Like any other business, healthcare offices need a steady stream of new and repeat patients to make money and succeed. Offices that can’t get customers to return will spend more on marketing and sales, and practices that can’t attract new business will slowly grow smaller. From the moment your patients set foot inside your practice, you need to convince them to return and refer your offices to others.
One way to drum up new business while growing your existing patient-base is with healthcare digital menu boards. Patients can learn more about your business and look for ways to use your services.
Here’s what you need to know about these menu boards and how your practice can use them.
What Are Healthcare Digital Menu Boards?
Digital menu boards are broadcasted on one or more waiting room TVs within your lobby. They can be adjusted for size and number depending on your office space or needs. Some practices display their services on one TV, while others have four or five TVs that line up to form a menu board.
The flexibility of digital menu boards makes them ideal for waiting rooms. Even if you have limited wall space, you can still develop a menu board to better communicate with your customers.
Plus, digital signage is easier to change than their print counterparts. Other than the initial set-up costs, practices can adjust their offerings as often as they need. With a few design changes, you can highlight a seasonal promotion (like a sports check-up or flu shot) or A/B test different menus to see which ones drive more sales.
How to Use Healthcare Digital Menu Boards in Your Office
Knowing what digital menu boards are is important, but so is knowing how you can use them. By making the most of your digital displays, you can boost your revenue and your client-base.
Turn One-Time Patients Into Repeat Visitors
Some healthcare providers struggle to bring patients back more than once a year, or even after a few sessions of treatment. This decreases their overall customer lifetime value. If you spend $100 on marketing and sales to bring in a patient who only attends one $100 session, then your efforts break even. But if the patient attends six monthly sessions, then their overall lifetime value to the business is $600, which makes the marketing efforts worth the cost.
By setting up healthcare digital menu boards, you can promote your packages and sign customers up for long-term care.
A therapist might offer discounts for patients who sign up for long-term treatment. Instead of paying $100 per session, they pay $80 for six months. The patients save money, and the healthcare office increases the customer lifetime value through patient retention.
If customers can learn about your packages while they wait, they might consider signing up for long-term treatment before they leave the office.
Encourage Impulse Buys to Increase Customer Spend
More than 75% of Americans admit they made an impulse buy in the past six months, and 80% of those impulse buys came from the store (as opposed to online). If your patients are paying for their treatment, they are likely to add something else to their bill in the form of an impulse buy.
For the healthcare industry, this might include wellness evaluations, special health treatments, or physical products that can help with their care.
Upsells vary greatly by practice and industry, but they can be used effectively to grow your average ticket and revenue.
By making products and services clearly visible on your digital signage, your customers can sell themselves on the idea of additional treatment and make impulse buys for their care.
Upsell Patients With Bundled Treatment Options
Another option for upselling patients is bundling. This includes packaging additional treatments together to help patients better care for themselves. You might have seen bundled packages on Amazon when the site encourages you to buy multiple books or tools that compliment each other. You can use this tool as well for your healthcare practice.
Bundling is more effective when patients can buy the same items individually. For example, a dentist might encourage patients to get an “at-home health kit,” with an electric toothbrush, special toothpaste, and and waterpik for better flossing. If a patient can buy the items individually, but it costs more outside of the package, then they’re more likely to choose the package because of the perceived value. Yes, patients are spending more on a package than one item, but they feel like they’re saving with the bulk purchase.
Use your healthcare digital menu boards to upsell items to patients and encourage them to bundle their purchases together into one package.
The more of your products and services you can offer in bundles, the greater the chance that your customers opt into them and spend more.
Share Information About Your Procedures and Treatments
Healthcare digital menu boards don’t just focus on how much services cost in order to upsell patients, they also highlight treatments your patients might not have known about and why they are important.
Digital signage content for your healthcare practice can include a screen that describes what various treatments are and why they might be important for patients.
This keeps your patients informed and prompts questions to ask their healthcare professionals. While a few words and a price tag might confuse people waiting in your lobby, a light description might sell them on receiving the treatment.
Bring Digital Menu Boards To Your Healthcare Practice
Your digital menu boards don’t need to have all of these options displayed. You might entice customers with long-term treatment plans, but not promote products or combo packages. However, by reading this post, you should have a few ideas for how you can effectively promote your practice to waiting patients in your lobby.
If you still have questions about menu boards or want to test them within your waiting room, contact Spectrio today. We can review your budget and goals to find a menu board budget that works for your practice.