Reseller Survey: Top Benefits and Pain Points of Digital Signage

The diverse applications of digital signage range from advertising and marketing to wayfinding. People respond well to visuals because the human brain is so wired. Visuals get 94% more views than text-based information. Additionally, digital signage has an astounding recall rate of 83%. This figure is almost double the information retention rate for traditional advertising. These are some of the benefits of digital signage.

Smart businesses know this all too well and maximize the potential benefits of digital signage to attract, inform and educate. Some users earn additional revenue by showing advertising material for non-competing businesses on their digital signs.

Digital signage has some inherent benefits and pain points. Here is a highlight of the findings after a recent survey we conducted among digital signage resellers.

Benefits of Digital Signage Solutions

Digital signage is getting more popular by the day, as businesses of all sizes across different sectors are adopting it for various applications. Among the most appealing benefits include the following:

1. Remote Updates 

Remote updating is the biggest benefit scoring 53.8% with resellers on the count of most appealing digital signage benefits. For most businesses, their digital signage deployment involves multiple devices across different locations. Without remote updating, it would require an individual to go to each location to update the content. 

A cloud-based digital signage system allows you to remotely publish, monitor, and update content on any number of devices without having to physically visit the digital signage solution. Also, you have full control of your digital signage platform and can do so much remotely from a centralized dashboard.

2. Instant Updates

Not only can you do the updates remotely, but they are also instant. In fact, there is a lot of power in real-time content. It is refreshed, up-to-date, and very relevant. Most people will zone out and stop paying attention if they notice any out-of-date information on your screens.

Thanks to multiple integrations, updating content across different digital signs is much easier. Today, it takes just a click, and your content is updated or refreshed. With earlier systems, the IT and content management teams would have to add a huge file to a USB, get them in the right order and queue them up. This would all take so much time, something that you don’t have to worry about today. It’s easy to see why instant updating would score 38.5% of the most appealing benefits.

3. Reduced Costs 

No denying it, the upfront costs of deploying digital signage can be quite high. That being said, if you are to consider the running costs of traditional static signage, then you’d realize that digital signage helps to reduce your costs. That’s why reduced costs come in third among the most appealing digital signage benefit at 7.7%.

Take posters, for example. You would have to pay for printing, distribution, and the same cycle every time you need to update your content or publish new content. In the long-term, these costs will certainly add up. On the other hand, the running costs associated with digital signage are much lower.

Primary Pain Points 

1. Content Creation

By far, the biggest challenge revolves around content creation, scoring 55.4 % among resellers. For starters, most digital signage users don’t update their content frequently enough, doing it every other month or even less frequently. This is a missed opportunity to promote new products and showcase their inventory to potential customers.

Another challenge lies in coming up with relevant content. Just because some information is readily available doesn’t mean it’s worth displaying. Only ever display content that is relevant to the context of your business.

Relevancy of a message also has to do with it being localized messages. For example, for retailers with multiple locations, a one-fits-all message may not have the desired impact. The better option would be to have each location come up with its own content, customized to suit the target audience at that particular location. Therefore, retailers need to invest in data analytics, which helps to produce highly targeted messages.

2. Difficulty in Updating 

Second up, at 15.4 %, is difficulty in updating content. Even with an appreciation of how important it is to update content, many digital signage users have some challenges doing it. The most user-friendly digital signage platforms may still be quite a challenge for some users. 

Above all, most users have to hire a team, not just for content creation, but to update the content. The difficulty in updating content is a big part of why most users don’t do it as frequently.

3. Time-Consuming

Coming up with digital signage solutions right from the design stage to the final production or unveiling can be time-consuming. It may take several runs before finally settling on that design and content mix that is just right for your brand and marketing campaign. What’s more, all these considerations saw the time element scoring 10.8% on the count of the biggest pain points.

If an in-house team were to handle the process, it would definitely impact overall productivity as they’d be spending so much time on this. It is for this reason that most users choose to outsource related tasks to experts.

4. Cost

The initial cost of digital signage solutions is definitely higher than what it would cost for traditional print signage. 

Businesses need to invest in hardware, software, and a content management system. Businesses that display large, high-resolution files may need to invest in a private connection to overcome the bandwidth limitations imposed by most internet service providers (ISPs.)

This high initial investment can be especially prohibitive for smaller businesses. On the whole, the high cost stands at 18.5 % on the count of big digital sign pain points. That said, a look at the bigger picture and the potential return on investment is a great motivation to go ahead with the investment.

In Conclusion

Digital signage is prominent and will only grow bigger in the next few years. Even with the pain points highlighted, it remains abundantly clear that digital signage is beneficial for all business types and sizes. 

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