For as long as there have been businesses, people have been hanging up signs to tell the world about them. And in our new digital age, signs are getting an upgrade. Here are four reasons why digital signage is worth thinking about for your franchise.

1. Real-time updating

The primary problem with traditional signage is that it’s extremely difficult to change. Even today, if you visit a franchise, you may see out-of-date menus and branding. But with digital signage, everything can be updated in real time to reflect current branding or design standards. Real-time updating also opens the door for sign optimization and customization — for instance, removing a menu item that you’re sold out of.

2. Centralized management

Updating traditional menus and signage is, to be blunt, an enormous pain. It’s time-consuming, scrolling devices are finicky and prone to failure, they’re difficult to implement and if you run multiple outlets the work needs to be repeated. With digital assets, it’s not only a lot easier to update, but you can do it all at one time from a single location. Depending on your signage platform, it could be a matter of uploading a new digital file.

3. Rapid changeability & lower cost

A major challenge for franchisors is brand consistency. They want every location to look, feel and behave the same way. But producing physical assets like printed menu boards fixes a particular place in a particular time and enormously reduces the likelihood of overall brand consistency. For instance, there were Pizza Huts using the old logo as recently as 2011 — a logo they stopped using 12 years earlier.

This is also the source of friction between franchisees and franchisors. Franchisees want to reduce their cost, while franchisors want them to constantly buy fresh marketing collateral.

Digital signage helps resolve this disconnect by reducing the cost of deployment for the franchise, increasing franchisor control and providing a more consistent brand experience — something that both parties benefit from.

4. Flexible content and use

The fact is, signage as we know it now is not long for this world. Digital signage will become the norm. It won’t be long before things like video, graphics, iconography and personalized content will be the standard in the signage world.

But all of that starts with marketing the switch to digital signage. Business owners can leverage a lot of content that already exists to improve their foot traffic and better engage customers. For instance, taking a standard sign and applying a local spin to the look and feel, or changing the sign to match local events (e.g. to reference a local sports team) are easy wins for franchises that are only really practical as digital assets.

Conclusion

It is not surprising that digital signage is increasingly popular. It’s easier to manage and update, quick and easy to change and opens the door to all kinds of content possibilities and engagement.

But beyond those benefits, it’s also a great way for franchises to future-proof themselves against new technology and innovations. We’re moving towards a digital-only world. The sooner franchises get to that level, the better off they’re going to be in the long run.

We love digital signage! Check out how we used digital signage to increase a QSR’s annual sales by 4% and their average ticket by 27%.