Choosing the Right Digital Signage Solution for Your Property: A Comprehensive Guide

The occupants in your building are your customers. It’s up to you to create an atmosphere that drives occupancy, increases overall tenant satisfaction, and ensures optimal renewal rates. If you’ve been looking for a way to modernize your property, you’ve likely considered the many advantages of installing digital screens in your lobbies, elevators, and high-traffic common areas. Digital signage solutions are a sleek, tech-forward amenity ideal for streamlining communication, elevating your image, and impressing visitors.

If you’ve spent any amount of time investigating your options, you’ve likely found multiple companies that make it relatively easy to upload an image to just about any type of screen. But the search for the right fit for your property can lead to a lot of dead ends. Don’t give up just yet. You’ll find the selection process much easier after reviewing our comprehensive guide. Let’s get started.

The Advantages of Investing in Digital Signage Solutions

Digital signage is the future of dynamic communication solutions. It’s cost-effective, adaptable to the needs of nearly any facility, and makes it easy to standardize company messaging across multiple locations. Today’s building owners are using the screens installed in their elevators, lobbies, and other high-traffic common areas to share property updates, showcase the value of their network, and support internal communication to build and strengthen relationships with tenants.

Setting up the hardware is relatively straightforward. Business owners have two options for utilizing the technology: outfitting their properties with high-impact elevator screens and video walls selected to complement their building aesthetic or modifying their existing HDMI-capable screens with a user-friendly plug-and-play device. 

Companies utilizing the right network partner for this modern prop tech have everything needed to create, upload, and publish essential communication in real-time with user-friendly design tools and prebuilt templates.

Related: Guide to Digital Signage | Your Questions Answered

Although many building owners initially invest in digital signage to save time and money on essential business communication, it’s the content broadcast alongside their messaging that keeps residents, tenants, and visitors engaged with their screens and, in turn, makes their property communication more effective. 

Building owners, partnered with media network providers, can offer a contextually relevant, expertly curated programming mix managed by an editorial staff working across multiple time zones. This does more than engage your tenants—they consider this technology a modern amenity and come to rely on the building’s digital screens for quick but valuable information as they come and go throughout their building.

How Professional Content Curation Ensures Optimal Engagement in Your Building

Many cloud-hosted service networks attempt to cater to the needs of business owners seeking to engage with their customers. These platforms allow businesses to upload and manage user-generated content, delivering targeted business messaging. However, it’s common for these networks to accompany such messages with a generic RSS feed or a static video playlist that’s rarely updated.

Although viewers initially appreciate having screens installed in spaces where they know to look for the most recent communications from building management; they tend to stop paying attention when the novelty wears off. That’s where access to engaging content and expert curation factors into the equation. Together, they’re the variables businesses need to elevate the messaging screens installed in their residential and commercial properties to an amenity that tenants value.  

Related: Captivate’s Take on Schindler’s “Communication inside buildings” Whitepaper: Why Agencies and Building Owners Should Be Listening

Content curation for the best digital signage solutions resembles what you may think of when you consider journalists putting out freshly published news reports each day. For business owners, the professionally curated content their tenants, employees, residents, and visitors value and look forward to watching transforms their messaging screens into a dynamic source of information and entertainment appropriate for each screen location and relevant to its population. 

Global & National News Reports

Global and national news reports broadcast on digital signage solutions installed in common areas appeal to a large audience. Stories considered factually questionable or inflammatory do not. The most in-demand media networks don’t take chances with the reputations of the business owners enlisting their services. As you’re comparing content providers, take a few minutes to ensure you’ve narrowed your options to networks leveraging relationships with reputable news organizations.

Financial News & Stock Market Reports 

Financial news and stock market reports appeal to tenants and visitors interested in the latest information about corporate mergers, interest rates, and the economy. With the right provider, you’ll have access to the latest market indices, business headlines, and financial advice. When you have tenants in financial services, your digital signage helps generate positive associations.

Health Information & Lifestyle Tips

Any amount of time invested in the pursuit of physical, mental, or emotional well-being is well-spent, especially with today’s focus on a more healthy work-life balance. With the right connections, the screens you find most impactful for your business will play in rotation with informative reports about nutrition, fitness trends, and actionable tips for minimizing stress.

Real-Time Weather Updates & Transit Reports

Tenants, employees, and visitors who may spend a significant portion of their day indoors appreciate knowing what they can expect from the weather once they get outside. Screens displaying real-time weather updates are destined to reach a receptive audience. Many will linger for a glimpse of short-term forecasts and long-term predictions. You can also count on nearly every commuter in your building watching for the latest transit report updates specific to subway, bus and train routes geo-targeted to their building.  

The Next Step: Factors to Consider Once You’ve Narrowed Your Options  

Every building has a certain dynamic and a unique atmosphere. Its inhabitants have a diverse range of needs and interests. Professional content curators are experts at finding the ideal balance for just about any audience, whether the content they provide is intended to appeal to business professionals during office hours or residents passing through the lobby of a multifamily residential community.

However, you’ll also want to consider how the companies offering the curated programming that gives your tenants even more reasons to love where they work or live pull everything together. The following list is a good place to start.

Time Spent Watching

By nature, signs are “glance” media, meaning people walk by, engage momentarily, and move on. Although investing in great content is one of the best ways to ensure your audience will engage longer, your screens won’t have much impact if you don’t have readability and visual appeal. To keep your screens fresh, consider partnering with a provider broadcasting both video and static content.

Safe Content

Ensuring the display of “safe” content on digital screens within office buildings and residential spaces holds paramount importance for fostering a conducive and secure environment. In office settings, maintaining a professional and non-disruptive digital atmosphere contributes to a focused work environment, enhancing productivity and employee well-being. 

In multifamily residential buildings, the emphasis on safe content ensures a comfortable and appropriate living environment for all residents, including children. By choosing a network partner that carefully curates displayed content to be free from offensive or inappropriate material, building managers can promote a sense of safety, harmony, and community within these shared spaces and not risk attracting negative feedback from tenants and residents.

Format & Interval Timing 

As you’re comparing providers, consider your formatting options and the length of time each screen remains visible within your rotation. Full-screen messages tend to be the most impactful. For most viewers, switching screens at 15-second intervals is ideal. That’s just the right amount of time to keep your audience watching until the next story appears. 

Satisfaction Ratings & Subscriber Support

Reputable digital signage service providers should never be more than an email or phone call away. You can learn a lot about a potential partner from their consumer satisfaction scores and service ratings. Companies with CSAT scores that outrank their competitors aren’t shy about revealing where they stand. With the right partnership, you’ll have an experienced support staff in your corner for the duration of your relationship, a team you can count on for everything from installation assistance to navigating technical challenges.

Get Started: Add Digital Screen Signage to Your List of Building Amenities

Now is the time to take advantage of everything modern digital screen signage has to offer, and it’s important to weigh your options carefully. When you’re ready to modernize your amenities with a solution that streamlines business communication, provides information and entertainment, and gives people even more reasons to love where they live and work, visit Captivate to see our screens in action.

When you partner with Captivate, you can invest in our fully managed network or connect a Captivate | Go plug-and-play device to your HDMI-capable screens. No other digital screen network offers more engaging content partnerships alongside custom messaging features, and our ability to attract and retain viewer attention is unrivaled. You’ll find Captivate-powered screens installed in the elevators, lobbies, and common areas of premium office buildings and luxury residential communities across 170+ designated market areas (DMAs). When you’re ready to offer your tenants a high-value amenity while elevating your communication capabilities, submit a contact form.