SMBs looking for customer-engaging and cost-effective ways of driving competitive edge are increasingly turning to digital signage solutions which offer a powerful and high-impact way of getting their message across and can easily be tailored to meet the needs of key target audiences.
Recent research by LG shows that SMBs comprise the largest proportion (31 percent) of the European digital signage market. It also reveals that SMB operators are seeking the same quality and reliability from displays as larger operators but at lower costs. Further, they want solutions which do not require specialist knowledge to operate.
Benefits of Partnership
Delivering digital signage systems and solutions into the SMB marketplace is a key focus for value added distributor, Medium. The company therefore viewed it as a great opportunity when LG IT Solutions, the business-to-business division of LG Electronics, chose it as the launch partner for LG SuperSign.
Medium has worked with LG for more than eight years, selling its commercial range of large format displays (LFDs) into both the educational and commercial/professional audio-visual (AV) markets. From LG’s perspective, Medium’s existing relationships with resellers working in the SMB sector made it a natural choice for partnership.
Testing Times
Part of Medium’s role in the lead-up to the launch of LG SuperSign in September 2010 was to test and evaluate the solution. This process began when the company hosted LG representatives from Korea who spent a couple of days with Medium, discussing market trends, price points and digital signage success factors. Medium was also issued with some early evaluation LG SuperSign units. It tested these and gave honest feedback as to benefits and issues. This has been instrumental in ensuring that the finished production unit was as complete a system as it has ultimately proved to be.
Setting out a Sales and Distribution Strategy
Medium’s primary strategy has been to target resellers whose main focus markets are SMBs, particularly in the retail sector and education.
All of Medium’s field sales team have an LG SuperSign NC1000 mini media player PC unit in their demonstration kit, enabling them to engage dealers with a real demonstration of the product. In addition, Medium offers them the chance to purchase their own SuperSign unit at a discounted price, so they can manage end user demonstrations unaided. That, coupled with a high profile presence on the Medium website home page, plus regular e-shots to prospects, is effectively communicating the message.
Medium has already achieved some significant successes in distributing LG SuperSign. It believes the key to success in this marketplace from a distributor point-of-view is to maximise the throughput of “seed” units to dealers so they can, in turn, show as many of their customers as possible how the system works in practice.
Digital signage products typically have a longer initial sales lead time than the majority of IT solutions as customers want to evaluate the systems and run trials before they commit to a large volume roll-out. To this end, Medium is continuing to promote its demonstration unit offer to dealers so that they can help to drive, and ultimately guide, this assessment process.
Bright Prospects
The success achieved so far by the LG SuperSign solution highlights the broad potential of digital signage. All the indications are that digital signage is becoming more of a requirement in all areas of life, from student communications to employee updates and from health and safety messaging to retail promotions. In our view much of this growth will be driven by SMB organisations.
