Blog by Convergent - Page 4 of 7 - Digital Signage Resources

Creating Brand Advocates in Your Business

Are your employees brand advocates? You want them to be. Whether you know it or not, at least half of them are posting on social media about your company from time to time, if not more often, according to a 2014 Weber Shandwick study – but only 39% of them are sharing something positive. One of the reasons why they might not be affirming your organization online is a lack of effective communication. Internal communication is the second strongest driver of employee advocacy (or activism, to use Weber Shandwick’s term), trumped only by leadership. Yet according to the firm’s research: […]

Digital signage

Digital Signage for Millennials (and Everyone Else, Too)

Millennials: now the largest cohort in America and the most-studied, most-discussed generation in our history since baby boomers. Brands want to understand them and connect with them early on to establish customers and advocates for decades to come. Employers, too, have gotten in on that act, trying to figure out how to draw and keep millennials while at the same time grappling with an age swing of four generations and 50 years in their businesses. Creating engagement is key, and that’s difficult with a generation that has little expectation of long careers with a single employer and a greater need, […]

Strategy and Measurement

Keeping Digital Signage Simple: Design that Captures Attention

“Sign, sign, everywhere a sign.” With a shout out to the Five Man Electrical Band that made those words famous, this message is truer today than ever, wherever you go. This is particularly so in the retail space, where shoppers are barraged with visual messages at every turn. And since the attention span of consumers lasts only a few seconds, retailers have a very brief window to capture their interest and engage them. Digital signage is an effective tool for achieving both of those goals – but the key is in the content. Maximizing the impact of digital signage requires […]

Retail

Better Sex through DSaaS*

Yes, you read that headline right. And yes, we’re being provocative, but bear with me, because I’ll prove my point: DSaaS* + an experienced, committed solutions provider = increased retail sales, less stress and a better home life (and all that implies) In last week’s blog, we talked about the continued struggles of today’s retailer (as if you needed reminding). Same store sales data is down and fewer people are shopping in brick-and-mortar stores. RetailNext’s latest Retail Performance Pulse report on store performance showed a 6 percent year-over-year decline in August, continuing a years-long trend. At the same time, the […]

Retail

Make Your Storefront Work Harder and Smarter to Boost In-store Traffic

I promise you – this is not another alarmist blog about how online shopping will lead to the demise of your brick-and-mortar stores. That does not have to be your end game. Instead, I’d like to arm you with a proactive strategy for leveraging new digital technologies to keep shoppers coming into your stores and driving engagement and sales. People are still shopping – so bring them in First, when it comes to in-store sales, there’s still plenty of good news to be found among the bad. There’s one hard fact everyone in the retail industry knows: there hasn’t been […]

Digital signage

Digital Signage that Rocks Your World Again

So many times we’ve seen companies implement digital signage and marvel at how amazing it looks, how impressed they think their customers will be and how it will totally transform their experience. Sadly, the novelty tends to wear off over time, and you don’t feel the same level of passion for your solution that you once did. Sounds like your digital signs could use a revamp. That also sounds like an expensive proposition. The good news? You probably don’t have to completely overhaul your solution. In fact, it may take just a couple of tweaks to refresh it and make […]

Digital signage

The Batman and Robin of Digital Signage

Content is King! Yes, you’ve heard it a million times. Sure, it’s important, but there is an unsung hero—a Robin to the Batman of content. So what deserves the same level of love and respect that content has been receiving for years? It’s programming strategy, and yes, it’s a pretty big deal. The two go hand-in-hand, and like many great couples, they’re even better together than apart. Think of programming strategy as the steering wheel for your digital signage content. Without it, content plays back aimlessly. But with a highly refined programming strategy, it’s a high-powered marketing engine. The strategy […]

Strategy and Measurement

5 Reasons Why Marketing Should Make Your Digital Signage Buying Decisions: Part 2

Last week, I was pretty tough on marketing professionals and the reasons they give to justify a digital signage solution. Too often, in my experience, they rely on what looks sexy and sounds cool, rather than considering hard issues such as cost, ROI and metrics to show results. I gave a lot of credit to IT professionals and their focus on those and other concrete details that can lead to a successful implementation. On the other hand . . . IT folks also have a few blind spots when it comes to digital signage. In general, their focus is on […]

Strategy and Measurement

5 Reasons Why Marketing Shouldn’t Make Your Digital Signage Buying Decisions: Part 1

During my career in start-ups and tech, I’ve spent a lot of time selling to IT professionals. The philosophy and discipline they bring to decision-making has always frustrated…I mean, impressed me. They focused on things like Return on Investment (ROI), measuring value and true cost of ownership. They understand the challenges of owning and operating rapidly changing technology. They speak a concrete language of finance, logic and analysis: ROI modeling, TCO, capex vs opex and cost of capital. They demand product demos, pilots and proof of concept to validate and measure value of solutions. On top of that, they demand […]

Retail

Getting Real about Real-Time Retailing

Stores Magazine recently said, “One of the key messages at this year’s NRF Annual Convention and Expo was that there is no more multichannel. There is no more omnichannel. There is just you and the consumer, and her expectations are very clear: give her what she wants how she wants it, and as close to instantaneously as possible.” The new buzzword that sums up this approach: real-time retailing. It means being able to understand and effectively serve customers at every point in the purchase cycle. This sounds like a logical next step in thinking about how to best serve customers […]