Omnichannel Digital Signage Content Strategy
In today's world, the user experience is king. Yes, word of mouth has always been important, but social media and online reach has propelled it by leaps and bounds. Everything from a vacation, vehicle, kitchen floor, and recent dining experience can be rated and shared online. Companies that don't take the time to manage and maintain their employees’ experiences may end up missing easy opportunities to drive important messages.
Ensuring your company flourishes instead of flails is one of the main reasons to be concerned with creating a powerful omnichannel digital signage content strategy. Executing your plan so that all components of your signage strategy are working seamlessly toward the same goal, instead of unnecessarily overlapping and competing, is vital. And your digital signage software needs to play a significant role.
Where Do You Begin?
A challenge this big takes buy-in from multiple stakeholders, not just marketing and sales. IT, for example, will most likely be an active, ongoing participant. You also need to be blessed by the executive team. Each of these players is going to be responsible for creating, scaling, and supporting the omnichannel content strategy in some form or fashion. A breakdown from one of them causes the entire initiative to suffer.
Once the critical people are on board, the strategy can start taking shape. Building both online and offline user contact points, and making certain they are thorough and complete, is the next phase of a successful plan. This part is the foundation of your entire strategy.
Why Should Digital Signage Be Part of Your Omnichannel Communications Plan?
Digital signage gives businesses a simple way to create a unique, personalized experience for everyone that visits their physical location. It allows for both flexibility and scalability and is becoming a tool companies use to maximize their communications, branding, and cross-product promotion, just to name a few.
Digital screens round out an omnichannel content strategy by being present in the office, warehouse or corporate building. Highlighting employee communications, safety messages, KPIs or achievements are a few key ways they can play into the overall initiative of creating a memorable experience. With the accessibility of the screens, some of them even offer a touch feature, they pick up from the company’s online presence and create a cohesive bridge to the in-person process of purchasing. Few other tools can do this as effectively as digital signage.
What Do You Need to Know About Your Audience?
If you want to build an omnichannel content strategy that works you’ve got to understand the end user and the way they consume information. You must see the process through their eyes and then use this knowledge to build the best experience possible. There are unfortunately many pitfalls along the way that can trip you up, and you may THINK you know, but you still need to research and study to ensure you’re correct. Once you’ve nailed down your audience’s preferences, build your process so that it provides what they want as smoothly as possible. Use your digital signage screens to share the information they need and make it easy for them to interact through apps if that is what they want to do.
No matter how your audience wants their communications journey to unfold, you need to make sure a top priority is for all your content, no matter the channel feeds in a uniform direction toward the goal of being easily digested and understood.
How Do You Create Content that Users Need and Want?
Developing employee messaging takes thought about the content you’ll be sharing with them. If you try to rush through this step you could miss your mark altogether. What type will they like? How long and in-depth will it be? How will you inspire them to take action? What do you want the content to accomplish?
Being able to achieve this means setting your goals and then following them in a step-by-step way. Engaging videos and imagery can keep users engaged for a longer period of time.
Nailing your content is critical in accomplishing what you need your omnichannel communications strategy to do. This means reviewing and measuring it and editing it and adding to it as necessary.
What Are Some Ways to Keep Content Fun and Fresh?
One of the worst ways to cause your audience to lose interest is to share communications that are redundant, stale, and boring. Don’t be afraid to let your creativity loose when you’re brainstorming ideas for your omnichannel communications strategy. Luckily, digital signage displays offer bold and crisp optics to help you draw attention to the engaging content that you create.
It’s a good best practice to periodically scan your content not just for accuracy and thoroughness, but to also measure whether or not it comes across as engaging. And never be afraid to step out and try something new.
Spearheading and executing an omnichannel digital signage strategy takes planning, brainstorming, and a bit of creativity. Begin with buy-in from the company's stakeholders and then move into the body of your plan. By using your other communication channels such as email or a company intranet along with on-premise channels like digital signage software, you will be able to build an end-to-end strategy that engages your audience and enhances your employees' experiences. Don't forget to review results and measure them against the goals you set in the beginning, and to add and revise as needed.