Is your Digital Signage creating a call to action?

-Deacon Wardlow

Oil change $19.99. Bottomless cup of coffee: $0.99! Sale! Town Hall meeting: 7pm. A lot of Digital Signage is failing the target audience. We push out information without considering the medium nor the end-result. Digital Signage is dynamic, alive, changeable and still unique enough to be eye-catching for even the most mundane of messages (time and temperature).

Without a call to action, Digital Signage falls flat. What is the reason for the target audience to do anything other than forget your message when they’ve passed by the display? Regardless of the medium (LED Sign, LCD, DLP, etc.) content which lacks a call to action fails.

A call to action doesn’t have to be a clarion call to the masses. Simply adding a small touch, a few words to something changes the nature of the message and makes it more appealing to the audience:

OLD: Oil Change $19.99
New: Meet Bubba, have a cup of coffee & an Oil Change, all for $19.99

OLD: Coffee: $0.99!
NEW: Free coffee with cup rental: $0.99!

OLD: Town hall meeting: 7pm
NEW: Be heard and be a part of the community, Town Hall Meeting @ 7pm!

The call to action is often lacking and this underutilizes a valuable resource for communication to your audience. A monologue (Coffee: $0.99) becomes an intriguing message which potentially leads to a stop-in (Free coffee with cup rental: $0.99!). Having your audience connect with you draws them in, makes your message more memorable, more effective, and your signage becomes dynamic.

Put a special on (i.e. free drink for the best joke emailed to: _____@email.com), give people something in return for their taking the time to stop in or do something. Put up messages with no other purpose than to make someone smile (give a person a smile and they’ll remember you and come looking for more).

The next time you’re putting together a message, ask yourself if it contains a call to action. If it doesn’t, step back and see how it can be modified to turn the monologue into a dialogue. You have the opportunity to start a great conversation, make it happen today!

*I invite you to comment here and/or email me directly with requests at deacon@vantageled.com. Vantage LED has white paper resources and more educational material on the website (http://www.vantageled.com), please check it out when you have a moment. Note all posts/thoughts/writings are strictly the viewpoint of me and me alone and do not reflect nor speak for Vantage LED’s beliefs, attitudes, thoughts, etc. unless specifically stated.