DIY Cheap & Easy Digital Signage for Your Small Business

When somebody asks you about the costs related to digital signage, you want to give them the easy answer so that you don’t scare them away from digital signs. The fact is that digital signs are now the versatile answer to most retail and business problems. Yet, they can be rather expensive. It is not just the hardware, but it is the setup, the software, the configuration and the content creation too. Nevertheless, if you are looking for a bargain basement solution, then try a few ideas listed here.

Start As Small As Possible

Getting started is the biggest hurdle. Some people go a little too “All in” on their first purchase, and they buy massive screens, expensive software, network equipment and streaming devices. Then, when they have all the gear, they need an expensive team of consultants to help them figure out how to use it.

Start as small as humanly possible so that you can get to grips with digital signs as a concept. For example, take your Smartphone and turn on YouTube through its app. Then, screen cast the video you are watching to your flat screen TV at home. This is the most basic version of a digital sign and is a great starting point for your journey into the DIY cheap and easy digital signage world.

Create a Little Content

Perhaps edit together a quick video or pay a freelancer to make you an animated advertisement. Create something simple and small and find a way of getting it onto your TV. Even something like a flash drive in the TV and an app that allows you to loop the ad is a fair start.

As you progress and become a little more advanced, you may like to add a piece of hardware. You may like to add something that plays the videos over and over again, but also that allows you to schedule things and even change things during the day. For something like that, you will need a streaming device. For example, if you have an Apple TV device, you can stream your video from that onto your digital TV screen.

A Full Setup

If you are looking for a full setup, then this is what you need. You will need a digital sign, which can be a flat screen TV. If you are looking for something more sophisticated, like signs for outdoors, or signs you can place together to create a large screen from several small ones, then you will need digital signs rather than regular TVs.

Once you have your screen (a digital sign or regular TV), you will need something to stream the information to it. An Apple TV box will do this, but Amazon devices work too, as do PCs, laptops, and various other devices. You need a piece of hardware that can accept streaming software.

Try streaming software like KitCast. You can learn more about it from their blog.kitcast.tv. It is a service you can use from your computer to arrange your digital sign content, schedule your content, and such. You then install the Kitcast app on your streaming device (like your Apple TV), and that is all you need to do. You may now use Kitcast to control what is shown on your digital sign.

What About Networks, PCs, Multiple Signs?

The “Full Setup” you just read about is all you need to create a digital sign. You need the screen, the streaming device, and the software. However, if you want to scale things up, then you can build a network that communicates information to different digital signs. You can use PCs and servers to control your signs instead of Apple TV boxes. You can also add multiple signs if you wish, perhaps with some stacked on top of each other. 

To do something like this, you will need bigger budget and a smarter installation. However, as mentioned in the introduction sections, you should really start out as small as you can. Then, once you are used to the concept, once you have troubleshooted a few problems and figured out how to schedule things on Kitcast, then you may move onto bigger things. But for now, keep things cheap, do it yourself, and you will gain the best value on a cost-per-benefit basis.