Perhaps one of the most commonly discussed blog digital signage issues is how digital signs may be used to increase sales in a retail setting. There are plenty of uses for digital signs, but this issue seems to keep resurfacing for two reasons. The first is because people already have an intuitive feeling that digital signs will help them make sales, but they are not sure where to begin.
The other reason is that every time somebody else finds an ingenious use for digital signs in a retail setting, it is genuinely interesting to more than just retailers and merchants. That is why blog posts, Reddit posts, and even YouTube videos have seen bumps in their view numbers whenever an innovative idea comes up. Here are five ways that you can increase sales using retail digital signage.
1 – Show Demonstrations Of Your Products
There are several companies that make a lot of money by setting up isolated displays in big chain stores. They push their stock, usually on a buy-when-sold basis, and they do it with fancy displays and digital signs above them.
In simple cases, the digital signs run advertisements for the products below. In other cases, they run demonstrations of the products on the shelves below. They show the sort of infomercials that were popular before TV streaming became popular. They show you how the mop’s microfibers pick up dirt, or how the multi-tool will help you scrape old tile grout and shape new grout after it has been applied.
Some digital demonstrations are a little more like the TV shopping channels that were also popular before streaming became popular. In this case, instead of having a person stood in a store showing off how a knife can cut through a tin can and still remain sharp. It shows all of that on the screen, and it also has fancy transitions and graphics. Plus, once it finishes with one product, it moves seamlessly onto another product and demonstrates that.
2 – Show and Demonstrate Your Offers
Demonstrating your offers is a lot easier than it seems. If you are having a two-for-one sale on shoes, you can literally show a cartoon of somebody picking a pair of shoes off the shelf, and then picking another pair of shoes for free.
Fast food restaurants do this sort of thing all the time. They show you how you can buy something like a burger for a set amount, or you can add fries and a drink and save a certain amount of money on the whole offer. By demonstrating your offers, not only are you selling the perks of the offer, but you are subliminally selling the product at the same time. The longer you draw somebody’s gaze, the more they want something. As Hannibal Lecter said, “We begin by coveting what we see every day.”
3 – Draw People In From Outside
This is the oldest trick in the book. This is what people have been doing for years by using large TV screens. When people see something moving in a store window, their eye is instinctively drawn to it. Being visually aroused by something moving is an ancient instinct that we still possess. If you really want to draw people in, then change the pace of your video every now and again. Even a swipe across the screen as a transition into a new segment is going to draw the eye of the people outside.
Traditional Italian restaurants would have people standing outside trying to entice you into the restaurant. Having a digital sign in your window has a similar effect. The great thing about having digital signs in your window is that you extend the range of your window to an almost infinite degree. For example, if your window can only hold four vacuum cleaners, then those are the only four you can show off to people outside. However, if you have a digital sign in your window, you can show off your entire range of vacuum cleaners by showing each of them in turn as people watch.
4 – Develop Interactive Catalogs and Displays
If you are looking for more of a close-up customer-interface marketing method, then you could try what McDonalds did. They set up digital signs that were touch-screen enabled. People would press on the food they wanted, create their order, and then pay. They could pay with their card in the machine, or wirelessly if they wished.
Even if you do not have the sort of technology that allows people to make orders from your digital signs, you could still make them interactive. You could still show off your products to the people in your store and you could even show them stock levels so they know how many they can buy. There is also an odd knock-on effect from this too. When other people see customers looking at items on a digital screen, they too start to yearn for those products.
It is a little like when you are flipping through TV channels and you see nothing you like, but when your partner starts flipping, you start seeing all sorts of stuff you think you will like. The same is true of digital signs. When people see other people searching out and admiring things in your catalog, it acts as a ringing endorsement for them and causes them to want your products too.
5 – Highlight Low Stock and New Stock
Showing off your low stock is a slightly sleazy method for selling, but it still works and it works in all types of retail, from toy stores to places where patches of building land are sold. The method is a little sleazy because it is often used by companies that are trying to push lower quality goods, so they pretend as if they are just running out of stock. On the other hand, with genuinely scarce stock, you may be able to push people into buying sooner rather than later. Even at food wholesalers, people have been able to sell all of their stock of specialty foods by showing which are running out of stock.
You can also show off your new stock using digital signs. People may be interested in new stock if they are already established customers and have seen all your stock already. New customers may also be interested if your digital signs show the sorts of products and stock they cannot find elsewhere.
Perhaps the best use of digital signs is not for new stocks, but for restocks. Due to the GPU shortage of 2020+, thanks to cryptocurrency, robberies, and the COVID pandemic, things like the PlayStation 5 have been in short supply. They were bought by scalpers by the van load and then sold for massive profits. However, the retailers who received them didn’t want to go posting them out and then having to deal with stolen deliveries, broken items during delivery, and missed deliveries. They wanted to sell them in store to people walking by, so they put their stock numbers on digital signs in their store with a notice that they were only selling one per customer. People flocked into their shops, often buying several other items in the frenzy (game pads, console stands, games, headphones, etc.).
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