How do clients really select digital signage technology?

Tech is great. We all love it – don’t we? Well, as it turns out, customers (and potential customers for that matter) don’t really value it as a key driver in choosing their digital signage technology.

Who knew? Actually, we did have an inkling of sorts, and it was confirmed at the recent Global Digital Signage Conference where the Yodeck team was on hand to play a leading role as one of the event’s panel participants. Yes, London called and we answered.

Different professionals, with very different perspectives, gathered for the same cause: to discuss everything and anything about the state of play in the digital signage market. And the highlight? For us, it had to be Yodeck CEO Vangelis Mihalopoulos’ insightful appearance on the panel to discuss “Why users choose one digital signage platform over another”.

Digital signage technology: what’s important?

So, what is the answer to that intriguing of all questions? Virtually all of the speakers supported the view that the majority of customers do not care about tech. They simply want a solution that works for their needs. Additionally many said that the “freemium” model, is prone to failure. They support this argument by citing marketing strategies based on revenue sharing on ads – as well as subsidizing a big brand customer as a co-partner. But we beg to differ.

Certainly, we at Yodeck do agree that customers mainly focus on the service provided. Or the “what’s in it for them”, both practically and financially. This is especially true of those who call themselves self-served. And, if our customer base is anything to go by, there are a lot of them! So that’s where we focus. Because we provide a service that exactly fits their needs! i.e. a freemium model, which is one managed screen for free, so that customers can use it and make sure it fits their requirements.

Can all customers be self-served?

As mentioned above, customers basically care whether the platform fits their requirements. By building an easy-to-use platform, customers come in, subscribe, purchase their hardware and set it up themselves. Easy as 1-2-3. In London, Vangelis drew attention to our many thousands of self-served customers that follow this flow. Apart from this, we of course acknowledge that different customers will always have different needs. For this reason, we sell both directly AND through resellers. As well as have different pricing plans to please everybody.

What about SoC and Raspberry Pi?

Some of the panel speakers expressed their doubts about integrating technologies such as SoC and Raspberry Pi in digital signage. Their line of reasoning mostly relies on concerns about cost. In fact, they feel that pushing down the cost for customers can lead to failed projects, due to costs of on-site support.

While in some cases this may be true, we believe that it is basically a paradox. First of all, let’s admit that affordable does not always mean bad. It just does not come with all the “bells and whistles”. From our viewpoint, we focus on providing a cost-effective solution that pays back. Without a doubt, cost is a major factor, for small or even large installations. That’s why we believe that the adoption of SoC and RPi will keep increasing. From our standpoint, you can’t go wrong with Raspberry Pi in digital signage technology.

Key takeaways

  • All integrators need to minimize overhead and support. And that stands valid with Yodeck too, since reliability is beyond question.
  • Making digital signage directly available to customers, with minimum cost and the easiest possible solutions, is a high priority for us. And Yodeck does exactly this.
  • The old ways of setting up a distribution channel for software are long gone. Cloud software is now available everywhere, and so is our hardware platform, the Raspberry Pi. Anyone can use our technology, today, out of the box, without any intermediaries.

Food for thought

In the end, if there’s one key message we took away from our participation at the Global Digital Signage Conference it’s this. That no matter what technology we use, we need to translate customers’ needs into engineering considerations. The customer is, after all, the driving force behind our business.

And this needs to be respected, even if it means that we provide digital signage with a certain amount of leeway. From our viewpoint, this conclusion is a happy one. Because at the center of our strategy is this very concept. It basically sums up the way we approach digital signage and digital signage technology altogether.