To generate a positive return on your investment in digital display technology, you need to know how to maximize display utility. A basic display setup helps you communicate with your audience, but shouldn’t you want your audience to communicate back? Simply plugging in a display and letting it shine leaves money on the table by neglecting the two-way performance a display can bring to your business. The key to unlocking this two-way functionality is audience analytics.
A display without audience analytics tools is essentially just shouting into the void. A display with these tools receives something back. As you send out information into the world in the form of display content, audience analytics tools collect information of their own in the form of viewer data. This data can then be used to inform your display and content strategies moving forward. However, like with any tool, audience analytics platforms are merely a means to an end. In other words, before asking how audience analytics can help you accomplish your goal, you first need to establish what your goal is.
Is it to increase crowd size? Is it to lower crowd age? Is it lengthen dwell time? It could be all three. Or it could be none of them. The process of figuring that out starts by evaluating your space.
Figure out the job, then bring in the tools.
Obviously, a display suspended near a mall food court is going to have a different purpose than a wall-mounted display in an airport hallway intersection. They cater to different audiences, with different content, for different reasons. The owners of the display in the mall are likely hoping it will attract more diners and shoppers to take their meals in the area. The airport display on the other hand is probably aiming to decrease congestion in their space. Either way, with a goal in mind, the next step is defining what constitutes success.
The food court display owner has a goal of increasing foot traffic. For them, let’s say success is a 15% rise in the number of customers congregated in the food court between the hours of 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. Success now defined, it is time to determine what role analytics tools will play in meeting this threshold. What do we want the audience to tell us? In this case, we would probably like our display to measure foot traffic levels, audience dwell time, age profiles, and the gender breakdown, among other things.
That’s how you get started with audience analytics. Set a goal, define success, and then use your analytics platform to measure progress and inform strategy. Eventually, your analytics can inform the creation of your next goal, and the one after that, too. Just as simply plugging in a display fails to maximize its performance, so too does simply plugging in an analytics platform waste its potential. You need to have a plan. Again, an audience analytics platform is just a tool. You need to have a job for it. Give us a call today to discuss how the AWARE audience analytics platform can help you reach your goal!
