The Small Business Guide to Digital Signage

Around the time that we launched ScreenCloud, it wasn’t uncommon to see a $1,200 price tag on a 46-inch flat-screen TV. Today it’s under $300 – even after persistent inflation. Screens are so cheap nowadays that even small businesses tend to have a few just lying around unused. But just because your TV is old enough to remember a world before Donald Trump was president doesn’t mean you can’t put it to good use. 

Digital signage software like ScreenCloud streamlines the process of creating displays for business use. Whether this is promotional content, menu boards, displaying employee engagement or internal communications content; and regardless of whether it’s for a small professional services company or a microbrewery.

What can small businesses use digital signage for?

Whether you're using TV screens that you have lying around, or you're planning how to create a digital signage network in your warehouse or office, there are many uses for digital signage.

Directional signage

Directional or wayfinding information is a popular way for small businesses to use digital signage. As an example, a digital sign in a retail store or market, or as a welcome board in a hotel or spa.

A simple you are here map, or a selection of screens highlighting specific areas within the space can be very useful for visitors.

Menu boards

You've probably noticed how your favorite coffee shop or fast food restaurant already uses digital menu boards. These aren't just the preserve of huge corporate franchises, but can easily be created using a consumer grade TV and casting device such as Fire sticks or Chromecasts.

Menu boards have a number of benefits, such as being easy to update on the fly (if you have special offers or time sensitive discounts for example). And they offer more engaging and dynamic content such as videos or full color photos.

Upselling and cross selling

Perhaps the most obvious use for digital signage is promoting your content or services. If you already have an audience, for example within retail stores or hospitality, you can display content designed to highlight other products, special offers or optional add-ons.

Displaying data

In an office or warehouse setting, sometimes real time data is an important method of managing performance. Digital signage will also integrate with some of the most popular data software such as Excel or Sheets, or pull information for Calendars, Google Maps and Zendesk.

Build custom dashboards and automations

If your office does have a jack-of-all-trades IT person, though, you can create content that rivals that of large enterprises. You can moderate user-generated content with AI, send messages to your signage with Siri voice commands, or automatically create personalized welcome messages for office visitors. All you need is digital signage software that includes a tool like ScreenCloud’s Playgrounds.

Social walls and reviews

User generated content is all the rage, so harness the power of UGC in your business too. Whether this is showcasing social media feeds using your brand hashtag, or sharing your Yelp or Google reviews.

Integrating user generated content onto your signage screens is literally a few clicks away with ScreenCloud.

Employee engagement

Workplace culture starts with your staff, and digital signage is a great way to nurture employee engagement with some internal comms. Some ideas can be using your digital signage to gamify sales, highlighting individual or team success, or simply offering some inspiration and reassurance throughout the day.

Studies show that people are naturally drawn to a live TV feed as a medium, so using digital signage is a great way to get the message out there.

Read more: The guide to internal communication.

Useful information

People love being able to access useful information at a glance. And all the better if they don't need to take out their phones to check either. ScreenCloud's app store includes traffic information, weather apps, stock prices, breaking news and even a live airport departure board.

Whatever information your customers are looking for, you'll be able to easily display it across one or multiple displays.

Share company information

Virtual bulletin boards ensure important messages are always front and center. Need to distill company updates into bite-sized announcements? You can automate the whole process and push information to as many screens as you’d like.

ScreenCloud apps such as Team News, Noticeboard 2.0, or Microsoft Viva Engage allow you to craft engaging information and real time updates.

What technology do I need for digital signage?

The beauty of modern digital signage software is that it can be applied to almost any screen you have available. You can connect to a smart TV, such as Samsung Tizen - but we strongly recommend using a digital signage media player such as our own PIXI as this gives you much better control and security.

You can use our hardware guide for a full list of recommended screens and media players..

With a ScreenCloud branded device it's just a case of plug and play. Or, if you're using a third party media player, you might need to download the ScreenCloud app from the relevant app store.

Simply create a ScreenCloud account on the computer you’ll use to manage content, log in, and pair the screen to your account. Then, from the app dashboard, you can begin choosing what to show and when, from wherever you are and whatever device you’re using, simply by logging into your ScreenCloud account.

Here’s a video walkthrough of the whole process. 

How to create small business digital signage

Before you choose what content to show, let’s pause for a second. It’s tempting to throw up the easiest content you have in reach - social media, images, and the usual suspects. But we’d recommend doing a little strategy and planning your digital signage content based on your audience. 

If your small business operates in an office setting, your target audience will be employees and office visitors. As such, consider their unique interests and needs. Maybe your sales team already tracks performance in a database, and they want to connect Airtable to a screen in their section of the office. 

In fact, almost any app you already use can work with ScreenCloud. And anything you can put on digital signage, you can automate, showing exactly what your team needs to know, when they need it. 

On the other hand, if you’re operating something like a retail store or hospitality venue, your digital signage content will be very different. You might need to create the sort of content designed to increase sales; for example promotional content.

Or you might just need to offer timely and accessible information.

Of course, you'll need to understand what your audience is searching for,

With a better understanding of your audience’s wants, needs, and interests, you dramatically increase the value of digital signage.

Make sure to create an outline and a strategy that would best support both your brand and your customers goals.

Creating content that captivates viewers

Using ScreenCloud anyone can quickly and easily create professional-looking content –  no marketing or design experience required.

When we talk about content, this could be Google Slides or PowerPoint presentations, uploaded video files or YouTube playlists, Notion dashboards, and even content that you automatically scrape from websites.

Whatever it is, content tends to fall into one of three categories.

1. Content you already own

What’s already in the locker? Do you have any videos, images, or presentations that are ready to go, with no updates necessary? ScreenCloud supports dozens of file types, including JPEGs, GIFs, PNGs, and SVGs, PDFs, and Office/iWorks formats to make uploading content easy.

You can also import directly from Dropbox or your Google Drive. 

2. Content you can easily create

Perhaps you want a digital menu board, a quick promotion, or you’re keen to jump on the latest TikTok trend. The always-growing ScreenCloud App Store is full of tools to help. Here, you can set up digital menu boards, noticeboards, dashboards, and data visualizations, as well as import content from Google spreadsheets and Google Slides.

Want to create some simple animated charts? Check out our guide to Chart.js for digital signage.

Here, you can set up digital menu boards, noticeboards, dashboards, and data visualizations, as well as import content through Google spreadsheets and Google Slides. 

Need a simple text or sign? Check out these apps and content-creation tools. 

3. Content that’s created for you

Then you have content where you don’t have to lift a finger. For example, take the Gallery for Instagram app. Plug in your user handle or hashtag, and it will turn the results into a beautiful scrolling wall.

You can also create digital menu boards, weather and traffic updates, news updates, and YouTube live streams. If the options start to feel overwhelming, take a step back and consider things from a broader, big-picture perspective with our comprehensive guide to digital signage content strategy. 

Who should manage your digital signage content software?

This is crucial in a small business where roles and responsibilities are often divvied up across a select few. In some small businesses we work with, the CEO or business owner has the idea and passes it to a marketing or IT department for implementation.

This will depend on your business model, but ultimately, digital signage management can go to anyone with a firm grasp of your business and goals. We’ve seen displays managed by teachers, HR assistants, office managers, chefs, and cashiers.

Digital signage can be as simple or as technical as you’d like. Want to create branded images in a drag-and-drop image editor? Canvas can do that. Want to control your signs with GraphQL mutations? No problem. 

Of course, the who is only part of the equation. You also need to come up with a schedule for when and how often that person updates your screens. This could be weekly, monthly, quarterly, or seasonal. It may be that you have five pieces of ‘fixed’ content, and you add a new slide, image, or graphic here or there when you have something to shout about.

Putting these guidelines in place at the start ensures your displays don’t get put into a ‘set it and forget it’s a mindset that defeats the object of having them in the first place!

Measuring digital signage effectiveness

You don’t need a strict KPI structure to ensure your digital screens are creating value. Many of the effects you’ll notice yourself. For example, fewer customer complaints about wait times, more positive Yelp reviews, or higher conversion rates from products that appear on screens.

You can also create return on objectives which will help measure what you’re doing against top-line goals for your organization. This might include higher customer satisfaction, more engaged employees, or faster response times on social media.

Setting goals gives everyone a benchmark to work towards and will increase morale within a small business.  

Even today, when screens and software are cheap, digital signage is a seriously underutilized channel –especially for small businesses. Try our 14-day free trial and see just how easy it is to get started.

Drag and drop content into playlists and schedules

You have your hardware and your content, so how does this become a manageable, fully-working system for your small business? Namely, through playlists and scheduling.

With playlists, you have all of your content on the right-hand side ready for picking. On the left-hand side is your playlist. Simply drag and drop content from right to left, re-order it as you see fit, type in the length of time you want it to show for and that’s it; job done.

You can upload new content with a click, delete content with a click and make changes as many times as you like. The advantage of using a web-based player paired with playlists is that changes can occur whenever you like, from wherever you like. Log in, change your playlist and the new one begins playing on your screen, even if it’s a million miles away.

Then there are schedules.

With scheduling you can select one day, or all seven and set up specific playlists to play when you want to see them. So “breakfast menu” playlist only plays between 8am and 10am and “lunch menu” kicks in at 12. You can show certain playlists on weekdays but not on weekends, on holidays or even at specific break times throughout the day.

Playlists and scheduling together give you full control over what your screens show and when, making small business digital signage way more effective.

How much does digital signage cost?

After the initial free trial ScreenCloud costs $20 per screen, per month. This is monitored by the number of screens you have added to your account. Connect a screen partway through the month and only get charged for the rest of the month; disconnect a screen and your account gets credited with the remaining time.

This makes digital signage a flexible marketing option for your small business. If you only need the screens at certain times of year, or on certain days, that’s all you get charged for. If you want to add, remove or edit screens at any time, there aren’t tricky cancellation or billing processes. Delete the screen and you’re done. This saves on cost and makes the admin side of managing your digital signage easy, which in a small business, is exactly what you want.

In summary: digital signage for your small business

Using digital signage software for a small business is as easy as plugging in your TV. You don't need technical skills to set up media players on your screens, and with ScreenCloud, content management is a breeze.

Whatever screen size, however many locations, or whatever your signage needs - from advertising to information - ScreenCloud makes the perfect partner.

Here's a quick recap of the benefits of using ScreenCloud.

• Easy setup, free trial and no credit card details needed
• Start at any time - no waiting for consultation calls
• Low cost
• Integrates with any TV screen
• Content management system that anyone can use - no training required
• Easy to add content
• Manage content easily between playlists and schedules
• Delete and add screens as needed

Start today, visit ScreenCloud to access your free trial.