How to Use Digital Signage to Engage Customers and Sell More
Whether you are trying to increase foot traffic, sell through a line or get each customer to spend more with you, digital signage is the answer. It is an extremely powerful advertising medium. Provided, of course, you put it to work for you in the right way.
This article is all about the use of digital signs for cafes and restaurants. You won’t find any fluff in it. No approaches that are only effective for clothing retailers or ideas that are so time-consuming to implement that they are not practical for most restaurants or cafes.
Advertise In-Store Promotions
Top of the list is using digital signage to share the details of your promotions. It does not matter what you have to offer, share it with your customers on all of your digital screens.
Rotate Your Promotions During the Day
Most bars, restaurants and cafes serve different types of customers at different times of the day. For example, on a weekday, at lunchtime, they might be serving mainly workers. People who are there for a quick bite to eat and do not have time for dessert.
For them, a promotion that offers them a free coffee if they order a dessert as a takeaway would be tempting. They could potentially enjoy it at their desk while settling down to do that afternoon’s work. Or you could offer them a 10% discount if they pop in for a takeout meal on their way home from work, that day.
Promote Your Daily Specials
Digital screens are an especially good way to tempt your customers to try your daily specials. It is not hard for a staff member to take a nice photo of the dish and use a template like this one to create an image that can be used on your digital screens. Or, better still, let the supplier that provides you with your digital screens create a template that features your branding. Given the fact that many restaurants and cafes have higher profit margins on their daily specials, finding effective ways to sell more of them is important.
Encourage Customers to Try Something New
You can do something similar with new dishes or products that you want your customer to try. Perhaps you want to sell more vegan food but are having trouble getting enough people interested in eating tofu. Running a promotion that offers toasted tofu as a free topping for a starter salad, is a great way to get people to at least taste it.
Once they realize that they like it they are far more likely to order it as a main dish. Providing you with the numbers you need to be able to expand your vegan range and be ahead of the competition in a market that is set to explode. As you can see here, the US vegan food market is already worth $13.7 billion.
Create Ambiance and Enhance Theme Nights
You can also use digital screens as part of your décor. They are incredibly versatile. Mid-morning you might want to set a corner of your restaurant up as a bit of a play area. Including having screens showing images of kids´ cartoon characters. Space parents who want brunch with their kids will love.
Later you can clear away the toys, lay the table with nice cutlery, soften the lighting, and display romantic images. Transforming that same corner into a quiet spot for couples to enjoy.
There are lots and lots of ways to use display screens to enhance your theme nights. You can use both still images and videos to do this. Even text displays can work well for certain events.
Promote Customer Loyalty
For cafes, bars and restaurants, repeat customers are vital. Customer loyalty is like gold. Someone that loves what you have to offer, will come back regularly. They will want to celebrate their birthday with you, bring their dates or partner in for dinner and buy a takeaway on their way home from work.
Loyalty programs are a fantastic way to turn an occasional customer into a regular one. They enable you to build a lasting and strong relationship with someone. A symbiotic relationship that benefits both parties.
So, it makes sense to use your digital display screens to promote your loyalty scheme. You could do that using a simple image and text ad or by running a short video on the screens people see as they enter your establishment. Inviting them to sign up before ordering to get a big discount is a particularly powerful way to get more people to join your loyalty program.
The above is just a taste of how digital advertising screens can be used by cafes and restaurants. Once you have one installed, you are sure to find many other ways to use them.
