How to get best results from out of home advertising

How to calculate digital OOH ROI

When we talk about return of investment in a digital signage display strategy, the first questions that come to mind are: what kind of economic return will I have and how long will it take to get it? This way of thinking, despite being very practical, is unfortunately also very limiting. Because, of course, an outdoor digital signage strategy must be studied in the first instance to reimburse expenses and then produce profit, but it should not be reduced to that alone. There are many other aspects to keep in mind, such as the effect it has on customer loyality and engagement, brand awareness, speed of service, savings on printing and management costs. All things that will affect the ROI calculation.

Digital display vs printed paper

The digital out of home advertising has collected the legacy of printed paper advertising and it’s the comparison with that method of advertising that makes understand how much more comfortable and faster is the display counterpart. Advertising through printed paper provides a much slower strategy: the billboards must be studied and sent to press, then they must be checked knowing that even the smallest typing error involves having to redo the printing of all the billboards, with a waste of money and paper that you can well imagine. Because as long as it is just one shop, you can even think of getting away with paper and creativity, but thinking big, to a fast food chain or a clothing franchise, things start to get complicated a lot involving just printer paper. In fact, it’s not possible to change last minute a product or a promotion. This brings us back to the first problem, to the waste of money, which on a national or international scale, it becomes of colossal proportions.

Yet, interviewed in a survey, menu printer users have expressed doubts about digital signage displays, especially regarding management costs . Of course, your [1] outdoor digital signage strategy requires a software that does not collide with displays, because an error signal on a monitor is a bad signal to send to customers, but you can not stop at the first difficulties. Not when you can find a solution in a digital display that allows any software to operate without conflict, but giving you the possibility to make changes even at the last moment, on thousands of devices at the same time.

Modular system, the present and future of outdoor digital signage

Even better is to improve your out of home advertising with the modular system, a solution that allows you to open the totem out of use just like a book and replace only and exclusively the piece that causes malfunction. This allows to reduce the management costs, to maintain the desired colors and brilliance on all the digital displays and to protect the environment, but that’s not all. It also allows your out of home advertising to keep up with the times. In fact, by changing the LCD display it is possible to replace it with a larger one, or integrate webcam and microphone, for greater interaction with customers.

There is no need to highlight how a digital display that transmits a colored video is much more eye catching than a static image. Microphones, audio speakers and webcams also allow interaction with customer service, with other products or models available that are impossible to think with paper. A type of interaction that only goes to increase brand awareness, especially in the millennial generation, factors that a digital signage display strategy should always take care of.

The perks of ROI calculation on digital out of home

The best thing is that while you are collecting data to evaluate ROI in your out of home advertising strategy, you will come across a series of information (such as that the writings are too small or that to reach a specific target you have to bet on a certain type of product or color to advertise it). In this way you will find in your hand elements that you can use to change the aspect of your digital signage displays improving the customer experience and at the same time increasing your ROI. This feedback loop will be your trump card to achieve results with an outdoor digital signage strategy.

[Note 1 : Cost Savings And Business Benefits Enabled By Outdoor Digital Drive-Thru Menu Displays In The Quick-Service Restaurant Industry, February 2017 – https://static.ziftsolutions.com/files/ff8081815fb8a7f8015fdb370dad16a0/WHPLFDOUTDOORMENUTEIFEB17FR.pdf ]