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The fundamentals of understanding your audience in digital signage

Engaging your customers in digital signage is now easier than ever. But do you actually know who your target audience is? Find out how to do an in-depth research and make your signage work more efficiently.

Photo: Kitcast Inc.

November 13, 2018

Persuading Your Audience – Understand it First

The ‘engage your audience’ slogan is on heavy rotation these days. While we live in the era of ‘pretend,’ not ‘actually be,’ we don’t think it’s possible to engage with your audience without understanding it. There should be a perfect understanding among business owners that they wouldn’t be able to reach their audience effectively without knowing who they are.

Understanding your audience is not only the key to customer engagement but also your best bet in gaining their loyalty and skyrocketing your conversion rates.

Digital signage is shaking things up in the game of dynamic interactions with clients. Therefore, we prepared a simple step-by-step guide for you to show you what you need to know about your customers. Applying our best practices to your retail business can help you reach a new level of that desired ‘customer engagement’.

Count the Number of Daily Viewers

The digital signage content and its dynamics usually depends on the metrics that you can and have to calculate.

Depending on the number of daily interactions, you can decide on the type and amount of content that you’ll be running through the eyes of your prospective clients. Let’s be honest; it may be complicated to calculate this number. However, the results of the well-analyzed research can be shocking.

Let’s say you already know how many potential customers are viewing your signage displays. What’s next?

Learn Their Gender and Age

Clients usually prefer more relevant and personalized approach. Even though you cannot target them all separately, you still can divide them into some sort of groups.

The fundamental knowledge needed for the segmentation of your audience includes the gender, age, marital status and, sometimes, political preferences.

This set of data will help you run different campaigns depending on the client’s personality and lifestyle. You shouldn’t advertise dating services if half of your audience is married, right?

Count the Attention Time

The digital signage engagement usually depends on the amount of attention time. Unfortunately, sometimes it’s a very circumstantial thing that you cannot affect. The only way that you’ll have then is to shorten your message and make it reach people’s minds faster.

Even though it’s always more epic to deliver a shorter and more catchy message, some brands prefer to provide the information partially. Also, don’t forget about the interactiveness that usually makes you sacrifice the attention time in favor of entertainment.

The bottom line is that you’ve got to get the real numbers regarding the attention time. Perhaps some of you’ve already wondered why people ignore your digital signage content. Attention time can be the heart of the matter.

How Frequently Will Your Audience See Each Screen?

One of the fascinating things that digital signage displays brought to the advertising business is dynamic content. However, it’s not enough to run hours of content and hope it grabs the attention of a stranger walking by your store or cafe.

Understanding your audience is not only about their routine, but it’s also about the routine of your digital signage content.

Make sure you know the frequency your client interacts with your screens while walking by your store, chooses a product inside it or just has a cup of coffee in your cafe.

Depending on the numbers you’ll get after your research, you’ll have to calculate the number of ads and content pieces that you’ll be able to show.

Usually, it also depends on the type of your business. Restaurants and pizza places will need more diverse content and just… more content. Areas, where clients spend less time, require less content, yet it should be engaging as hell.

Where Is Your Audience Viewing the Screen From?

You’ll be surprised how many elements of your content will be affected by the positioning of our digital signage. Even the most beautiful and useful content won’t matter at all if people cannot see it.

The best idea here will be to try yourself in the customer’s shoes, recreate the route of your clients and ensure that the text size, content clarity and text amount is just what you needed.

Your content can be too long or too boring for a specific location of your room. All these details decide whether you’ll lose the client’s attention after all.

Define Common Friction Points with Your Audience

Defining the brand voice and brand personality is crucial in any type of interaction with your customer. Digital signage is basically just a tool that allows you to present your brand’s benefits and engage your clients more actively.

While utilizing this tool smartly is a must, you also need to know what you have in common with your audience. Having common life views and things that you all stand for will define the client’s interest and loyalty to your brand.

It’s not so hard to find a common ground with your audience. Once you’ve shaped the face of your typical target audience representative, you can learn his/her habits and lifestyle.

Find out what you have in common and use it to your advantage.

Conclusion

Your digital signage engagement metrics depends directly on how well you know your audience. The reality dictates that even the top-notch content will not resonate.

After all, engagement is about evoking a certain feeling and understanding your audience can help you do that. Digital signage lets you do this more efficiently, so we recommend applying our tips to your business approach and see the results yourself. We’re sure you’ll be surprised.