| February 03, 2010
Digital signage is becoming a universal communication platform for healthcare facilities and their overall communication strategy. From large hospitals to small clinics to everything in between, cutting-edge healthcare marketers have discovered the value of using some form of digital signage to display a targeted message to its steady and diverse audiences.
In 2009, our feature “ Digital Signage: A Technology Queen for King Content” introduced reasons for why digital signage was such a natural medium for healthcare advertisers and marketers. It was revealed that through its affordability, appealing nature, non-static messaging and ease to disseminate multimedia information, digital signage would be a growing technology for hospital marketers in the year to come.
This year, the focus drills down a bit deeper. Rather focusing on why hospital digital signage is an exciting medium for hospital marketing, we now want to shine the light on what those marketers can actually do with a digital signage system.
Convert Physical Visitors into Website Visitors
By integrating solid call-to-actions placed within the content—such as educational information on wellness or new hospital services offered for patients—digital signage is proving to be a highly effective means for:
- Promoting your hospital’s brand
- Increasing Website traffic and conversions
- Introducing your patients to your online presence
Most hospitals these days have several interactive features on their Website that benefit the community they serve. Digital signage is a great way to point out these features on a hospital's Website and have visitors engage with you when they are unable to be on your Website. For example, creating an individual ad for a particular tool on your hospital's Website, like a physician directory, can help introduce that tool to patients with eye-catching graphics and useful information that will in the end, drive the patient back to the Website.
Emergency Messaging
Enabling hospitals to disseminate emergency-related messages throughout their corridors on digital signage systems (such as a local meningitis outbreak or a municipal food contamination), helps fulfill their civic responsibility as an advocate for public safety.
Also, emergency messaging can be used as an efficient method of delivering critical, up-to-the-moment information to hospital staff if an emergency should arise within the hospital. Digital signage can push out messages such as internal codes or protocols you hear over the intercom system in a fast, reliable and systematic way.
Internal Scheduling and Communications
Any digital signage system’s software worth its salt will allow operators to control content delivery to display pools, or groups of screens playing the same content for a particular audience. This not only opens up interesting opportunities with external communications in public areas (such as with day-parting), but it also presents a way to communicate internally with staff, nurses, physicians and others, including:
- Activities
- Education
- Live streaming (e.g., surgeries in a teaching hospital environment)
- Meetings
- Staff announcements
- Training opportunities
Entertain and Inform Waiting Patients and Visitors
Similar to airports, there’s a reason why virtually every hospital, clinic and doctor’s office has waiting rooms and areas. An unfortunate part of the healthcare experience is waiting. Why hand an audience’s thirsty attentions over to a scattered collection of outdated magazines or television broadcasts (and their advertisers)?
LCD and plasma TVs are typically at the end of every digital signage system, which means that they are inherently designed to accommodate televised content. Purchasing or even creating custom health-related content is not only fairly easy and affordable, but it engages otherwise bored visitors.
Furthermore, intermittent commercial breaks are an ideal opportunity to promote new products, enhance your brand, or any of the countless other opportunities that a digital signage system allows, including:
- Health tips
- Hospital announcements and events
- Locations of hospital services (such as the gift shop or cafeteria)
Dynamic and Streaming Content
The fact that digital signage is capable of delivering multiple, networked messages is a well-known advantage. Nevertheless, often, those messages are only considered from the perspective of what is generated onsite.
However, since the digital signage system is linked to a network, that means it has access to a tremendous wealth of dynamic content that is created offsite—in particular, information from the Internet:
- Local, state, regional and national news
- Tickers and crawls for news, updates and more
- RSS feeds from health and safety related sources
- Weather reports (especially during severe situations such as tornados, hurricanes, etc.)
These types of streams, feeds and dynamic content not only allow a hospital’s digital signage system to flourish, but it delivers precisely the kind of desired and often critical information that is needed by both hospital visitors and staff.
Reduce Paper, Cost and Labor to “Go Green”
Digital signage in hospitals can be utilized as a tool to reduce physical labor and enhance internal workloads. As opposed to traditional print media where you have hard costs, digital signage eliminates all printing costs—both internal and external—and diminishes any physical labor (such as changing, moving and installing print signs) and management issues. With digital signage, you have a complete easy-to-access database full of current digital signs that can be changed with the click of a button. It also is used as a tool to organize, streamline and manage marketing messages.
Digital signage presents an excellent way for hospitals to “go green” and support their community’s efforts to help the environment by eliminating waste paper for advertisement and notification purposes within the hospital.
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