Obtaining information from screens is no new place for the average American; nor is using screens or digital displays to market to customers. Today, the biggest challenge for the marketer to make sure their customer doesn’t see the digital screen as “white noise” means they have to put targeted, pertinent information in front of their customers at the right time. This can be a challenge when there might be different demographics of customers at different times of day. For example, a town mall might see older customers and stay-at-home moms during the first half of the day and then teens and college students toward the last half. These customers are very different from each other, so getting targeted information to them at the right time can be a challenge. This challenge has many digital signage users using dayparting to make sure their message is relevant to their target audience at the right time of day. Dayparting is simply timing and placing the right digital signage message to the right audience at the right time of day in an automated fashion. Here we will explore 3 ways you can use dayparting to make your digital signage strategy more effective.

  1. Know your visitors and how they vary during the day.
    Airports and sporting complexes see a wide variety of people throughout the day. Airports host people at all hours and sporting complexes house anything from professional to little league events, or even concert events. Know who is walking through the door and what they are looking to do there. If it’s people catching an early morning flight use soft tones, give them important news and weather for their day and maybe direct them to the nearest coffee shop by their gate. If it’s parents at the sporting complex for a weekend long tournament, give them entertainment options for after the game, kid-friendly places to eat or places to buy memorabilia to take home. We would think it obvious for the QSR (Quick Service Restaurant) to change their messages 3 times a day for the three main mealtimes, but there could be different varied segments within those times. If a restaurant’s hours of operation go well into the late night, there could be a whole other dining crowd they could talk to differently than they do their traditional 6:00pm crowd.
  2. Know what you want your audience to do once they’ve seen the display.
    There are different reasons to use digital signage, so it’s important to know what you hope the targeted visitor does after engaging. Hotel and convention centers might use dayparting in their digital signage strategy to highlight maps and schedules as the convention goer and vendors start their day but as the day winds down they might highlight their hotel spa or laundry services. Both messages solve a problem, but if they were given at the wrong time of day it could have been white noise to a hurried businessperson.
  3. Don’t forget to strengthen your brand.
    Digital signage is a great way to engage your visitors for the purpose of marketing, but it’s also a great opportunity to strengthen your brand. Often times digital signage is placed in a place where visitors are waiting or standing still before going to the next thing. Using dayparting at high traffic times with fun interactive games or up-to-date news allows the visitor to think about something other than their wait; keeping them happy in the long-run helps to strengthen your brand and build loyalty. Another example could be colleges or university campuses. The main groups on campus on any given day are current students, faculty and staff and visiting potential students. While their digital signage might be mostly targeted toward those who are already on campus, they can use dayparting to target their digital signage to potential students when they know they are hosting higher numbers. This helps to connect these potential students (and their parents) with the philosophy of the school while also getting the information to the current students and staff.   

Applying a strong dayparting plan to your digital signage strategy ensures that you’re talking to the right people at the right time to help them solve a problem. Always remembering, as your visitors change so should your digital signage strategy. Take the time to keep the content fresh and relevant to whoever visits.

If you would like to know more about how digital signage can work for you, contact us to speak with a digital signage expert, or fill out the form below. Our team of designers can customize a plan and provide a turnkey solution for any application.

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