Digital Signage has become one of the most significant trends in the restaurant business and changed the way restaurants communicate with their clients and promote their products. The eating out market is dynamic and constantly shifting and using digital signage in this environment makes a lot of sense. Here are eight ways to make digital signage work for restaurants:
1. Showcase Menus Dynamically
Digital signage is most frequently used and best suited to advertise menus in restaurants. Digital menus are also easy to change, for instance daily specials and new additions to the seasonal menu only need a few button pushes. Compared to conventional board menus, the digital menus are more attractive and may include pictures, videos, and animations to entice the customers with the food products. You can call attention to some items, suggest the best combinations, or change the price depending on the current interest, which is helpful if the buyers can easily see what is available to them.
Tip: Ensure the images used are quality pictures of dishes and research proves that quality images can help boost sales by as much as 30%.
2. Promote Limited-Time Offers and Specials
Digital signage is best suited for advertising such offers, happy hours, and anything that has a limited time offer. Because content can be changed instantly, restaurants can introduce flash sales or exclusive offers for some days or hours. For instance, if a restaurant wants to advertise a mid-week lunch special, it can make the signage to only show this offer at lunch time. This approach makes people come into the store, buy more, and avoid spoilage by promoting specific products.
Tip: Deploy countdown timers on the digital signage to make customers more anxious about limited time offers and thus make faster decisions.
3. Enhance Branding and Ambience
More importantly, digital signage is not exclusively a practical tool; it can also play a part in building the mood of the restaurant. Through the visibility of your logo, brand colors and even videos telling your story to the customers, you improve brand salience. Depending on your target market, you might wish to play some calm scenes if the target customers are calm types, some animated scenes for the jovial types or even some local content for the community spirited types. Digital signage is a powerful tool when used correctly in a restaurant and can greatly improve the dining experience and make your restaurant stand out.
Tip: Promote the brand occasionally to avoid a situation when all the content is promotional and uninteresting for customers. It is preferable to have 70% of the posts related to ambiance, while the rest of the posts are promotional.
4. Display Feedback and References
People tend to believe their peers more than they trust a company, and that is why customer reviews are so valuable. Digital signage provides restaurants with the opportunity to place live or the most recently received customer reviews from Google, Yelp or TripAdvisor. It is always useful to show your first-time visitors that many guests have had a good experience dining with you and you offer good food and service. It also creates trust, and the addition of real reviews makes it possible to develop a loyal clientele base.
Tip: Post recent reviews and add messages of gratitude to your clients as an appreciation for their support and as a way of acknowledging your audience.
5. Integrate Social Media Feeds
Social media content is ideal for display on a digital signage screen. Through pop-up notifications of feeds from Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, etc., restaurants may share user pictures, make an announcement of new events or invite guests to follow them. For instance, if a customer took a picture of the meal they ate and then used the restaurant’s tag on the picture, the photo can instantly be displayed on the digital signage. It also not only improves the ‘touch and feel’ experience inside the store, but also encourages customers to share their experience on social media.
Tip: Show a hashtag that is specific to your restaurant so the customers will post pictures with that specific hashtag. That’s why it also fosters a feeling of togetherness and involvement both in the physical space of the shop and on social media.
6. Upsell and Cross-Sell With Visual Appeal
Digital signage is also an excellent chance of upselling and cross-selling for the company. Cafes can employ screen prompts to recommend the additional products to a particular order, for instance, an upgrade to a side dish. This is because the customers may be enticed to take an additional order by mouth-watering pictures of some of the most ordered items. For instance, a burger stand may have add-ons such as cheese, bacon or avocado on its electronic billboards or a coffee shop may have images of cakes alongside coffee.
Tip: Place the signage at the place where the customers are most likely to give their order, this is so that you can capture their attention when they are making the order. This is a great way to increase average transaction value.
7. Provide Contactless Ordering and Payment
The pandemic changed numerous customer preferences and expectations, with some of them preferring contactless service. This is because digital signage can show the customers QR codes which they use their phones to scan and navigate through the menu, order and pay without having to touch other things. Not only does this approach increase the convenience and safety of services but also decreases the time of waiting and unification of services. From the technological side for restaurants with fewer employees digital signages can also benefit in controlling the number of customers.
Tip: Make sure the signs are put tactically, perhaps at the entrance or at some places where the customers would have to wait, then they will see that contactless options are available.
8. Provide Entertainment and Information
This is especially so because while waiting for their meals, customers may feel bored, especially in busy eating establishments. Another way of using digital signage is through gaining and maintaining the customer’s attention through entertainment, as well as passing on information through trivia, fun facts about the products being sold for instance food and drinks, and even news. By entertaining the customers, you make them appear not to wait for a long time and thus enhance the experience of the restaurant. Other restaurants also install digital screens that display the views of the kitchen which makes the restaurants transparent to customers.
Tip: Ensure that the content is new and updated in order that the frequent customers will always have something new to look at when they come in.
Conclusion
Digital signage is an ideal and unique tool for restaurants to convey messages and to promote their brands and products. This way, the menus are displayed in a dynamic manner, time-sensitive offers can be advertised, and even the guests can be entertained, all of which are just some of the advantages that can lead to increased customer satisfaction and increased profits. Consequently, while digital signage is put to use, it evolves from being just a display medium into becoming part of the value proposition of dining.
These eight digital signage tips can help restaurants to stand out in the current saturated market and increase customer acquisition and retention, sales, and brand presence.
