8 best practices for improving the impact of on-screen communication

There are a few essential best practices for making your digital signage communication impactful. Discover our checklist for a successful digital signage campaign.

Determine the KPIs of effective communication

If communicators are now convinced that digital signage is an excellent communication tool, they also want to be able to measure the return on investment of their campaigns in concrete terms. To achieve this, they need to clearly define the objective of their phygital project. Then they need to associate the key indicator that will enable them to objectively assess the impact of their screen-based communication.

If the aim of a campaign is to maximize the profitability of an in-store visit, it will be necessary, for example, to measure the increase in the average basket per visitor. If the aim is to generate more in-store visits, measuring the number of visitors to the point of sale thanks to a campaign can be a real eye-opener. If the objective is to raise brand awareness, the memorization rate will show the relevance and impact of the message delivered.

All these performance indicators (KPIs) enable us to judge in concrete terms whether a communications campaign is effective in achieving its objective. To increase the chances of achieving this objective, a number of standard performance criteria must be respected: 

1. Use an attractive format: video
2. Adapting content to screen formats
3. Respect your graphic charter
4. Refresh your messages as often as possible
5. Follow a strict editorial schedule
6. Add dynamic feeds
7. Contextualizing messages
8. Opt for a glocal strategy

These performance criteria echo 4 levers: content appeal, campaign freshness, contextual targeting and glocalization.

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1) Use an attractive format: video ▶️

At a time when we are over-solicited by different messages on a daily basis, video is an effective way of capturing the attention of a target audience. On a medium like Facebook, users spend five times more time on a video than on other, more traditional formats. In fact, video can even generate a higher level of engagement with its audience. 

Video is an irresistible eye-catcher and a lasting attention-getter, making it an indispensable lever for effective communication and a real weapon for maximizing the impact of screen-based communication. It's the ideal format for conveying emotions, telling a story or simply explaining a concept. Perfectly adapted to the use of screens, it naturally favors the memorization rate of a message with a given target.

The question is how to use it. From this point of view, we can only advise communicators to use video to present a new product, to make it more concrete in its use and operation, to introduce a new employee, or to highlight a customer testimonial. 

To animate messages simply, Canva has quickly become an indispensable ally for communicators. You can also turn to Lumen 5 , which transforms written and static content into video. PlayPlay and Animoto are also ideal for creating videos specifically adapted to digital signage. What's more, all these tools are free to use.

2) Professional rendering 👩🏼‍💻

It's essential for creating videos adapted to screen formats. Nothing is more unpleasant than unsightly black stripes on the sides of screens. More than just an aesthetic issue, this imperfection can really ruin the potential of effective communication. So it's important to remember that digital signage screens generally have the same dimensions (16:9 for a horizontal screen, 9:16 for a vertical screen).

3) Respect your graphic charter 🎨

Your brand must always be visible in your communications. It builds credibility. We also recommend the use of video generation templates integrated into your CMS. This will make content creation much easier, even for a large number of users, while guaranteeing consistency in brand communication.

4) Refresh your messages 🔄

Effective communication also means taking care to ensure the freshness of the content you expose to your target audience. Even the most impactful message will eventually tire an audience if it is exposed to it for too long. In order not to undermine the profitability of a phygital campaign, it is therefore essential to renew content frequently. And the more regularly this content is updated, the more likely the target audience will be to pay attention to the screens.

To bring freshness to your digital signage, you may only need to modify one element of the content, without having to create a new one. In this way, a single modified element will often suffice for the target audience; each new message will effectively stimulate their curiosity. There are other ways of creating content with ease.

5) Follow a strict editorial schedule 🗓️

The broadcasting period of a campaign must be fixed in advance in an editorial schedule. This will make it easier to time broadcasts and orchestrate "cold" messages. When creating communication campaigns, limit them in time. The aim is to avoid, at all costs, having a campaign run forever. Similarly, it's a good idea to frequently check the dates on which campaigns have been activated.

6) Add dynamic feeds 🆕

To fuel your communication and prevent the same messages from going round and round, we recommend adding dynamic feeds from external sources: dashboards, social networks, customer reviews, meeting room schedules, number of accident-free days... These data feeds use the data at your disposal to create reactive, highly contextualized and automatically updated messages.

7) Contextualize messages ⏱️

To make the difference and maximize the impact of your on-screen communication, the best advice would undoubtedly be to use marketing contextual. Digital signage allows you to adapt your communication to a specific broadcasting context or target. Several options are available for programming your screens: 

• Add personalized broadcast parameters: preferred times and days, higher or lower broadcast frequency, etc.
• Trigger certain content automatically : you can make your communication more effective and relevant by associating it with certain criteria, such as the weather. Facial detection also makes it possible to vary campaigns according to socio-demographic criteria specific to the audience exposed.
  

8) Opt for a glocal📍 strategy

In the same spirit, it is also important to be able to adapt communication to a localized context. Glocalized communication means that messages can be tailored to specific points of sale. Within the same network, it's obvious that a message may not have the same impact depending on whether it's broadcast in a store in Bordeaux or another in Annecy. The aim is to enable multi-local" communication which is steered at national level by the parent company, but which is able to respond to the specific characteristics of a country, a region, a town... The benefits of this glocalization are also evident in internal communications.

One of the challenges linked to this global communication is the ability to decentralize communication, leaving autonomy to field teams, who will be able to determine the message best suited to their context. Naturally, the use of the right tools will make it easier for these teams to adhere to this type of project.

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To optimize the ROI of digital signage campaigns, Cenareo provides its customers with key indicators to optimize all performance levers: media dynamism, campaign freshness, contextual targeting, balance between local and global communications. Our aim: to ensure that the use of a fleet of screens is in line with advertisers' performance objectives.

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