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Pizzeria digital signage: Great content makes the pies fly

What's it take to make your pizza brands pies fly off the shelves? When it comes to the digital signage sell, great content is key.

Image via iStock.com

July 8, 2019

By Mike Kilian, senior director of business development, Mvix

Some matches are made in heaven, a la pizza and beer, tomatoes and mozzarella, and in the restaurant digital display domain, digital signage and captivating content. They need each other likes all those Romeos out there need their Juliets. They are incomplete without each other so that although the digital signage your brand selects might be the medium, it's relatively useless without the message. Content is the fuel that powers your digital signage investment and the following ideas are designed to help the pizzeria  operator use the two combined to maximum revenue-driving advantage. 

Marketing: A tag team effort

Naturally, the most compelling use of the digital signage/content partnership is marketing. High-visibility digital screens are great for capturing consumer attention, providing clear, direct marketing messages, and motivating consumers to act. 

There's no comparable strategy on the market that can produce a similar effect. Indeed, we believe that digital signage is the focal point for an entirely new type of signage-centric marketing of which few companies are truly using to their advantage. Content makes miracles happen in this context and the great thing about digital signage is, although it carries an upfront cost, it offers nearly limitless flexibility in how pizza brands can tap the power of great content and put it to work in service of their marketing goals.

Lead generation

When's the last time you saw a paper flyer and rushed into the store to check out the product? We’re guessing it’s been a while. And how about online marketing? Are your company's digital marketing efforts really producing the results your company needs?

These solutions are fine ways to generate leads, but consider the research showing that digital media in public venues can reach 27% more people than online strategies. In our view, digital signage (powered by the right content, of course) is a crucial aspect of lead generation. The more you can get in front of your customers’ eyes, the better. Similarly, digital content is an excellent way to draw more leads into your marketing funnel.

Upselling products

The flexible content templates used in digital signage are perfect formats for upselling, particularly when they're positioned near the point-of-purchase. Many restaurant brands position screens near order counters and check-out points for this very reason, including approaches like these: 

• Displaying promotions or menu items that drive top returns.
• Sharing hunger-inducing (a.k.a. "food porn") images of offbeat items some diners shy away from. 
• Revealing cost comparisons of different food sizing options to highlight value, as in, "A large drink is just a quarter more!"
• Nutrition details and other product pluses that might influence purchases. 

The great things about these applications is that they can be easily traced for purposes of determining their return on investmenUnlike more abstract marketing goals that may take months to pay off, these content applications have the potential to drive higher revenue today.

Internal communication

Digital signage works just as well to engage your staff as it does your customers. But, digital signage is far more than just an extension of your bulletin boards because when used with the right content, it can become a full-fledged communication hub, including:

• Content templates for messaging, goal tracking and motivation.
• Widgets that can be tied into your APIs to provide dashboards of analytics.
• Integration of messaging apps to provide real-time visibility into communication.

Photo: iStock