Christmas is the most important sales period of the year for most retailers. Rather than being one event, or one opportunity to sell, it’s a series of promotions and selling milestones. It begins in October when the super-organised start their present buying, then ramps up throughout November, with a huge spike in discounted sales during Black Friday into Cyber Monday. It carries on throughout December as the rest of us buy our gifts, finishing with the traditional Boxing Day and January sales, before we all return to work, normality and our new year’s resolutions.
Digital signage is a great tool for Christmas promotions because it’s so easy to update your messages. It’s also a good way to cut through the noise at a very noisy time of year and increase brand awareness as you increase sales. Below we take a look at some ideas for making your digital signage stand out over the festive season.
1/ Update your content frequently
As we said above, Christmas is really four months for retailers (and that’s not counting the preparation). Keep your storefront and in-store messages fresh by planning frequent updates of your signage content. As well as changing your content from Black Friday deals to last minute gift ideas, you could do a daily advent calendar of special offers or competitions for customers. In fact, most CMS applications are so easy to use that you can change your screens in real time, so make sure to build in some flexibility with templates that you can update if stock of a product is running low or sells out. Running countdowns and promoting exclusivity or scarcity is a good way to give special products an extra push.
2/ Make gifts easy to find
Use retail digital signage in multiple places and throughout your store to signpost different areas. Entice people in with signage in the window and then draw them in to different parts of the store where you have arranged your products by ‘people to buy for’, or by price point, from cheaper stocking fillers and secret Santa gifts, to more expensive special gifts for partners and family. Use it near the till to remind people of something they may have forgotten – like batteries.
3/ Do something special
Christmas is a time to go big with your promotions. Using large screens with striking images and videos is a good way to stand out among the lights and decorations on the high street. This year Coca-Cola is running its biggest ever ‘Holidays Are Coming’ campaign. Its spending includes digital out-of-home with take overs of digital screens and spaces in travel hubs around the UK, including major train stations. It also includes using the digital billboards in Piccadilly Circus in London for Christmas carol karaoke. While not everyone has a huge budget, you can still have huge ambition with your digital signage and create something that engages and entertains your customers.
4/ Promote charity
Christmas is also a time for giving and for giving back. Use your digital signage screens to promote your corporate charity or any corporate social responsibility activities you are doing at Christmas, or have done throughout the year, to let your customers know that you are a responsible brand and that they are supporting a company that cares.
5/ Marry online with offline
Online shopping and home delivery have transformed how we buy gifts, particularly those last-minute ones. Use your digital signage in your high street store to remind people that they can also buy from you online, and tie together your offline and online presence. If you offer a click-and-collect service, make sure that’s well promoted and signposted with digital screens. Outside of opening hours switch the screens in your window display to promote your online store, and especially any gifts that people can buy right up until Christmas Day, like email or print-at-home vouchers.
6/ Contextualise your content
In the northern hemisphere, Christmas shopping can involve going out in some horrible weather. While the retail sector is resilient during this period – people need to buy gifts regardless – the weather can have an impact, especially on whether people choose to shop online or in-store. You can make your signage more engaging by running weather-dependent advertising on your screens, in store windows, within the store or at point-of-sale. With an easy-to-use digital signage content management system, you can create a series of offers suitable to rain or snow or warn/encourage people using forecast data too. If it is going to be a white Christmas, make sure you have an offer on sledges!
If you are planning a digital signage project, contact our experts for advice.
