes unexpectedly and rain/snow appears, you can promote rain gear within just a matter of minutes.

It is very important that billboards display the latest and up-to-date information, particularly when displaying news, schedules, timetables, weather updates and so on. With advanced software, sign owners can update their signs, change playlists and also analyze the readiness of a sign through an internet connection.

LED signs for businesses come with very easy-to-use, yet sophisticated software that lets you control your digital signage. The screen contents can be split individually and designed based on your requirements. Furthermore, integration of content is possible with this software, a variety of interactive features are available and the bottom line is that it makes content management very easy.