Advances in the digital signage and mobile phone industry, coupled with consumer acceptance of mobile marketing, are opening up new opportunities for both technologies. Mobile-powered dynamic signage exploits what consumers already enjoy. Add new dynamics, expanding the scope of interaction with digital signage.
A primary benefit of mobile-powered digital signage is that it offers more opportunities for user-generated content. This is key, as user-generated content delivered via electronic billboards can enhance the brand.
How does it work.
An outdoor digital sign, for example, displays a JCPenney ad. The ad sends product ideas to users’ mobile phone, then the user is encouraged to text or keyword “GIFT” to a short code. That short code could contain, for example, the gift idea, promotional information about the particular gift, and a link to the JCPenney online store.
BMW has integrated text messaging as part of its broader mobile marketing campaigns. These are used at airports, allowing travelers to connect to the car manufacturers’ mobile site, providing a dealer search and a click-to-call button to connect directly with the dealer for more information. BMW obtains reports on the efficiency of signals at particular airports and measures the boost mobile provides in increasing appointments and test drive sales.
Social Networks and Digital Signage.
Social media and user-generated content have also helped significantly expand the audience for mobile-powered dynamic signage systems, generate greater user engagement and achieve greater marketing impact.
Social media through digital signage has opened up new opportunities for marketers by linking users in home and out-of-home markets.
By combining a standard text message campaign with social media, you dramatically increase your response rate. For example, combining a generic text message campaign with a social network can increase your effectiveness from 1.35% to 3.41% and a localized text message campaign can increase the effective response to 3.75%. When this type of localized campaign is combined with social media, the effective response can increase up to 3.75%. There is one major drawback though, the first being that mobile devices and digital signage will overload consumers with more cluttered ads in public areas, just like spam in everyone’s email inbox.
But there could be a solution just around the corner, some digital signage software developers are looking for a system that will automatically reject a consumer who has made a purchase in the last 6 months, ensuring they are not bombarded with ads for the product. that have bought
Whats Next?
With the increased use of technology, who knows where we will be 3 years from now? One thing is for sure, as technology advances, so will digital signage, there are over 169,000 digital signs deployed in the US alone that have built-in components such as consumer-monitoring webcams, Bluetooth, and RFID .
All we need now is the software platform to tie them all together and this is what digital signage will look like 5 years from now.
