You may have heard the term “content marketing”, but aren’t sure what it is. “Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.” – Content Marketing Institute
OK. So what does this have to do with digital signage? Well, there are a lot of parallels:
- Content marketing is about attracting and retaining an audience. That’s certainly a goal for digital signage users, too. If no one is reading your screens, you’ve wasted time and money on that digital signage system.
- It does this by consistently creating and delivering relevant and valuable content. This is exactly what you want to do with your digital signs. If you aren’t giving your audience what they need, want and can use on a regular basis, they’ll tune out.
- The intention is to change or influence behavior. You will very rarely put information on digital signs without wanting your audience to take some action – come to the meeting, sign up for the 401K, buy season tickets for the football team, recycle on campus. (This comes back to our stress on including a call to action in your content.)
- The focus is on communicating – not selling. This is about relationship-building and being a trusted source for your target audience. Digital signage can be used for advertising, of course, but more often it’s about organizational communications – educating and informing your audience instead of selling the latest t-shirt.
- Content marketing is an ongoing process and is part of an overall marketing strategy. Your digital signage messages are obviously ongoing as you publish more each day, but they should also be part of your overall communications plan, alongside print, web, email, social media and other marketing/communications mediums.
This blog is part of Visix’s own content marketing effort. We aren’t pushing products or asking you to buy services here – we’re hoping to give good advice that will benefit our customers in using our products more effectively.
You can do the same with your digital signs – provide content that people want and find useful and they’ll keep coming back.