When you’re planning a creative campaign for your digital signage…. Wait a moment…Do you plan when you’re creating your campaigns? How are you measuring your digital signage ROI?
In our experience, many people simply see a need for an announcement of some sort, create it, schedule it and send it to the screens. But how do you know if your communications are reaching your audience? How do you know if those people who did see it read it and reacted in the way you intended?
The fact is, if you are going to involve yourself – your time, your creativity, your effort – you will want to see a return on that involvement.
Planning is essential if you want to measure the success of your visual communications. Whether it is a single message or an entire campaign, consider asking yourself the following questions before you create your content:
- What need or opportunity will your communication address?
- What impact do you want it to have on performance, reputation, image, profits, participation, etc.?
- Is there any research you have or can do to better inform your decision about how to design and execute your campaign?
- Who is your intended audience?
- Consider demographics, traffic patterns and key characteristics.
- What do you want them to do once they receive your communications?
- What is your goal: What do you want to accomplish?
- Align your goals with your organization’s future, as well as immediate needs.
- Choose two key objectives that you can define in detail.
- Objectives should be realistic and measurable.
- What is your proposed solution?
- Think of your communications in terms of problem solving.
- Involve key stakeholders in developing your communications.
- Determine a budget.
- How will you implement your solution?
- Identify the tactics and different media that can be used to support your goals.
- Assign tasks and responsibilities and ensure that everyone understands the plan.
- Tackle any possible challenges in the plan versus waiting until they occur.
By putting some thought into your communications plan, you can make measurement much easier. Once you’ve executed against objectives, measure your success:
- What was the outcome of your campaign, as measured against your objectives?
- Demonstrate the effectiveness of your solution by showing increases in participation, traffic, sales, or some other quantifiable outcome.
- Link the results to specific objectives outlined in the plan.
- Are these results valuable? Concentrate on outcomes versus outputs.
Remember that ROI doesn’t just have to mean Return on Investment – it can also stand for Return on Involvement. Instead of measuring in traditional financial terms, consider the effect on long-term goals, branding or culture in your organization. Your involvement should produce positive results, which you’ll never know if you can’t measure your success against a plan.
>> Want some more detail? Download our white paper – Why You Should Care About ROI