Digital Signage Strengths Resemble Those of Growing Digital Billboard Networks
Out-of-home advertising -the nice-sounding term for all types of advertising consumed away from home, including digital signage- is likely to become an even more important component of the advertising landscape with this week’s announcement that Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings will roll out digital billboards in four more cities: Akron, OH, Columbus, OH, Memphis, TN, and Wichita, KS.
Making up the digital billboard network in each city are:
* Memphis: five 14-foot-by-48-foot digital displays;
* Akron: six 14-foot-by-48-foot digital displays;
* Wichita: six 12-foot-by-24-foot digital displays;
* Columbus: six 12-foot-by-24-foot digital displays.
While the size of Clear Channel Outdoor’s displays and its ongoing commitment to building digital billboards networks are impressive, what’s more impressive is the flexibility the new medium brings to the advertising community. The company plans to rotate advertising copy on each network display in an eight-second loop, totaling a minimum of 1,250 advertising spots every day!
Compare that staggering number to the paltry 23 advertising messages the signs would have carried for weeks or even months if they had been made of paper and ink.
What’s clear from the Clear Channel Outdoors example is the dramatic impact technology is having on the way advertisers can communicate their unique marketing messages to people away from home.
The same is true of indoor digital signage networks. They combine the appeal of television -graphics, text, animation, sound and video- with a growing presence in retail stores, malls and other venues where consumers go to shop. Perhaps even more important, just like the Clear Channel digital billboards, the messaging on digital signage networks can change frequently -even more than a thousand times per day if required.
The flexibility to update messaging easily throughout the day is huge in retail. Consider only a few examples. First, many large retail stores spend seemingly countless hours changing thousands of printed signs in various departments to keep their promotional and marketing messages in line with their retail goals. Digital signage can slash the time spent on this activity. Second, updating or replacing signs at different times of the day to match the changing demographics and desires of patrons is at best difficult. Imagine a cafe in a mall that must post its specials on a placard outside its entrance three times per day -once for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Now extend that concept to other retailers in the same mall that would like to target their messaging to seniors in the morning, students after school and families in the evening. With printed signs, such day parting is nearly impossible. But with digital signage, day parting marketing messages is simple and fast. Third, consider ROI. Traditional signs do not lend themselves to advertising support in a retail setting. Digital signs do, and best of all because they’re easy to change, advertising messages can be sold again and again.
There’s one other important component of Clear Channel Outdoor’s announcement that relates to indoor digital signage networks. The four newly announced cities join deployments in Chicago, Boston, Cleveland, Las Vegas and Minneapolis/St. Paul. In total, the company intends to roll out networked digital billboards in at least 100 markets by the end of this year.
How long will it be before Clear Channel Outdoor’s parent company, which owns or operates 40 TV stations throughout the country, begins combining the sale of commercial TV time with the sale of networked digital billboard ads? What sorts of economies of scale and sales synergies would that type of approach bring?
In the indoor digital signage areas, how long will it be before competing, fractured digital signage networks coalesce into a unified market that can be sold in the same way? Just forward this column to Google. Given what they’ve been up to in the online, radio and television ad markets, they might just be the ones to pull it off.
David Little is a digital signage authority with 20 years of experience helping professionals use technology to more effectively communicate their messages. Keywest Technology specializes in technology for digital signage. Visit http://www.keywesttechnology.com and expand your marketing horizons.
Harness the Power of Print Ads
So what’s the magic formula for making your money multiply in print advertising? For small and medium sized businesses, print advertising feels much like going to Las Vegas and putting money down on the table. And often times, the owner gets burned.
Well, the problem centers on the way you’re going about it. The first step is a realization of what’s going on around you. I suggest that you pull out a phone book and open it up to an area of specialization that is not yours (this will give you a less emotional, more objective perspective). There are typically a minimum of 15-20 competitors in any niche. Next, I suggest putting yourself in the position of a consumer
trying to determine who they should spend their time calling.
As you can plainly see, everyone follows a pretty set formula (which they basically copied from each other). And that is…”here’s our logo, here’s what we do, please decide you want our services and call so we can close the sale”. There’s little that really differentiates one vendor from another. And so, the truth of the matter is that a number of the vendors you’re looking at don’t get good lead traffic from their yellow page ads. And it’s for this reason that you can shine in print advertising.
What would happen if you were to approach it differently and more elegantly for your prospect. What if, instead of ‘let me sell to you right out of the gate’, you would offer them some information they could use. What if you were to give of yourself before the transaction and assisted them immediately? The answer is that the consumer would bust down the door looking for you.
For example, let’s say that you’re a roofing contractor. You could put an ad in the yellow pages that shows the logo, says, “We’re Johnson Roofers.. we specialize in repairs, maintenance, replacement, and planning. Here’s a phone number for our representative. Please go ahead and call.” What if, instead, you were to immediately report called “5 Mistakes to Avoid When Selecting a Roofing Contractor” or “Transform Your House into a Dream Home – 5 Roofing Options to Suit any Budget”?
This technique is called permission marketing where you’re offering information up front in order to get information from them which will enable you to continue to market to them (remember, it takes about 7, 8 and 9 times for them to have contact with you before they’re ready to buy). The technique is applicable for all forms of advertising…newspaper ads, internet ads, direct mailers, etc.
The truth of the matter is that people don’t want to be sold to…the want to buy. And when you approach them in a non-intrusive, friendly, information-sharing way, they will respond positively. Now a lot of owners are frightened using this approach because it’s “unorthodox”. Yes, I suppose it is if you consider “orthodox” to mean ineffective. My suggestion is to use this technique and at least see what it yield.
Scott Campbell owns Impact Marketing, Inc out of Atlanta, GA. He installs a marketing system, called the “Ultimate Marketing System”, into small businesses and practices in the Atlanta, GA area.
Learn more about Impact Marketing and its solutions here at http://www.impactyourcompany.com.
Squeezing Every Last Cent From Your Marketing Budget
Since hiring a high-powered public relations firm is not in the cards for most business owners, coming up with creative ways to market on a budget is an essential part of any business plan. Your marketing efforts will grease the wheels of your business and get it moving in the right direction. Don’t be intimidated by the hype surrounding the extravagant advertising budgets during the Super Bowl. Not everyone needs to spend millions for a thirty second ad. There are plenty of cheap and effective ways to get your name out there and get your products in the hands of customers.
Don’t Let Your Marketing Efforts Fall on Deaf Ears
Quantity is not quality in the marketing world. Believe it or not, sending out advertisements to everyone in the United States is not a cost effective way to spend your marketing dollars. It is a waste of your time and money to advertise to people you know won’t be interested in your product.
Why would a dating service targeting 20-35 year olds living in the Pacific Northwest send a promotional coupon to a ninety-eight year old in Texas? Explore your customer base and figure out where you fit.
There are numerous ways to identify your target market. You will likely have an idea of the type of customer you want to attract from the get-go. It is just a matter of reaching those customers and seeing if they are truly interested in your product.
Don’t go wasting half your marketing budget on your quest to find your target market. If you think your customers will be active adults fond of the outdoors, you might choose to visit local nature societies or park reserves in order to see if that group really likes your product. Instead of wasting time surveying thousands of people, go straight to the source. Find your niche and stay there.
Creating a Marketing Plan Within Your Budget
Now that you know who you are marketing to, you’ll have to figure out how to do it. The “how” will be determined by your budget. Begin by asking yourself several simple questions:
-How much money can I spend on marketing?
-What type of advertising do I want to do?
-Where should I do this advertising?
While it is impossible to accurately foresee where you will want to spend your marketing money for the next year, you should be able to make some rough estimates. It can be helpful to research some of your potential competitors to see where their ad dollars end up. It is always good to learn from other people’s flops. If you identify a certain ad campaign as ineffective, you’ve already saved money by avoiding the same mistake.
Cost Effective Ways to Market Your Business
Creativity is the key to any marketing plan. A creative home video featuring your business may find greater fame on YouTube.com than any television advertisement ever will. Not only is that free, it is effective.
The Internet has opened a whole new world of marketing opportunities, many of them free of charge. Both blogs and public forums have become a great way for business owners to connect with customers on a personal level. This is not about pitching potential customers; it’s about sharing your opinion and having a conversation. Such a medium can be especially advantageous in establishing yourself as an expert in your field.
Article marketing has become another increasingly popular means through which companies market their products. This process requires you to write informative articles relating to the your industry. Once you’ve written a batch of articles, they can be submitted to article databases and then distributed to websites throughout the Internet. Each and every one of those articles will have links going directly to your company’s website. That is free publicity at its best!
Maximizing a budget for a new business is never easy. When you identify your target market, create a marketing plan, and seek out marketing opportunities within your budget, you set yourself up to see sales climb.
Roger Haumann owns a drywall contracting business by day and runs the blog http://www.getarush.blogspot.com by night. Roger is also a frequent contributor to http://www.articlemarketer.com, an online article distribution service.
High Quality Perceptions Start with Truthful Expressions and a Well-Conceived Messaging Strategy
Why do you make the decision to buy what you do?
Is it the promise of a desired result? Maybe someone’s recommendation? Or, perhaps you just “feel right” about it. Like buying this product or service is an extension or an expression of who you are?
Good reasons, all. But certainly not conclusive.
If any one human being had the definitive answer to this question and somehow was able to apply it in a profit-making venture, no doubt he or she would be quite wealthy. But you and I both know there’s no one answer. Instead, we have theories. Maybe we can lump all those theories together and we can begin to formulate a complete answer. That could work, but then we create another problem: leveraging this All-Powerful Marketing Answer into an actionable plan our creative minds can work though and execute.
Why? Because much of The All-Powerful Marketing Answer is based on perception–an exceedingly difficult thing to manage.
Often, perceptions aren’t even based in reality. They’re the derivative of opinions based on other opinions, which are based on other opinions. Facts get lost, and whether positive or negative, the truth becomes irrelevant.
Unless, of course, we’re able to identify the core truths of the brand we’re offering a market and be disciplined enough to build our entire branding, marketing and advertising strategy on that foundation of truth. NO MATTER HOW RISKY OR RENEGADE THAT STRATEGY MAY BE.
“Good theory, Barone,” you say. “Where’s the evidence it holds any water?” you ask.
Hopefully, in your financial portfolios.
A recent four-year study of 33 publicly-traded companies showed that perception (according to the EquiTrend method) had positive effects on the return on investment into those companies’ stocks. In other words, the better the perception was about a company, the more money it typically made. And when you wipe away all the fluff and bubbles, isn’t making money the ultimate black and white, clear as day, irrefutable measure of a successful branding, marketing and advertising strategy?
As a copywriter, my point in presenting you this idea of creating a perception based on truth is that it is, in large part, a task accomplished by what you say to your market and how you say it.
And if I may offer a little insight into the matter: many businesses don’t get that or practice it. They may know that having a well-designed professional image is important, but often times, the messaging takes a strategic backseat and is often relegated to the person who has a little extra time to whip something up. In larger companies, it may not be as simple as having “Bob in the back cube” come up with something. However, there could be a disconnect between the best, most strategic way to verbally engage your customers and what you’re doing in your marketing collateral, on your website, in your advertising or in your retail environments.
In other words, creating a positive perception isn’t the work of “afterthinking.” It requires deep thinking, hard research and deliberate execution by your entire marketing, branding and advertising team.
Something to think about, anyway.
Adam Barone is a freelance copywriter for such clients as The Timberland Company, Bank One, Sprint, and others. Subscribe his e-newsletter, CopyTHINK at http://adambarone.com/mailinglist/?p=subscribe. (c)Adam Barone 2006.
Digital Displays: A Little More About High Definition
A display panel can be SD, or standard definition, ED, or enhanced definition, or HD, high definition. Displays are made up of individual picture elements, called pixels. Basically, the idea is the more pixels, the higher the resolution of an image. Thus, an SD display with a pixel count of 704 (horizontal) x 480 vertical) has less resolution than an ED display with 852 x 480 pixels. HD displays, which have even more pixels and are at the top of the resolution food chain for displays, come in three flavors: 720p, 1080i and 1080p. (More on the “i” and the “p” in a moment.)
A 720p HD display has 1280 pixels (horizontal) by 720 (vertical); 1080i and 1080p displays have 1920 pixels by 1080 pixels, or more than 2 million individual picture elements. The letters “i” and “p” stand for interlaced and progressive, respectively. Interlaced displays, like ordinary TV sets and 1080i HDTVs, paint individual lines of pixels back and forth top to bottom across the display on the odd numbered lines (in HDTVs those are 1, 3, 5…1079) first and then the evens (2, 4, 6…1080) before beginning the process over and over. Taken together the odd numbered line “field” and the even numbered line field create one “frame,” or complete still image. There are 30 such frames displayed per second.
Progressive displays, like computer monitors and 1080p HDTVs, display lines sequentially (1, 2, 3… 1080) before beginning the process again. These 1080p HD displays paint 60 new still images on the screen every second. With twice the frame rate (60 versus 30),1080p demands twice the amount of data as 1080i.
That difference in frame rates means different things to different parties interested in high definition. To marketers using an HD as the display technology in a digital signage network, 1080p is the top-of-the-line image quality they can expect to achieve for the foreseeable future. If the message they are communicating requires the utmost resolution, 1080p may be the right choice. However, 1080p displays are more expensive and there will be a price to pay in terms of content storage required to drive that messaging.
To broadcasters who must work within the law administered by the FCC for transmission of HD, 1080p is too much. Simply given what they must work with, 1080p is beyond their capacity to deliver. Thus, 1080i and 720p are the broadcast HD formats.
To movie studios wishing to distribute their films in the highest display format available in the home, 1080p is the answer. Much of the buzz over Blu-ray and HD-DVD optical discs is in part about the ability of the competing formats to deliver superb image quality. Those formats -and their use of a blue frequency laser with a shorter wavelength that can write more data per area of storage- were designed to be able to write the all of the 1080p data to disk that’s needed to playback a full-length movie plus bonus material.
But here’s the most important party in the 1080p HD resolution equation: the audience. Whether you’re a digital signage marketer, a broadcaster or a movie studio, you are faced with same question: How do I affordably deliver the level of quality to my audience that satisfies my desired communications goal? In other words, how much resolution is enough for the communications task at hand?
Only you can answer that question. To illustrate how subjective the answer is, consider this: ABC, ESPN, Fox and My Network TV rely on 720p, or 720 progressive lines, for HD service while NBC, CBS and PBS rely on 1080i. Perhaps before you decide which level of HD resolution is most appropriate for your high definition digital signage network, you should flip between ESPN’s “Sportscenter HD” (720p), “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” (1080i) and “March of the Penguins” (1080p) playing back from an HD-DVD player or “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” (1080p) from a Blu-ray player on your 1080p display. You may be surprised by what you observe.
David Little is a digital signage authority with 20 years of experience helping professionals use technology to more effectively communicate their messages. Keywest Technology specializes in technology for digital signage. Visit http://www.keywesttechnology.com and expand your marketing horizons.