5 Tips for getting buy-in for your signage project

It's not the just system that delivers a successful signage project, it's the people who do it and create it. It takes an ongoing effort to make displays profitable and keep them interesting with great and relevant content. So when you start with signage it is vital that you get the right people involved in your project. Gather yourself a super team that provides a great signage system and keeps it alive in the organization. How do you do that? We'll give you a few tips.

Members of the digital signage team often consist of the creative ones which are responsible for the content. The IT takes care of the control of the whole system, such as server, software and hardware. For both aspects you need people with specific skills.  It's important to involve the necessary team members or departments in your digital signage project as early as possible. This way you immediately build the necessary synergy between the different areas of expertise and get the buy-in your area. Next to that it's best to assign one digital signage supervisor, someone who thinks strategically and practically, someone with a technical talent and a sense for marketing, someone who can be a bridge between two very different teams, someone like you, reading this blog? Anyway, a team like this will make sure the impact of signage will be big, bigger, biggest. 

Gaining involvement is going to make a big difference whether a signage project will be a success or a failure. This involvement is needed in different parts of the project. Starting with getting everyone enthusiastic into starting with signage in the first place. Here's a blog with some tips about how to introduce signage into your company. But you can think of sharing some examples of other successful signage projects in similar markets or with similar goals. Dive into signage solutions and the innovative features to get ideas and share the 'what if' - scenarios with the ones who are the decision makers if you are not the one to make that final call. Last but not least, make sure you get some insights in the ROI and (measurable) results.
The next thing you need involvement in is the content strategy: what is the plan? What does signage need to deliver and how are the signage goals going to be achieved? The strategy and getting everyone on the same page, is a big succesfactor. Here's a blog explaining the first step of creating a content strategy. 

Next up, the HOW? How are we getting it done? This is the part where you choose the needed hardware and make some decisions about the required software features. Choosing the right solution will improve the overall success and 'bring in the joy' of working with signage. When you have a difficult system or the software is failing over and over again this will affect the involvement. So when you choose a reliable signage system and software that's easy on the eye and intuitive to work with, this will increase involvement.  Here's a blog with 3 key elements to look for while choosing signage software. Our advice is always to go for software trial periods and get the right guidance within the testing period, this will create a higher user adoption.

To get everyone in the organization enthusiastic about the new digital signage displays, you can organize an internal launch (-event, -meeting, -lunch...). Especially when digital signage is new, some people can feel resistant. So bring the new displays with some noise together with a strong explanation and share the benefits and the goals. This will increase the embracement of this, to some, new medium. 

Want to get the buy-in? Show results and prove that signage works! This way you are guaranteed to get support and the people on your side of the plan. Is your goal to improve internal communication? An effect can be that people are just better informed and show up at internal events. The statistics available in signage software show how often an item has been published and when, combine this with sales information (perhaps connect it to internal systems) and you can gain valuable insights into the effect of your signage campaign. Another result of your signage investment can also be the declining or lack of printing costs, or that you see increasing income with a younger target group for example. Determine your goals and KPIs of success. Share these insights and deliver the evidence of something that you and your signage team already knew. Signage works!

Nothing is worse than digital signage showing outdated content or news on loop. To maintain the buy-in, you have to work on your signage and give content that's worthwhile and up-to-date! Whether your audience are customers, employees or visitors at your office. They deserve new and fresh content that draws attention and makes sure your message will come across. So schedule a task in the agenda to do some checks for updating content to audit content and remove anything that's outdated. Next to that it's our advice to put together an editorial meeting with all content managers. This is not only good for the needed involvement, but also necessary for keeping the content and information flow alive and updated. You can meet once a month to review content and get new ideas and to keep it fresh and appealing. 

Signage works when you put effort into it. Don't start working on it just on your own. In a signage solution like MagicINFO there are a lot of ways to work together with the use of organization groups, different user roles, rights and playlists access and more. So it's built for collaboration! Benefit from these tips to get your signage project to achieve your goals.