We are eagerly counting down the days to the year’s biggest holiday! An exciting time for shoppers and consumers as they get to explore the many treats their favorite businesses have to offer. Meanwhile, from the business side, it’s an entirely different story. There’s more pressure than ever to capture a spike in traffic. In case your digital signage holiday content is not yet ready for the weeks ahead, these quick and easy ideas get you off to a strong start!
Create countdowns for upcoming holidays
Everyone knows how many days are left until Christmas and the New Year. It’s the excitement and the sensation of counting down the days that makes everything a bit more special. To add the flair of anticipation, tie in unique content each of the approaching days to the upcoming holidays. For example, push unique daily sales for every day of the month!
No matter what setup you come up with, you don’t need to worry much about the technicalities of it as OnSign TV has several countdown apps to customize.
Build a holiday environment
Given the time of year, there are several theme ideas to choose from when it comes to building an ambiance. Snowfall is the obvious choice. Even in parts of the world which don’t get to see much of it during this time of year, snow is synonymous with the Christmas season. Cold weather in winter is complemented by a cozy fire. This is always a pleasant decoration to enhance any environment.
With digital signage software, you can easily add overlays or backgrounds of festive visuals to all your content. Maybe add a steaming cup of cocoa to the corner of your menu board, or a snowfall ambiance to user-generated content.
Highlight discounts and loyalty programs
A standard practice is to run special discounts and offers before, during, and even after the holidays. Keep your audience in the know of any limited seasonal items or extended return policies by putting them at the forefront of your digital signage holiday content. Loyalty programs come in all shapes and sizes, and it’s likely you already have some unique ideas cooking! With digital signage added to the mix, they’re a lot easier to execute.
We’ve covered unique ways to use digital signage to engage consumers in previous articles. One of them was using QR-codes to provoke an interaction. You can set up a unique campaign offering points to consumers daily for every visit to the store. Simply have them scan the QR-code and cash in their points for a discount once they reach a certain threshold. It’s the engagement, activity, and actual decision to interact in some way that matters, even if they don’t buy anything every time they visit.
Inform customers about changes
Discounts and seasonal items might not be the only changes coming to your store in the month of December. Inform customers, old and new, about any updates such as a change in work hours or availability of certain services. This is especially important with new services, just as with seasonal items.
In case you changed the physical layout of your store, let your regular customers know by putting in a bit of wayfinding into the mix. Direct them to your best-sellers or items on special offer. In some cases, you might consider creating a snapshot of the floorplan to help customers find their way, whether through traditional or digital signage.
Enrich your digital signage holiday content
For all the uses listed above, use the many copyright free sources available to you for getting lovely seasonal stock photos and videos. Use them as sales banners, decorative frames, or even video overlays to add more dynamic elements to your content.
Be sure to explore your digital signage software platform as they often offer ready-to-use visuals such as stickers, background images, or apps dedicated to enriching the visual aspect of your content.
Schedule unique content weeks in advance
Speaking of digital signage software, one of its main advantages lies in the planning and scheduling of your content. Keep in mind that you can brainstorm and create your content weeks in advance! This includes the daily sales we mentioned earlier, changing daily as we approach the holidays. Simply schedule them to pop up at the appropriate time, and you don’t need to worry about any details while you focus on attending your customers during the busy weeks ahead.
Take it a step further. Prepare and schedule the content for January’s campaigns, offering early-bird discounts, unique loyalty programs, yearly memberships, or new payment plans. Whatever else you have to offer at the year’s beginning can be created early. This is a great way to have everything neatly organized and prepared weeks in advance. Free up your workload during the holidays and hopefully you’ll be able to spend worry free Christmas Day and New Year’s Day.
Cover image by Rodion Kutsaiev.