4 Questions to Answer Before Investing in Digital Signage for Your Dining Locations

You’ve probably considered placing digital signage in your dining locations. After all, 90% of buying decisions are influenced by visual factors. Digital signage can help reinforce your brand and promotions, bring your menus to life, and boost sales.

But, whether your dining facility is for a k-12 school district, a higher education institution, or a healthcare facility, you may find yourself asking “is it worth the investment?” Quantifying the value of digital signage can be tricky, especially because the return on investment (ROI) varies depending on each organization’s specific requirements.

These four questions will help you think through your needs and the potential payback of an investment in digital signage:

1. What are your digital signage goals?

   Think through what you want to accomplish and write down your goals.

• Are you aiming to bring your dining facility into the twenty-first century — providing a more modern and convenient on-site customer experience?
• Do you need to reinforce your brand and special promotions?
• Are you looking for an easier and more accurate way to present your customers with nutrition information, especially to ensure compliance with FDA regulations around displaying calorie and nutrition information for your foods?

2. What are your digital signage needs?

Outline what features you need in a digital signage solution to help reach your goals. Is information accuracy a top goal? You’re likely to want a solution that allows you to make updates to your menu software and automatically push the information out to signage in multiple locations. This eliminates relying on employees at each location to keep information updated. If you want flexibility in how your digital signage appears, look for a solution with flexible templates. This allows you to customize your signage versus working within rigid templates.

3. What is your budget?

Typically, there are three components to digital signage solutions:

The actual cost of digital signage varies depending on the number of locations in which you want to install signs, the number of screens in each location, and the specific solution you select. Once you’ve found a solution with the features that meet your needs, take a look at the costs of each component and think about your budget. You may need to adjust your budget to get all of the features you require; or, you may decide to modify your list of requirements to meet your budget.

4. What is the value of digital signage to your organization?

Ultimately, the answer to the question “is digital signage worth the investment?” comes down to value. An investment in digital signage will be worth it if you’re able to reach your goals within your budget in a reasonable amount of time and with little hassle. When you consider that digital signage can help you create a modern and visually appealing look and feel in your dining locations, reinforce your brand, present accurate nutrition information, promote special offers, and ultimately increase sales, your answer likely will be “it’s absolutely worth it!”.