Preparing for the Holiday Season: Digital Signage Tips for Retailers
The holiday season is the most important time of year for sales volume for any retailer. How can digital signage help you stand out from your competition and attract customers into your shop to have an unforgettable shopping experience during the holiday shopping stampede? If done right, digital signage can be the key to customer engagement to drive more sales and customer loyalty. Here are some ideas around digital signage success for your business this holiday season.
Create Eye-Catching Promotions
The holiday season is full of promotions and special deals, and digital signage can be used effectively to advertise those promotions. Strong visuals, holiday themes and smart copy can all be combined to attract shoppers. Whether it is a flash sale, a buy one get one free offer, or a product that is only offered during the holiday season, digital signage can be used to promote those sales in a dynamic fashion throughout the store.
Tip: If you don’t want to be at the mercy of an online-booking site’s data, switch your signage daily, or even by the hour, for a different deal, to stimulate scarcity and recurring visits.
Enhance Window Displays with Interactive Elements
Your window display might be the first point of contact a shopper or passerby has with your store so utilising digital signage to create a second degree of interactivity could be very interesting. A digital screen in a window display could display high-definition video of products, animations or a timer counting down to a limited-time holiday sale. A touchscreen could let a passerby browse products, check inventory or join a loyalty program before they’ve even entered the store.
Tip: the information that changes in real-time, such as how many days are left until Christmas is over, can be used to further build anticipation.
Highlight Gift Ideas and Product Recommendations
Digital signage at your brick-and-mortar store is a great way to cater to all the gift-hunters in town for the holiday season. Display curated gift guides by product type, price, trending items or other criteria that relate to your customers’ interests. Use digital signage to create personalised product recommendations based on demographics – gifts for kids, for techies, for fashion-forward people, and so on. You can also promote the best-sellers or products that have received high customer ratings to increase credibility, which can lead to better conversions.
TIP: Rotate your retail signage to display items with low stock or new holiday merchandise that has just arrived.
Use Digital Signage for Queue Management
Holiday shoppers can be turned off from waiting in long lines. Make it a little more palatable for them by putting digital signage inside the queues at the checkout to entertain them with videos, holiday trivia or product videos. Alternatively, you might use the screens to notify customers how long they’ll have to wait or to let them know where they can use the express lane of checkout to cut down on wait times or manage the lines.
Tip: Use your queue signage to promote special offers (last-minute deals; exclusive offers) to entice customers to last-minute upselling while they are waiting.
Optimize In-Store Navigation
With the holiday shopping season speeding up your customers’ pulse rates, digital wayfinding signage can help your shoppers get the most out of their time in your store. Create holiday-themed directional signage to efficiently guide your customers to the product areas that are of interest to them, be it toys, electronics, holiday decorations, or simply your top sellers. You can also highlight hot items or areas with a high level of traffic flow to make your best deals easier to find.
For instance, if you have stores, provide store maps or searchable kiosks (ie, in-store iPads) of your inventory and product locations so that your customers know where to find what they’re looking for, and don’t have to drive around trying to find a substitute because they’re too frustrated with your inability to solve their problem.
Incorporate Social Media and User-Generated Content
You can be sure that holiday shoppers are just as responsive to reviews, recommendations and social proof as any other consumers. Display photos of customers using your products. Share photos of your products in customer’s homes. Post social media posts featuring your hashtag. Create a holiday-themed social wall of customer experiences. Ask shoppers to share their experience with your products online.
Tip: Run a holiday marketing campaign on social media wherein customers are encouraged to Tweet about their purchases or holiday shopping experience on Twitter using a branded hashtag. Display winners’ content on your in-store digital signage.
Promote Loyalty Programs and Holiday Events
During the holidays, use digital signage to expand your customer base and build loyalty. Promote your loyalty programme and holiday rewards, or sign up for special offerings. Or, if you are hosting holiday events such as in-store shopping nights or product demonstrations, digital signage can be a great way to build buzz and bring shoppers to your location.
Tip: Mention that customers can earn points on all purchase they make this holiday season (if you have a free loyalty programme) to drive sign-ups and adoption during your in-store visit.
Update Signage in Real-Time
Perhaps the most obvious benefit of digital signage is that you can easily change it. You can change a display from one moment to the next, should you decide to change the price of a product, run a flash sale, or want to promote something you just happen to have in great supply. You cannot do that with a static display.
Tip: Create a content-marketing plan weeks in advance, but adapt it on the fly based on actual sales, customer trends and inventory.