Love it or hate it, Black Friday has been a firm fixture of the UK’s retail calendar for over a decade now, and it looks like it’s not going anywhere anytime soon. Perhaps unsurprisingly, most people assume it’s something every retailer loves – after all, who’d be averse to people flooding into their stores on arguably the busiest shopping day of the year?
If you own or operate a store yourself though, your feelings on it may well be mixed. Those extra crowds are always welcome, but they come at a literal price, as you’re expected to offer increasingly impressive discounts on your stock. That can make Black Friday something of a double-edged sword, especially in the middle of a pandemic. And given that your competitors will all be running their own campaigns, for many this year’s Black Friday sales will seem like an unavoidable gamble that they’ll need to pay off. So on this most important of years, here are four key reasons why your LED signage displays can help maximise your Black Friday success.
LED screens are reactive, so your campaigns can stay flexible
One of the foremost advantages of LED digital displays is that unlike printed point-of-sale displays, you can change their content and messaging at very short notice. You don’t have to wait days or weeks for new prints to be drawn up, shipped to you and installed. Instead, providing your digital content is ready to go, you can roll it out in minutes across all customer touchpoints.
That makes it a particularly handy asset in the fast-paced period of Black Friday and the festive season. For example, it allows you to react quickly when stocks run low (or empty) of certain products or ranges you’re advertising, so that you can switch your retail LED digital displays to highlight a different product or service instead. It also means you can address any emergent customer concerns, such as new Frequently Asked Questions you’ve noticed cropping up more often recently.
Creative retail LED digital displays can help you win (and keep) new customers
The frenetic activity of Black Friday, and the effectiveness of your existing marketing messages, can end up bringing a lot of customers into your store who might not have ever visited before. That presents an unmissable opportunity for you to capture their imaginations with creative LED digital displays, and show them the quality of your in-store experience. (If you need a bit of help with content, we recommend checking out our previous post on content inspiration for your LED signage.) According to www.airpointofsale.com, shoppers who buy from you once are 32% more likely to buy again, so getting that crucial first sale from them could easily end up turning them into a loyal customer in future.
LED displays can help reassure your customers, and keep them safe
One thing that recent headlines have been keen to remind us of is that the pandemic isn’t over yet, and a sizeable proportion of your shoppers are going to be keenly aware of this. Many are going to be particularly wary of large crowds, so you can help manage the risk by using your LED digital signage to help customers navigate your store, facilitating the flow of footfall and giving people more space to shop.
On a similar note, you can also use your displays to highlight any useful safety locations, such as hand sanitising stations. And tying back in to what we said earlier about flexibility, your LED displays can offer you a valuable means of quickly responding to any updates in government policy or guidance (such a local mask mandate), so that you can promptly allay any concerns and keep your customers feeling safe and confident to shop in your store.
LED digital displays can make your customers feel valued
This is directly linked to our points about safety above – a happy byproduct of helping your customers to stay safe is that they’ll also feel valued, both as customers and human beings, and that makes them far more likely to keep shopping at your store in future.
Your displays can help them feel valued in other ways too, such as saving them time. Using your LED displays for wayfinding can help show your customers exactly where they are, exactly where they need to be, and the best way to get there. That can save them time and effort during what will probably be an exceptionally busy trip for them, and again can help generate valuable goodwill and loyalty towards your store. (The reverse is also true – if a customer bought something they liked from your store, but had to run a difficult gauntlet to get it, the latter aspect of the experience will be what they remember, making them unlikely to return in future.)
Plus, LED digital displays at checkouts can be constantly updated to tell incoming customers how long they need to wait, which can reduce frustration even during the busiest hours. You might be surprised at how many people are willing to endure reasonably long wait times, provided they have at least a rough expectation of how long they’ll be there for. It gives the impression you value their time, and if they gain that impression at the busiest time of year, it may give them higher confidence to return in the milder seasons. (Plus, well-managed queuing systems can be help to boost impulse purchases, so that’s a nice extra bonus!)
All that should be enough to spark a few ideas! If you’ve got any questions though, or you need a bit of expert advice, we’re only too happy to help here at Scanlite. We know our digital signage solutions inside out, including the many ways in which it can be used to achieve your goals as a business, so to find out how we can help you, feel free to give us a call today on 01253 302723, or email us on sales@scanlite.co.uk.
