While the South African economy has had its ups and downs over the past year, Christmas is a time that people tend to open their wallets to spoil the ones they love.

Ahead of the Christmas season shopping rush, retailers would benefit from implementing a digital-signage strategy to help drive traffic to their stores and effectively close the sales loop.

Rob Nelson, owner at Reel 2 Real Interaction, has a few tips to help companies maximise the benefits of digital signage in time for Christmas:

1. Show the hero: The product you are promoting needs to be presented as the hero in your campaign. Make sure that the hero stands out in your digital signage and is present throughout the experience so that even passers-by know what you are selling at a quick glance.

2. Easy to adjust: Make sure that the price on your digital displays can be quickly and easily edited without having to change the entire production. This is particularly important if you are going to be running special offers in the lead up to Christmas.

3. Eye candy is critical: It is important that you use proper animation that not only attracts the audience's attention, but also holds it for the duration of the clip. To achieve this it is recommended that you use specially developed content for digital displays rather than using a PowerPoint with clipart animation or run the entire television commercial in the hope that the audience will want to stand and watch your advert during peak shopping time

4. Right placement: For your campaign to succeed you need to place the screen at the right place for the desired target audience to see it. For example, if you are promoting a clothing brand rather display your content in a shopping mall where the brand can be purchased than at a garage forecourt

5. Dynamic content: The screen and the content you display on it needs to be fresh and dynamic to attract the audience's attention. To achieve this, the content should be developed specifically with the target audience in mind and especially for use on digital signage rather than reusing content that was developed for other mediums.

Various studies have been conducted proving the effectiveness of digital signage as a marketing tool that increases sales. Intel, for example, found that items advertised with digital signage experienced, on average, a 49% increase in sales versus a control period where there was no advertising.

However, while the research finds that this is an effective marketing tool, it is critical to get the basics right if you want to reap the benefits of this medium.