Digital signage is the best way for businesses to communicate with customers. Unlike the usual suspects of printed posters, USB sticks, or PowerPoint presentations, you can manage and change your content instantly (and easily).
This approach eliminates the reliance on static posters that quickly become outdated. It’s a flexible, modern, and cost-effective solution that works for almost any industry. If you’re new to digital signage, we recommend checking out our beginner’s guide for an in-depth exploration of the basics of digital signage.
Here are our expert tips to maximise your digital signage success, whether you’re showcasing a single screen or overseeing multiple displays across locations!
1) Think Long-Term Strategy
Digital signage isn’t just about one campaign—it’s a long-term investment that reduces costs and builds stronger brand visibility. A clear digital signage strategy creates a blueprint for how to achieve your business goals. And digital solutions provide you with a toolbox that makes this process stress-free and straightforward.
Businesses that adopt screens often experience lower printing costs, faster communication, and enhanced customer experiences.
Our Top Tip: Consider how digital signage can fit into your overall strategy. From entertainment in waiting areas to digital menus in restaurants, think beyond short-term promotions.
With Datapost: Automated scheduling and centralised control make it easy to plan ahead. Plus, by going digital, you reduce waste and make your communication more sustainable. It’s affordable digital signage that delivers both savings and impact.
2) Craft your Content Intentionally
Before your screens can make an impact, you need strong, engaging content. Think of your signage like a shop window—what you put on display is what draws people in. High-quality visuals and clear messaging are what separate successful digital signage from background noise.
Our Top Tip: Upload high-resolution images, engaging videos, or branded graphics that truly reflect your business. Consistency across all screens builds recognition and trust.
With Datapost: With our Digital Signage suite, you can access our native, user-friendly design tool. XID is an API-driven platform for creating and managing interactive digital content. This enables users to quickly create, update, and deploy visual content, including videos, templates, and tickers. With support for live data, mobile control, and custom scripting, XID simplifies the creation of original and dynamic displays.
3) Keep Your Content Organised
It’s easy to lose track of your content once you have multiple promotions, seasonal campaigns, or different store locations. Without organisation, your screens could end up showing outdated or mismatched messaging.
Our Top Tip: Group your content by campaign, location, or target audience. This ensures the right content is playing in the right place at the right time.
With Datapost: The platform allows you to create channels to group content and assign them to specific screens. For example, one channel for “Restaurant Specials” and another for “Corporate Communications.” This simple structure gives you total control.
4) Curate for Maximum Impact
Part of your signage strategy is a good playlist. Random content can confuse or overwhelm viewers. Instead, an organised playlist creates a story flow that keeps people watching.
Our Top Tip: Think about the order your content appears in and the strategy behind this screen. Mix promotions with branding messages, adjust timing for maximum impact, and avoid overwhelming your audience with too much at once.
With Datapost: The drag-and-drop playlist builder makes curating content easy. You can adjust durations, transitions, and layouts to ensure your screens appear professional and polished.
5) Automate with Smart Triggers
Managing content manually can be time-consuming, especially if you have multiple screens or locations. That’s where automation takes digital signage to the next level. Smart triggers enable your screens to adapt automatically to conditions such as time of day, special events, or even audience context.
Our Top Tip: Use automation to save time and improve accuracy. For example, set breakfast menus to display in the morning, promotions to display in the afternoon, and reminders or safety notices to display in the evening—without needing to log in and add manual changes.
With Datapost: Our Datapost Connect App enables Smart Triggers, which allow you to schedule content rules in advance. That means your signage can automatically switch playlists or messages based on the criteria you choose. It’s a powerful way to keep your screens relevant, consistent, and engaging with minimal effort and maximum return.
6) Publish Updates Instantly
One of the most significant advantages of digital signage is flexibility. Unlike printed posters, USB sticks, or PowerPoint presentations, you can make changes instantly. Ideal for flash sales, live announcements, or daily specials.
Our Top Tip: Keep your signage fresh, while considering your overall signage strategy. Update promotions quickly, adapt to changing customer needs, or even push live updates, such as weather or social feeds.
With Datapost: You can update and preview content on your registered players instantly. This gives you peace of mind, knowing that your screens always display the latest and most relevant content. You can also create brand new content with our native design tool, XID. At no extra cost, XID is a part of the digital signage suite – and enables original content publishing directly to your network.
7) Build a Robust Technical Foundation
Even the most eye-catching content won’t have an impact if your screens aren’t running smoothly. A reliable digital signage setup requires two essentials: correct licensing and compatible Hardware. Let’s break it down:
7.1 Proper Licensing
Licensing is the backbone of your digital signage system. Without proper licenses, your screens can’t display content consistently, which could leave customers looking at blank displays.
Our Top Tip: Regularly check that your screens are active, licensed, and connected. A little maintenance goes a long way in preventing disruptions.
With Datapost: Our digital signage suite makes licensing simple. You can register players, assign licenses, and monitor everything from a central dashboard. If there’s an issue, you can even restart a screen remotely or view any errors on the player dashboard overview.
7.2 Hardware Flexibility
With our trusted technology partners like Samsung, LG, BrightSign, and Android-based players, you’ll always have flexible options that suit your budget and needs. Are you unsure whether your current screens or media players will work with newer digital signage solutions? This is a common concern for businesses wanting to upgrade without replacing all their equipment.
Before investing in new hardware, double-check whether your existing screens or players are compatible with modern signage platforms. Sometimes, a small media player device can make older displays “smart” again.
Our Top Tip: The hardware you choose will influence what kind of content you can display. For example, high-resolution video, interactive content, or multi-zone layouts may require more advanced screens or media players compared to simple image loops. It’s vital to consider how your available hardware will influence content planning.
With Datapost: We support a wide range of Hardware, from commercial-grade displays to plug-and-play media players. Our system is hardware-agnostic, meaning you can protect your existing investment while still upgrading to a more powerful signage experience.
8) Refine Your Signage Strategy with Insights
Good marketing is about learning what works and doing more of it. A vital aspect of a communication strategy is iteration and insights. Digital signage makes this process possible by tracking engagement and performance.
Our Top Tip: Review which campaigns resonate most with your audience. Use data to adjust your approach—whether that’s promoting specific products more or modifying design styles for greater impact.
With Datapost: Built-in analytics and reporting dashboards give you insights into which content performs best. This means your digital signage can evolve into a data-driven marketing tool. Helping you make smarter business decisions over time.
Why Choose Datapost?
As a leading provider of digital signage, the process of managing your network and content is simple with Datapost. Designed to be user-friendly and scalable, we make it easy for anyone (tech-savvy or not) to create, manage, and display content across multiple screens.
Here’s the highlight reel:
- User-friendly platform: Drag-and-drop simplicity means no steep learning curve.
- Scalable licensing: Start small and grow easily with new screens.
- Centralised management: Control content, playlists, and players in one place.
- Local support: Based in South Africa, we’re here to help.
- Cost-effective & eco-friendly: centralised in the long term while reducing paper waste.
Ditch the USB stick, invest in Digital Solutions.
Digital signage is a versatile and effective solution for modern businesses seeking to evolve. The key is choosing the right platform to make the journey simple and effective!
With Datapost, you get an affordable, scalable, and powerful solution designed for businesses in South Africa. Our solution is available internationally, and we take special care to ensure our solution is simple to implement and maintain, wherever our clients may be.
Our support portal is easily accessible on our website, and our team is happy to assist you. For specific queries, our customers can log tickets and explore our help articles for further assistance.
Ready to get started? Contact us to talk solutions and transform the way your business communicates.