Many restaurant owners think digital signage is above their league, but they couldn’t be more wrong. No one industry calls dibs on this new marketing technology, but before jumping into it without a clue, you need to prepare your digital signage marketing strategy.
We often assume that digital signage is preserved for big companies like Apple or Samsung who want to promote their products on flashy screens. But that couldn’t be farther from the truth. Everyone can benefit from digital signage — it just depends on how well you use it to your advantage.
In a world where printouts and large posters are considered obsolete, digital signage can help you fill the gap and take your restaurant to new heights. However, using it so no walk in the park. You need to be careful of various things, such as having the wrong screen brightness, displaying impersonal and unbranded content, and more. If you’ve decided to use digital signage, you must remember that your digital signage content should be tailored to your target audience, must stand out, and be aligned with your brand identity. Here are a few tips on how you can ensure using this technology in marketing bears fruit.
Have a digital menu board
If you go to Mcdonald’s, Pizza Hut, or any other multinational food brand, you’ll see a digital menu above the counter. The screen displays all the deals and individual items on the menu with tantalizing pictures, making it easier for customers to choose what they want to eat.
According to research, 74% of customers say that they prefer an easy-to-read menu, and digital signage helps you do that. In fact, with a digital signage menu, you can easily change the prices of items whenever you want to. With card menus, you’ll have to slash out previous prices and add new ones, which doesn’t look very professional. Alternatively, you’d have to print new posters altogether, which can be even more costly.
If you want to go the extra mile, you can go for digital ordering, where customers can scroll through a digital menu screen, choose items and add them to their carts, and pay via their credit card without going to the counter or waiting in the queue.
Use in-window displays
Have you ever thought about what good windows are for your restaurant? Well, they provide a nice view for customers (if there’s a nice view in the first place). But overall, all unused real estate is not serving any purpose. Why not use digital signage on the windows or provide that space to other marketers to get that extra monthly revenue?
The foremost thing you must be mindful of when using digital signage on windows is to use high-brightness or ultra-high-brightness displays so that your marketing messages are clearly visible to customers in broad daylight. These display screens are specifically built to counteract the brightness of the sun.
Use digital signage near point of sales
Let’s have a restaurant branch at a mall’s food court — how do you compete with other restaurants in the food court? It’s simple; if you have a digital signage screen near the food court, displaying a cheese-dripping burger or a creamy Italian pasta, you’ll send signals to hungry customers before they even get there. Once they do, they’ll most likely buy from you instead of having to decide from a plethora of choices.
Similarly, have a digital signage screen at the point of sale too. This will reinforce the customer’s motivation to buy from you even if they get marketing signals from other restaurants at the food court. After that, it’s just a matter of how easy you make it for them to order food. For instance, instead of customers serving themselves, you could have a couple of servers deliver food to their table just to stand out from the competition in terms of customer service.
The only question is, how can you craft content to be displayed on a screen? It’s easy! Use an online graphic design tool like PosterMyWall’s poster maker to craft banners, posters, and much more for your digital signage marketing. It’s a one-stop solution for all your digital signage needs.
Show off your brand personality
The best thing about using digital signage for marketing is that you can choose or transition between multiple marketing messages all at once. For instance, you can create a wonderful short animation depicting the story of your restaurant. Or, you could show a time-lapse of how you’ve perfected your recipes over time and show various awards you’ve received or pictures of celebrities who have eaten at your restaurant.
Whatever you do, make sure you tell a story about your brand. Digital signage is an excellent tool to market your brand and push its outreach to newer heights — if you know how to use it intelligently, that is. You can even announce contests to have more customers through your door. For example, holding a spaghetti eating competition (the one who eats a bowl of spaghetti first) gets a free bowl, or a discount coupon will help you build hype for your brand.
Use digital signage back of the house
People assume digital signage is reserved for marketing to customers but what if you can use it to streamline your business processes to make them more efficient? For instance, when a customer orders their food using a screen, their order automatically shows up on the screen in the kitchen. This way, the kitchen staff knows what they have to do without anyone telling them. It makes cooking food and serving it more efficient.
Having a screen in the kitchen can also be beneficial for giving a brief orientation to new hires or chefs. It’s easy to share general announcements like an upcoming holiday or a discount scheme on a particular food item so that everyone inside and outside the kitchen is on the same page.
Concluding thoughts
There’s no doubt that digital signage can facilitate your overall marketing efforts, but how much? That really depends on how intelligently you use it. No one-size-fits-all approach would work for every restaurant, so you’ll have to experiment with a host of strategies and marketing messages. But don’t forget to track your results to know which strategy is working and which is not.
