Digital Signage Best Feature: Dayparting

“Dayparting” is a term that originated from the television and radio industry. In broadcast programming, the hours of the day and night are divided into “parts,” or blocks of time, for the purposes of providing appropriate content to the largest audience demographic during each segment of the day and night.

Dayparting is the reason cartoons are broadcast on Saturday mornings. Why? Because children represent the majority of Saturday morning audiences.

After being released from school, teenagers arrive at home around 4pm, which makes them the main demographic who turn on the TV or radio at that time. This is why teen dramas and “after school specials” are programmed to air weekdays at 4pm.

The nightly news with its sometimes-disturbing coverage begins airing at 11pm due in large part to the fact that adults, generally speaking, stay up late enough to catch the grisly details.

Each of these distinct audiences influence what programmed content is aired on various TV channels and radio stations at any given time of day.

Yes, dayparting was birthed long before the internet came onto the scene…

That being said, the exact same logic is applied to dayparting initiatives in digital marketing and advertising spaces, including dayparting that is used for digital signage content.

Put simply, dayparting is the process of segmenting a given day into time slots, wherein the shift from one time slot to the next reflects a switch in audience demographic. By segmenting the day into time slots, businesses can market their promotions in a personalized, interactive manner that audiences are more likely to respond to. In the world of TV broadcasting, for example, the Saturday morning audience of children typically switches to a teenage audience in the early afternoon. In the fast-food industry, customers switch from wanting breakfast to wanting lunch around noontime. During the holiday season, consumers look for Christmas deals the day after Thanksgiving.

Every audience switch should trigger a change in marketing and advertising content, which can easily be done with digital signage dayparting.

In this article, we will examine how dayparting can benefit every industry. We will also lay out why dayparting is the best digital signage feature for businesses that want to effectively market, inform, and advertise to all of their distinct audiences throughout the day and night.

THE FOOD & BEVERAGE INDUSTRY

In large part, using digital signage dayparting in the food and beverage industry is fairly straightforward. Dividing the day into several parts is as simple as blocking the displayed digital content into the following periods: breakfast, brunch, lunch, and dinner, perhaps adding an after-hours cocktail menu if applicable. During each of these blocks of time, different menus featuring relevant items are displayed digitally on the in-store signage, which serves to upsell and cross-sell meal options to customers while providing them realistic images of menu items that help them decide what to order.

Owners, managers, and servers of quick service businesses, such as coffee shops and bars, understand the importance of speed and accuracy. The more complex the customers’ needs become, the more complicated order fulfillment can get. By dayparting your menu boards, however, you can reduce and even eliminate confusion at the counter, all while upselling and cross-selling items so that your servers don’t have to.

Digital signage with dayparting content can contribute to boosting the sales of all F&B Industry retailers, including:

• Restaurants, bars, nightclubs, and entertainment venues

• Cafés, coffee shops, and tea rooms

• Food service trucks, ice cream trucks, and other mobile street vendors

THE RETAIL INDUSTRY

With the rise of eCommerce and online shopping options, brick-and-mortar retail stores have suffered during the past five years, and it goes without saying that COVID-19 obviously didn’t help matters. Despite the slow downs and lockdowns, consumers still enjoy the experience of in-store shopping and derive a lot of benefits from the personalized attention they receive when browsing and shopping in person. There really is no substitute for trying on a garment, smelling a cantaloupe in your hand, and eyeballing a doggie sweater to be certain it will fit on Fido, all of which is impossible to do online.

Once shoppers have entered a retail store, their time and attention are limited. This means that your in-store marketing must be top-notch if you want to maximize the shopping cart total that each customer will pay at the checkout registers. Using dayparted content on your digital signage can effectively yet briefly snatch your customers’ attention, alerting them to sales promotions that are most relevant to the audience group they belong to, which will ultimately lead to an increase in sales.

The benefits of upgrading from static, printed signs to digital signage with dayparting capabilities can improve marketing ROI for retailers of all niche markets, including but not limited to:

• Department stores, high-end fashion boutiques, casual clothing brands, and athletic sportswear retailers

• Specialty stores such as pet supply retailers, vape & CBD stores, and optical shops

• Supermarkets, grocery stores, and convenience stores

THE MANUFACTURING & WAREHOUSING INDUSTRY

Digital signage in general has been proven to greatly improve operational workflows in manufacturing facilities and warehouses. When dayparting is incorporated into the scheduled content that is displayed, workplace efficiencies can increase even more. There are certain hours within the workday when employees are congregated in the breakroom, for example. This could be first thing in the morning before the factory bell sounds, during lunch, and during any shift changes throughout the day and night. By displaying OSHA updates, facility-wide alerts, and upcoming safety training courses on your digital signage during these blocks of time, you can reinforce critical information to your workers.

Dayparting can also be displayed on digital signage that has been installed wherever incoming vendors and customers will see those particular digital screens. Do your vendors tend to show up at the plant in the afternoons on certain days of the week? Schedule the most relevant content to display for them during those peak hours, such as pickup and dropoff protocols, wayfinding maps, and important contact numbers to call if an issue arises.          

Digital signage dayparting can improve the order and fulfillment operational workflows of all types of manufacturers and warehousing facilities, such as:

• Fast-moving consumer goods manufacturing and warehousing

• Automobile, aerospace, and shipbuilding manufacturing and warehousing

• Chemical, pharmaceutical, and industrial equipment manufacturing and warehousing

PROFESSIONAL OFFICES & PRIVATE PRACTICES

For clients and patients, oftentimes the hardest part about their scheduled appointment is the patience they must exercise in the waiting room before the receptionist invites them in to see their attorney, accountant, dentist, or doctor. Digital signage has been proven to shorten perceived wait times when the displayed content is relevant and engaging. Yet professional offices and private practices can improve their clients’ and patients’ waiting room experiences by implementing dayparting as part of their scheduled digital content.

For example, a dental office that purposefully schedules the majority of their patients’ routine teeth cleanings on Fridays could use dayparting during that block of time to display advertisements for teeth whitening treatments, porcelain veneers, gum grafts, or other cosmetic dentistry treatments that promote the appearance of a healthy smile. Busy law firms that offer pro bono and sliding scale services might have associated walk-in hours on a particular day. By dayparting their waiting room digital signage to display content relevant to those pro bono services, law firms can engage and inform prospective clients while they wait to speak with an attorney. 

Specific professional offices and private practices that can benefit from using dayparting as part of their digital signage content include:

• Legal practices, accounting firms, and financial advisory businesses
• Dental offices, orthodontics, and ophthalmology offices
• Medical private practices, chiropractic offices, and naturopathic businesses

THE EDUCATIONAL SERVICES INDUSTRY

Dayparting can work excellently for educational organizations that use digital signage, because all educational organizations and institutes have developed daily schedules and timetables in the first place. High schools use period blocks throughout the day that change with the sound of a bell. Likewise, colleges and universities use a uniform, daily course schedule for their student body. Even educational summer camps and other extracurricular programs organize their enrollees’ daily itinerary. In large part, the course scheduling that is already in place at these institutions has done the work of segmenting their “audiences” into “groups” for them.

All they have to do is target relevant content to each audience using dayparting and these educational organizations will be able to deliver clear information that can promote additional classes, courses, activities, and opportunities of interest to their students. By placing digital signage screens in high traffic areas, such as lobbies, cafeterias, and lounges, the displayed content can successfully promote academic programs and other relevant information so long as dayparting is used to direct specific messages to targeted audiences.           

Dayparting digital signage can especially benefit educational institutions and higher education organizations, including but not limited to:

• Primary and secondary educational institutions, and tutoring services

• Colleges and universities

• Extracurricular music, science, math, sports, and other community educational programs

THE HEALTHCARE INDUSTRY

Similar to professional offices and private practices that use digital signage in their waiting rooms to quicken perceived wait times, all businesses that operate within the healthcare industry can benefit from dayparting their digital content. Healthcare facilities and treatment centers can tailor their digital wayfinding maps to cater to high-traffic times of day. Dayparting patient testimonials to display in waiting rooms during peak walk-in hours can help dispel patients’ anxiety about their visit. Dayparting can also improve medical staff coordination and communication when content is displayed at strategic times in break rooms and other staff-only areas.

The trick to observe when it comes to implementing dayparting for your healthcare facility’s digital signage content is to recognize who your audiences are and where they are naturally grouped together. Typically, the outpatient services of a mental health treatment facility doesn’t cluster all of their disparate group therapies at once. Rather, they schedule these groups during blocks of time, stacking one meeting after the next. Each group is an audience, and by dayparting your content messaging accordingly, you can best serve your patients. 

Which specific types of healthcare industry businesses can improve their inpatient and outpatient services by utilizing dayparting as part of their digital signage?

• Hospitals, walk-in clinics, and urgent care facilities

• Inpatient and outpatient mental health treatment facilities

• Dialysis centers, diagnostic imaging centers, and accredited cancer treatments centers

NOT-FOR-PROFITS & NGOS

Not-for-profit organizations operate on a 501(c)3 basis, and because of it, these organizations are separate and distinct from traditional businesses. NGOs, or non-governmental organizations, are similar to nonprofits in that they have the same relationship with the US government in terms of tax exemptions, but that isn’t why these types of organizations have made it onto our list of industries that can benefit from the best digital signage feature: dayparting. We’ve included nonprofits and NGOs, because these organizations represent the most dynamic operational entities in existence with the most dynamic audiences around. If dayparting can work for them, dayparting can work for any business. Period.

You might be surprised to learn that a recent study about nonprofit organizations showed that digital marketing pulled in roughly 49% of all donations. If you work at a not-for-profit or NGO, however, you definitely already know that. And you also probably know that a little over half of all US-based nonprofits use digital signage for both promotional and organizational purposes on site and in the field! Why? Because digital signage has the power to attract new donors, and even more amazingly, a lot of those new donors would not otherwise know about the nonprofit if digital signage had not been used as part of their promotional campaigns.    

A wide array of nonprofits and NGOs can enhance how their organizations interact with the public both inside and outside of their offices when they use dayparting digital signage. Examples of nonprofit organizations and non-governmental organizations that can benefit from dayparting include:

• Houses of worship such as churches, synagogues, mosques, and temples

• Community-based organizations that operate under 501(c)3

• Advocacy organizations that operate as charities, civil societies, and environmental groups

WHAT’S NEXT?

If you’ve made it this far reading our article, then you’re probably convinced that implementing dayparting on the digital signs at your store is a must. But what if you haven’t yet upgraded from traditionally printed signs to digital signage? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered.

FTx Digital Signage is the industry leader when it comes to providing digital signage solutions that make scheduling dayparting easy.

Our full suite of tools simplifies in-store marketing. Retailers of all industries prefer FTx for their digital signage needs because our system and software were built specifically to make the lives of busy business owners and their hardworking employees easier. Our software includes a well-organized, easy-to-use Control Center where you can upload, store, and schedule all of your content media. Promote your slow-moving items, create buzz about soon-to-be-released items, and implement every dayparting idea that we covered in this article by enrolling in FTx Digital Signage today.

As we covered in this article, in addition to benefiting retailers, FTx Digital Signage Solutions benefit professional offices & private practices, educational institutions & higher education organizations, clinics & healthcare facilities, non-profits & NGOs, and B2B businesses of all industries.

What else can FTx Digital Signage do for your company?

• Save time, money, and effort by avoiding the costs associated with static, print signage
• Manage all digital displays from your home or office PC, or from any device with an internet connection
• Communicate information and effectively motivate your audience to take action
• Train employees, disseminate critical internal alerts, and keep company morale high with positive digital signage messaging With FTx Digital Signage, we offer design training, or you could select a pre-made campaign from our template database of over 1,000 designs! Our proprietary design software, AdPro, makes it easy for the user to edit templates, design original displays, and make fast changes. You can even schedule promotions and advertisements weeks, months, or even years in advance. Simply design, save, schedule, and forget about it! The best part about our cloud-based design software, AdPro, is that it’s available for free! If you don’t yet have digital signage at your business and would like to take the first step in upgrading from printed to digital signs, contact FTx Digital Signage to speak with a specialist today.