The Best Engagement Strategies for Digital Kiosks

When asked why their business has digital kiosks, most folks say something like “to notify individuals about things.” But just like documents that sit in an unread book are inadequate, a marketing message that’s read and forgotten doesn’t accomplish anything. And, the things people learn need to make some sort of impact in the world if they’re to have any tangible value at all. Digital kiosks can vastly increase the reach of a message, but if that marketing message lacks a clear call to action, then you have to ask – what’s the point? Digital kiosks are another form of digital marketing, promotion, and advertising, like a website or social network, and follow many of the same styles. Often individuals look at how many “likes” or “clicks” a post gets, but that isn’t really that valuable. The real name of the game in digital marketing or advertising is conversions – the audience interacting with the promotion and taking some sort of action. A business might choose, for example, that the main purpose of their Facebook page is to push traffic to their website, so a conversion on a post happens when somebody clicks through. Every digital kiosk message also needs a conversion objective that is strong to the audience and measurable for the brand. Action expresses priorities. Crafting a good CTA allows you to focus your marketing message and really drill down to the core of what you are trying to achieve. Instead of thinking “what do we want to say?”, think “what do we want them to do?” With few allowances, every marketing message should have some sort of call to action. Only attractors like news and weather feeds should stand out on their own. (Their perseverance is to draw attention to the screens.) Verbs are crucial. Verbs instantly create a sense of action or motion, and folks respond to them differently than other words. In fact, verbs trigger a different part of the brain (the part that deals with the motor cortex and the controlling mechanism of the physical formation of speech) than nouns do (the part that develops recognition of color, faces, words, and categories). Statements with authoritative verb forms are shorter than those with a stated subject and generate a sense of urgency. For instance, the statement “Contact admin now” is shorter and much tougher than “You should contact admin today”. You really need to ponder who the target audience is for each marketing message and what is most probable to get them to do what you want them to. Also, think about the time of day the promotions and messages are being displayed – a message that directs folks to “talk to HR today” after the department is closed for the day isn’t very effective.