Use Case Spotlight: Portable Digital & Interactive Billboards for Real-Time Sales Messaging

Digital billboards and interactive billboards provide a suite of new capabilities that event marketers and producers can leverage to connect with audiences and add value for their sponsors. Interactivity, touch and gesture control, data collection and analytics, and flexible programming have made portable and interactive digital billboards a powerful tool for live events, including festivals, concerts, brand activations, and more.

One of the most exciting evolutions in digital advertising displays is real-time sales messaging. This is where digital signage uses its flexibility and digital programming to deliver scheduled and real-time updates to audiences. Updates might be scheduled according to the time of day, day of the week, season, or according to limited-time promotions and campaigns launched by brands. They can also incorporate live feed updates, such as social media interactions or influencer content related to live events and campaigns.

Real-time messaging first gained major traction in the quick service restaurant category. This sector has long needed to fine-tune its promotions, targeting different demographics throughout the day to increase sales.

As opportunities to analyze real-time data have opened up and the hardware for portable digital billboards has improved, real-time sales messaging is increasingly expanding opportunities for brands, event marketers, event producers, and venues.

Unlock the true potential of portable digital displays with real-time sales messaging and connect with customers with the right offer at the right time.

Upsell Your Audience

Portable digital billboards are the perfect way to upsell tickets and experiences at live events. Want concert-goers to upgrade to a VIP experience or sports fans to make a game-day decision on better seats or a better package? Live sales messaging gives you the opportunity to make timely upselling offers.

Self serve kiosks offer a prime opportunity to automate upselling while optimizing labour costs. They can be programmed to offer promotions, deals, upgrades, and packaged bundles, all on-screen. Many customers even prefer to be upsold on-screen rather than in-person. Seeing various options on-screen gives them time to consider the value and think about an option that works well for them, rather than quickly rejecting the promotion due to feeling pressured.

Self serve kiosks boost revenue-per-sale. According to Harvard Business Review, research shows that self serve kiosks changes consumer behaviour by removing social friction. In one example, a liquor store that switched to self serve ordering kiosks found an uptick in products with hard-to-pronounce names, as customers felt much more comfortable ordering them without fear of negative judgement.

Rent portable digital billboards and self serve kiosks for concerts, festivals, sports events, and other opportunities where they can be used to sell tickets, seat upgrades, concessions, VIP experiences, merch and more.

Live Sponsorship Promotions

Live sports games offer huge opportunities for sponsors to connect with fans and get in on the game. The days when brands could get away with being just a “proud sponsor” are over. They’re increasingly getting involved in the game and offering deals and promotions to ticket holders when the game swings one way or another.

For example, QSR chain Wendy’s offers a free Frosty to Philadelphia 76ers fans when an opposing player misses two consecutive free throws in the second half of home games. It’s a promotion that encourages fans in the stands to do everything they can to distract players at the free throw line, cleverly branded as the Frosty Freeze Out. It’s just one example of many where corporate sponsors need to push their promotions and offers in real-time at live events.

Pop Up Promotions and Commerce

Live events can also be a great place for pop up commerce shops or concept locations where attendees can get product demonstrations and information, or explore, engage, and shop online. Pop up commerce with a portable digital billboard provides targeted offers throughout the day and drives revenue through real-time sales messaging. Timing is everything when you’re communicating with your audience. Time-targeted messaging matches your real-time communication with your limited-time offers.

Social Media Integration

Your signage for events can do a lot of work. Incorporating real-time messaging is a great way to integrate social media, enhancing the feeling that this event is the place to be while generating buzz beyond the reach of your event.

Real-time messaging on digital signage can integrate with your social media campaign in a way that immediately makes your campaign interactive. Social media messages can pop up in combination with a sponsor activation to weave in both in-person and online interactions with audiences.

You’ll extend the reach of your social presence into the real world, inviting audience feedback and real-time opinions.

You can also integrate influencer collaborations to take your social media feedback to the next level.

Update Content in Real Time

Brands and venue operators have an opportunity to use outdoor and indoor digital signage to deliver real-time messaging and update content as required at live events. Digital signage gives you more capacity to connect with audiences and provide more detailed, meaningful product information alongside real-time messaging, such as programming and wayfinding information.

Digital signage is already used to promote sales and offers, but real-time messaging and data-driven personalization elevate your branding and messaging potential. Out-of-home advertising is increasingly data-driven and capable of personalizing ads and messaging based on anonymous data taken from smartphones.

Digital signage is capable of responding to known behaviours and delivering personalized product recommendations or promotions most likely to fit their past buying behaviours. Make sure your guests and customers see the promotions that will connect with them. Sponsorship content that responds to data from live audiences will add more value to event sponsorships.

Real-time content updates also allow you to respond to immediate changes in the environment. When the weather takes a turn, you can adapt your content to the most appropriate branding or sponsorship material available. BIG Digital’s outdoor digital billboards are weather rated and built to resist up to 160 KPH winds, letting you respond to the environment, not worry about it.

Digital signage expands your messaging capabilities and improves engagement. If your goal is to integrate brand activations and sponsorships or push real-time sales messaging in-store or on the street, portable digital billboards bring dynamic, real-time messaging to events, commercial properties, and brick-and-mortar stores.