All businesses need to advertise to make the sales, to stay in business. If they do not advertise, their competitors will take the business. Now small, local businesses are now using digital signage, to promote their business, product or service.

This is due to the falling prices of the digital signage hardware, as this is based around either a plasma television or an LCD TV, but in the past few years as the technology has advanced in the display market the costs have come down dramatically. You can now get LCD displays from 19″ to 108″.

So the first things you need to think about for setting up a digital signage solution:

• Decide what size of display will be used
• Location, will it be indoors or outdoors?
• Create the media content

What size of display?

Ok, so let’s take the first part, you need a screen that will capture the attention of potential buyers, to get your message across.  So normally anything from a 32″ to 70″ display are used in shopping malls, with 19″ to 32″ being used within the actual stores or at point of sale.  Then the choice is either LCD or plasma display, now the old problems of the plasma picture burn are very few and far between. The choice comes down to personal preference.

Secondly, the location.

There are three very different types of digital signage, firstly, there is indoor digital signage, this is shopping malls and even the local stores have digital signage solutions in their building, so they are protected from the weather and possible vandalism. Outdoor digital signage is were digital signage is placed outdoors and normally in un-manned areas, such as train stations, subways and the likes, so vandalism is a possibility. The third option is mobile digital signage, used in transportation, this is becoming very popular.

Now the issue with indoor dynamic advertising, is that the sign will normally be switched off at night, due to the store being closed and this reduces the amount of people you can target, were as an outdoor sign, it’s the 24 hour salesman you always wanted. The indoor sign will be cheaper to set up, however outdoor signs have been proven to have a better return on investment.

Now the problem with putting a digital sign outdoors, is that the electronics used will be electronics that have been designed for the domestic market and will fail when used outdoors in extreme temperatures. Now the solution is to either purchase a very expensive waterproof TV or to put all the electronics into either an outdoor plasma enclosure or LCD enclosure. These protective cases offer vandal proof and weather proof protection to everything inside.

Media Creation.

This is necessary and is the actual content you use for the advert, it could be just images of your product with an audio track played behind it, or it could be a complete add that splits the entire screen into various sectors, all displaying different content at the same time. You can find free digital media software free, by searching Google. Then all you have to do is add the content using drag and drop and the “new software” and upload it to the media player used in the digital signage system.