If you’re starting a business in the digital signage industry and are in the process of writing a business plan there are several areas that I would focus when writing your business plan and these are listed below:

1. CLEARLY STATE THE ROI - Your investors and the client will want to know what their ROI is. Based on the fact that you’re new to digital signage you may not have these figures available. There are several websites on the internet which may provide you with these numbers but my recommendation would be to engage the client to run a trial (for a fee or for free). During this trial you can use various measurement tools or devices to obtain your data. For example, the client may want to know how many people looked at the screen and purchased the product displayed. In this case you can use an audience measurement tool which tracks the number of faces that looked at the screen. One great thing about these tools is that it can help you also track demographic information. You can then correlate this information with the digital signage player logs and the retail management system logs.

In the past, we have been asked whether installing digital signage increases the number of customers walking into the store. The only way to determine this is to compare and track how many people walked into the store before installing digital signage and after. Some stores may already have some measurements tools to track this eg. people counter (uses infrared light to determine how many people entered the store) if they don’t then it may be worthwhile to install one.

2. NEED MONEY TO START YOUR BUSINESS – If your investors decide not to proceed with supporting you financially and your client is still keen to go ahead with your digital signage solution then you may want to consider leasing the equipment through a finance company. Have a read of this article about leasing vs purchasing outright vs rental:

http://www.digitalsignageblog.com/2008/07/20/digital-signage-purchasing-outright-vs-leased-vs- rental/

3. SWOT – All business plans should include the SWOT analysis i.e. clearly analyse your business Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats and clearly understand where your business may stand in the current market condition. Keep in mind who your current competitors are and how difficult it might be to enter the market. Also keep in mind that a number of existing businesses who are in the video/audio industry are merging into the digital signage industry. These companies will already have existing clients so it will be difficult to win these clients if you don’t have the relevant experience or portfolio.

4. SCALABLE SOLUTION - if you don’t manufacture your own equipment then you will need to clearly state in your business plan what services or equipment you will be providing. You will need to look for a digital signage solution that is scalable, affordable (also one that will make you a profit) and one that reduces administration costs. A centrally managed solution is the perfect choice for your clients needs.

Browse through our Digital Signage Portal Products pages to get more information about what are some of the products available in the market.

5. GET HELP IF YOU NEED IT – Partner with high profile digital signage manufacturers who can guide you and assist you with winning the projects. Do this even before you execute your business plan. Getting your foot in the door is always hard and working with an existing and experienced business will provide you with that extra support.

6. ROI FIGURES – In the ROI include potential advertising revenues figures from manufacturers. In your business plan, you will obviously do your maths and provide figures and number of how much your business will be earning, even if it’s making a loss in the first couple of year. Sometimes you may have to clearly draw the line and decide when it’s best to pull out from the business but generally, the first 5 years is always the toughest and most businesses fail in this period.

7. UNIQUE – are you providing anything unique in the current digital signage industry? If you are, then your business plan should clearly revolve around what additional benefits your product/solution/service will bring to the industry. Otherwise, the competition will be quite rough with existing established businesses.

Hopefully these points helped you in putting together your business plan.

Do you have anything further to add to this list?

Feel free to submit your answer as a comment.

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