10 Ways to Have Successful Digital Signage on Your College Campus
Digital signage is slowly taking over the world. After all, PwC claims “[digital out-of-home] advertising is driving overall OOH advertising growth globally at a CAGR of 16.2%.” It’s likely that your college campus has already begun to use digital signage to keep students up-to-date on what is happening on campus. Why not take your digital signage a step further and use it as a source of income for the school?
- You Have the Infrastructure in Place
Digital signage on college campuses can already be found in the student union, in bus shelters for the campus shuttles, and on LED video scoreboards in athletic facilities as a way to update students with information such as application deadlines, bus delays, and campus events. By simply selling the space on those signs to interested parties, you gain a new revenue stream.
- Prepare Your Staff
When you decide you want to fully utilize your digital signage, you need to involve those who will be working with the signage. Naturally representatives from your IT department should be a part of this mix, but you also need to work with those who actually develop the content for your signs, such as the admissions office and student services. For your staff to give your students the best experience, create goals for your digital signage initiatives, even if you are not trying to attract advertisers.
- Prepare Your System
You may already have digital signage in place, but if not, you need to look into the types of software and hardware available. While you’re considering budget, be certain the software you select is compatible with your hardware. The software you choose should help make contributing content simple for the staff in charge. Confer with your IT department again to get specifics on any issues you may have regarding powering the signs, the network, and security.
- Attract Advertisers
Out-of-home advertisements work especially well on college campuses before students are always moving around campus by attending classes, grabbing food in the cafeteria, visiting the student union, and participating in campus activities. Great advertisers are restaurants and other local businesses, and community events.
- Don’t Tailor Messages to Students Only
Remember that your campus sees far more than just its students each day. You have visitors in the form of students’ families, rival athletic teams, potential students, and donors that constantly come to campus, plus your faculty and staff.
- Let Your Audience Know Its Coming
Announce the changes to the digital signage to create buzz amongst the viewers. Be certain when you do that you also describe the benefits the advertisements will bring to the viewers, such as learning about specials at off-campus dining, as well as how the income helps the school. After all, the income from digital signage may be how your campus is able to continue to use the digital signage for communications.
- Be Sure You Test
It’s best not to discover a major technical problem on the day of the reveal. Instead, choose one board to test beforehand so things run smoothly when your audience is actually expecting to see the changes.
- Only Post Quality Content
Your viewers will quickly lose interest if the content displayed on digital signs is poorly designed, not of interest to them, or hard to read. If you keep your messages to those that fit with the goals you developed for the digital signage, you should find it easier to maintain the content quality.
- Change the Content Often
You have digital signs because they allow you to show multiple messages and change the messages easily. Use that ability by replacing the content with new messages every day, and having content that rotates the messages every few minutes.
- Measure Your Results
How can you know just how successful your signs are unless you measure? The metrics you gather are also beneficial to encouraging new advertisers to purchase space on signs. Items you may consider measuring are reduced costs for campus communications or proliferation of the messages throughout campus.
Make Campus Communications Work for You
By knowing what you want to accomplish with your digital signage, having the appropriate resources in place, and creating content that resonates with your audience, you can put your digital signage to work in not only improving campus communications, but also bringing in revenue for your school.