Waiting Room Theater

The Top Three Ways To Educate & Grow

Admin — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 08:22:56 +0000

Here’s a video we ran at a recent tradeshow. It describes the Top Three Ways that WaitingRoomTheater will help you educate your patients and grow your practice revenues. The video will answer:

Challenge #1:
Patients don’t know about most of the services you offer

Challenge #2:
Patients are often bored and anxious

Challenge #3:
You don’t have the time or desire to sell your services.

Are You Allowing Your Competition In Your Lobby?

Robert — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 11:05:21 +0000

The other day I walked into my bank and got in line. I noticed they had installed two large LCD TVs right above the teller windows. Then I noticed what they were playing – CNN and Bloomberg.
Not a big deal, right?
Wrong.
My bank was providing an excellent platform for their competition to steal my business away. How is this possible, you might ask? It’s so simple that most people completely over look this.
Who are the main advertisers on CNN and Bloomberg?
If you answered other financial institutions, you are correct! My bank is now allowing their competitors to advertise right in their lobby. What if, while I was waiting in a long line, frustrated and late to a meeting, another bank bought time on Bloomberg, and their main message was no waiting in line at our bank? Or what if they were advertising a new checking account with no fees or no ATM fees or whatever?
There I am standing in line. My mind is focusing on my banking relationship. I am wondering how I can improve my business or how I can get a better loan rate, and then whammo, I’m watching commercials from other banks.
The hotel industry is also guilty of this marketing crime. Almost every hotel I check into these days has installed TVs behind the check-in counter. And they, too, are playing news and other cable channels. They too are allowing their competitors right into their lobby.
If this isn’t bad enough, the real crime is that they’re not helping me spend more money, buy more services, or improve my experience while waiting in line.
What is the answer?
Banks, hotels, markets, and even many medical offices provide far more services than most of their customers know about. Tellers are not trained as sales people and neither are the people who work at the front desk of a hotel.
This is where a well-thought out digital signage strategy can help so many businesses improve their bottom-line.
By controlling the content that plays on those screens, you can provide valuable information about additional services you already offer. For example, I am checking into a hotel. I see a short video about the hotel spa and then a short video about their premiere restaurant. Now, the hotel just informed me about two of its services which will leave my wallet a little lighter when I check out.
A word for the wise: many digital signage companies are offering free installations in exchange for playing commercials for non-competing businesses. I find this very annoying, intrusive, and frankly, poor business. I have no desire to watch commercials about the dentist down the street while I’m eating a meal or having coffee.
But if I’m in the dentist’s office, I am very interested in anything they have which will improve my experience while I’m there and give me a brighter smile.
Robert Grossman
President and Executive Producer

Digital Signage – Content is King!

Robert — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 03:01:55 +0000

Last week, I attend the Digital Signage Expo in Las Vegas to get an idea where the industry is headed and look for new opportunities. I’ve been working with digital signage for a few years now in dentistry, banking and now moving into retail. There were very few exhibitors who were demonstrating any new and exciting, but I did glean one very important fact to me – Content is King!

I walked around thinking to myself, what about content? What about the audience experience? What about helping me drive more business and more sales?

Digital Signage is going through some of the same growing pains video production is going through. The hardware is cheap, the software is cheap. There are so many companies offering solutions that the price is being driven down dramatically and the cost of screens are dropping too. Of course it is better for the end user if the cost is cheap right? Well, I think so, except you have people calling themselves digital signage experts, video production experts, content creation experts, but they don’t have a strong sense for branding, marketing, messaging and motivating an audience to take action.

And are they really experts? Some are and many are not. So beware.

I said Content is King right? Well, this is not completely actuate. What makes good content for your digital signage audience is nothing more than relevancy. What is relevant to them when they are watching the media on your screen. In other words, expecting someone to think about plumbers while they are filling their gas tank up in not relevant to the guy buying the gas. Sure, you might get lucky and they just might be looking for a plumber at that very moment. But then they have to get a pen and paper or enter the number into their phone. Chances are with the thousands of marketing messages bombarding us every single day, the changes this person will remember you from that one touch is very slim.

I think you get it. It is a shot in the dark.

So what is on the mind of someone pumping gas besides the price of gas? Who knows, but if there is a convenience store attached to the gas station, then maybe a few short videos about what they can buy in the store. Maybe reminding them that the store sells great coffee, or fresh donuts, or milk, or sandwiches might get them to walk into the store and buy something. There are obvious brands who sell product in these stores who might want to take advantage of the brand impression.

But here is the problem. Many of the models around digital signage involve installing the system for free and then sell advertising. The business owner gets paid per ad played or some variation of that. Now you know why your favorite restaurant has installed those annoying screens selling all kinds of stuff which has nothing to do with the meal you are sitting down to enjoy.

By the way, this same rule applies to presentations, videos, meetings and social media. The more targeted your message to what the audience really cares about, the more effective your communication will be at achieving your desired results.

I would love you hear your thoughts and comments about this.
Please also share some of your experiences and stories with me.

Sincerely,

Robert Grossman
Co-Founder, Waiting Room Theater

The Four Mechanics of Success For Your Dental Practice

Robert — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 11:01:05 +0000

A brief video with some good principles and guidelines. From the Revenue Builder series.