You've likely heard of the benefits of digital signage, like increasing sales and boosting customer engagement. However, you've avoided pulling the trigger because of the significant startup capital costs. 

Perhaps you plan to buy standard digital displays, but a cursory look across multiple manufacturers' websites confirms your initial reluctance. 

If you have smart TVs, this wouldn't be a problem, as long as you choose digital signage software with utility to deliver signage through smart TVs. 

Most establishments already have smart TVs anyway, so going this route presents a cost-effective way to introduce digital signage without breaking the bank. 

Below, we share how to extract the most benefits from smart TV-compatible digital signage software. We also discuss the features of smart TV-compatible digital signage software, factors to consider when choosing software, and much more. 

Features of smart TV-compatible digital signage software

Some of the notable features of smart TV-compatible digital signage software include: 

Integration with a host of smart TV options

Smart TVs come with different specs, so the digital signage solution you choose must be able to integrate with various options. This is essential, especially if you have different brands of smart TVs in your establishment. 

If a smart TV only has a Chrome browser, you should still be able to run digital signage without a hassle. And if your smart TVs run on Android, the results should be the same. 

This seamless compatibility with a broad range of digital signage hardware makes implementation easier, helping you maximise returns in no time. There’s no need to dive into technical realms that require you to pay for help. 

Remote management

Whether you're managing the digital signage system or you've outsourced it to a freelancer, managing your screens from any location is a lifesaver. 

This means you don't have to be in the office or store location to track, plan, schedule, edit designs, and monitor what's happening on all your digital signage displays. 

This feature brings a lot of flexibility in terms of who manages digital signs because digital signage software also provides means to assign different levels of authority and tiered access. 

Tiered access means you can retain maximum control over the system without exactly micromanaging everything. 

Screen previews

Screen preview is one of the management tools available in digital signage software solutions. This feature helps you see what’s cued and scheduled on all digital screens. You can see what’s currently playing and what’s next. 

For example, imagine you run a bar, and it’s almost midnight on the 1st of January, a new year. You’ve asked the staff responsible for digital sign graphics to create a series of designs to build excitement for the new year. 

About two hours before the new year, you check the system and find an error in the timeline. The digital signage content for 11:50 pm is scheduled for midnight. Thankfully, you caught it in time to ensure you get the desired results. 

Screen monitoring is super essential, especially if you’re running multiple screens. You can avoid scheduling errors, fixing them before they are published, and confusing your customers. 

Powerful scheduling

We touched on scheduling digital signage content briefly above, but it’s much more than creating a timetable for what to display. Powerful scheduling adds an extra layer of rules. 

With “rules,” you can specify additional details such as frequency, duration, and time. For example, say for the new year designs you created, you wanted to inform customers of discounts entering the new year. 

Let’s say the promotion is for customers to get a 24% discount for the first 24 minutes of the new year. There’s no point in displaying the content 25 minutes after the new year because the discount is now useless to the customers. 

Advanced scheduling helps set this up beforehand: only display between 12:00 am and 12:24 am. There’s no need to wait behind your computer to stop the display and cue a new display by 12:24 am. 

Developer API

Developer APIs are a powerful medium through which software solutions communicate. Thanks to APIs, you can easily integrate digital management software with your own software to automatically schedule content and create screens programmatically.

Rather than creating digital signage capabilities from scratch, use a Developer API with your own software for a significantly lower fraction of the cost of developing those digital signage capabilities yourself.

Template editor

As a small mom-and-pop store or small business, designing and creating content is one of the major hurdles to getting started. The templates editor provides an easy-to-use and cost-effective solution for solving this challenge. 

Digital signage solutions come with a content management system filled with thousands of design templates, and like Canva, you can select any template and edit it to your taste and need.  

You can add your business’s brand identity and reuse designs as necessary. 

Manage each screen independently

Imagine a retail clothing store with different sections: kids, teens, and adults. Now, it’s back-to-school season, and you’re only showing back-to-school promotions across all the sections. 

Showing different content in each section is a more powerful way to use digital signage. That way, you can share back-to-school promotional content on the screens located in the children’s section and perhaps run a lingerie promotion in the women’s section. 

Targeted content gets more results because it connects better with your audience and sparks positive engagements, thus aiding your sales, customer acquisition, or cross-selling objectives. 

Access many of these features on Luna Screens, a powerful smart TV-compatible digital signage software today.

How to maximise ROI with smart TV-compatible digital signage software

Here is how to maximise ROI with smart TV-compatible digital signage software:

1. Define your objectives

Why do you want to install digital signs? Answering this question will explain how you use digital signs and provide a yardstick for measuring success. 

Do you want to use it to engage your audience, or do you want to increase sales?

If you use them for cross-selling but sales remain the same, the system is not yielding results. 

Identify your why and simplify it into specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound objectives. 

For example, “We want to increase app downloads by 5% month-on-month by adding a specific barcode to our screens” or “We want to increase the number of people who take advantage of our happy hour from 50 to 100 within six months.” 

The objectives will determine factors like location and how much investment you pour into content development. 

Using the screens to engage customers will require more creative content than those used for informational purposes (like digital menu boards) only. 

2. Identify your target audience

Who are you creating digital signs for? What’s the makeup of your customers? Answers to these questions are critical in ensuring you reap the highest ROI from your interactive digital signage investments. 

An example of how this plays out is a bar with different kinds of customers during weekdays and weekends. 

Let’s assume the weekend customers are mostly tourists who only spend Saturdays and Sundays in your location. 

Then, it wouldn’t be prudent to show this group content that prioritises only events happening during the week over weekend promotions. 

3. Choose a feature-rich digital signage system that meets your business needs

Do you want to share PDFs and data visualisations during meetings? Then, it’s important to stick with solutions that support these media types. 

Perhaps you want to roll out the system across multiple locations in different countries, then a robust system that can support such a scale and digital signage network should be a priority. 

Later, We will delve more into the factors you should consider, but note that your digital signage software choice will affect the ease of installation and use, performance, and whether the system will meet your initial business objectives. 

4. Develop a content strategy

The core aspects of content strategy include “planning, creation, publication, management, and governance of content.” 

A content strategy ensures there’s a clear plan and end goal for every piece of content you create. Think of content strategy as the glue that ties your objectives, target audience, and content creation. 

It creates a clear direction for every visual you put out, ensuring it’s geared towards maximising engagements with your target audience and meeting your objectives. 

You can begin by creating monthly content plans. That way, you already know what you want to promote or share for upcoming events or holidays. It’s forward-thinking!

5. Assign responsibility

One of the mistakes most business owners or leaders make is not assigning someone to lead the project, especially if it’s a medium to large enterprise. 

A relatively small business may get away with no clear structure, but most big companies cannot. 

There must be a clear indication of who plants content, who creates content, and who dictates the schedule. 

There’s also the gap for fixing errors, scheduling maintenance, and generally ensuring digital signage systems run smoothly. 

6. Choose appropriate locations

Choose the right locations for the business objectives. For example, it’s more appropriate to place a digital screen targeted at employees in the canteen or lounge than the reception, since most employees visit and spend considerable time there. 

Some factors you may consider when choosing a location include:

• The business objective(s)

• High-traffic area

• Locations with significant wait times or queues

• Distance of the customers from the screen 

• The average time spent in front of the digital signage screen

7. Follow best practices

Some best practices can lead to exponential results. Some of these recommendations include:

• Use a call to action to make users take specific action after viewing the content. Make it visible, and ensure there’s urgency and reward to force the viewers to take action immediately. 

• Use QR codes to connect your physical stores and digital assets like surveys, apps, and websites.

• Do A/B testing to experiment with content. Track which content resonates with your customers more and discard the non-performing ones.

• Post attention-grabbing content by being clever and creative. That said, know your audience to avoid making humour with subjects they may find offensive. 

To learn more about increasing your ROI with digital signage, read: Maximizing ROI with Self-Managed Digital Signage: A Comprehensive Guide.

Factors to consider when choosing smart TV-compatible digital signage software

So, how do you choose which digital signage software to adopt? Which factors should you prioritise? Are all digital signage software applications the same? 

To answer the last question: all digital display solutions are not the same. There may be some overlapping features, but overall, some solutions will work better for you than others. So, it’s imperative to get this step right, or else you’ll be on the market shopping for a new vendor soon. 

Here are the factors we think you should prioritise:

Your business needs

We highlighted earlier how identifying your objectives for implementing digital signage to maximise your investments is pivotal for success. 

You don’t need any sophisticated solution or large budget if you merely want to use the digital displays as a menu board or price list. A simple solution would do.

However, an enterprise-grade solution is paramount if you need advanced features or need to service a huge signage network. 

As you can see, your business needs or objectives will play a big part in not only your choice of solution but potentially your upfront cost.

Specs of your smart TVs

Every software solution has the technology they’re compatible with. You must assess smart TVs and note the type of features and specs they have. 

You may need to speak with the vendor’s support team to ascertain if their solution is compatible with your TVs. The purpose of this step is to minimise your upfront costs and ensure you’re up and running in little to no time. 

Luna Screens is a smart TV-compatible software that offers seamless compatibility with a broad range of devices and smart TVs. Learn How to turn your smart TV into a dynamic advertising tool with Luna Screens. 

Features

You need an advanced solution if you want analytics and a digital signage display that automatically changes content based on who’s in front of them. 

Or if, for example, you cannot afford the time or money to create content, then subscribing to a system that provides free templates would be important to you. 

Other features like advanced scheduling and support for different types of content are equally important. 

That’s why it’s vital to identify your business needs first, how you intend to use the digital signage platform, and your prevailing business context and realities. 

Then, you can match your business needs to the software features.  

Ability to scale

Say you have only four smart TVs currently, and the software can power them efficiently and effectively. 

You need to ask yourself if the same application can handle the digital signage network if it grows to 100 smart TVs across multiple locations. 

It’s super important for the software to remain robust and maintain the same performance, whether it’s 3 or 100 smart TVs. Or perhaps you require a bespoke solution for your company. Can they provide it?

That’s why it’s also critical to approach analysing your needs based on your short and long-term business goals. In essence, you need a solution that can grow with you when the need arises. 

Ease of use

Digital signage software should be easy to use, both from the standpoint of installation and day-to-day operations. 

We are talking of a simple, user-friendly, and intuitive interface that makes content creation, upload, or publication straightforward. 

You’re already running multiple screens, each having its own schedule. The last thing you need is a solution that makes your process more cumbersome. 

In terms of ease of use, the system should also be able to adapt content that fits and looks good on all smart TVs, irrespective of size. 

Ease of use also extends to things like automatic updates and integrating the software with other tools or apps like Google Sheets, YouTube, or data visualisation tools. 

Available level of support and customer reviews

What level of support do they offer? If someone needs to be on the phone walking you through the hard yards, can you get that? What if you have a billing issue? Are they responsive?

These are some of the questions customer reviews can help you answer. Moreover, you can use the ratings to assess if their product and actions match their promises. 

That said, it’s also important to be wary of false reviews from companies with unethical business practices. So, comb everywhere for reviews and trust your judgment. 

Budget and price

Another vital factor to consider when choosing is your budget. Software providers have different pricing models, so pick a vendor that aligns with your financial position, especially since pricing is subscription-based. 

Many providers offer a per-screen payment, while some offer a bulk payment or other pricing model. You’ll also likely be able to use some providers, like Luna Screens, for free. 

However, you’ll have limited access to features, and your content will have a watermark in place. Notwithstanding, you don’t have to break the bank for great digital signage software. 

Not sure where to start? Read our article on Cost-Effective Digital Signage Solutions. 

Cloud-based and secure

If you want to access your digital signage network from anywhere, then a cloud-based system is the way to go. 

Aside from the “access-from-anywhere” benefit, using a cloud-based system requires less upfront cost and ongoing maintenance. The provider handles all the server setup and maintenance, leaving you to only worry about content and scheduling. 

That said, because it’s cloud-based, it’s equally imperative that the whole setup is secure since you may be exchanging critical business information across the network.

Benefits of smart TV-compatible digital signage software

Smart TV-compatible digital signage software presents tremendous benefits, including the following: 

Budget-friendly

Smart TVs are relatively cheaper than commercial-grade digital signage displays, which means compatible digital signage software significantly reduces your upfront cost. 

Additionally, commercial-grade digital signage displays require technicians and experts to set up, in addition to their ongoing need for expert maintenance. 

So, compatible software also reduces the ongoing cost of operating your digital signage system. 

More environmentally friendly

Due to heat, some commercial signage displays require air conditioning to cool the components. This places extra energy demand, which is not great for the environment. 

Smart TVs are more energy-conservative; thus, having compatible digital signage software makes your setup more energy-efficient. 

Quicker setup

With a smart TV, the setup is faster than when you have to install commercial digital displays. From having to wait for technical support to the resources required, setting up a commercial digital display takes time. 

You also already have the smart TV idling away on your premises anyway, eliminating another potential outlay. Having smart TV-compatible software makes this possible. 

Also, with content templates, you can start serving content on digital signs almost immediately. Moreover, smart TVs typically require no additional software to function as a digital display, further hastening setup time. 

Flexibility

One of the advantages of using smart TVs as digital signs is that they have many use cases. From the canteen to a small meeting in your conference room, you can deploy them with little to no hindrance.

Also, the fact that smart TVs can function independently as an entertainment system adds to this flexibility. For example, you don’t need to connect external speakers to the TV to play music or sounds. 

More targeted reach

Smart TVs are used indoors in closer proximity to the target audience, increasing the odds that your message gets across to the customer. 

We also reckon that customers are likely to expect something more interesting from a TV than traditional or commercial digital signage. 

Takeaway: Smart TV-compatible digital signage software unlocks amazing possibilities 

Smart TV-compatible digital signage software can take a smart TV into a powerful dynamic content delivery system. It unlocks multiple opportunities and benefits, chief of which include cost effectiveness, quicker setup, flexibility, and more targeted reach. 

These solutions feature a cloud-based system for remote management, screen previews for monitoring scheduled content, advanced scheduling for more targeted promotions, content templates for quick deployment, a developer API for expanding the product’s use cases, and much more.

While digital signage provides inherent benefits, practices like developing your content strategy, identifying your target audience, defining your business needs, placing screens in optimal locations, and using QR codes can turbocharge your ROI on digital signage investments. 

A dynamic and easy-to-use digital signage software like Luna Screens simplifies turning every smart TV into a digital display. 

Simply sign up for free on Luna Screens today, and you can create your first content within seconds.