COVID-19 Vaccination Sites | Communicating With Your Visitors

Vaccination sites require visitors to wait 15 minutes after getting the COVID vaccine; that’s 15 minutes you could be using to your benefit as a vaccine provider.

The TV provides an opportunity to communicate with your patients while they’re sitting around waiting for time to pass. Whether it’s getting first-time visitors to come back for other reasons or encouraging more volunteers to donate things like plasma; you have a prime opportunity to educate those people-in-waiting. This article is all about the best way to take advantage of that time, and it all starts with the TV in your waiting room.

The Best Waiting Room TV for Vaccination Sites

The best waiting room TV for medical offices isn’t cable, nor is it a medical display; that goes double for “FREE” medical TV services. The best TV software for your clinic is It’s Relevant TV. It’s Relevant is geared towards patient comfort, providing hospitals, clinics, and medical offices with a means to keep their visitors entertained. Entertainment here is key, because medical displays are NOT fun. They’re boring, and often times unsettling.

It’s Relevant helps pass the time by putting something fun on the TV.

IRTV brings a variety of engaging content to the table separated into a list of 40+ unique categories. The categories are like “channels,” which can be turned on/off based on the interests of your visitors. So whether you’re someone who likes celebrity interviews and cooking, or prefer home gardening and automotive, there’s something for all audiences.

It’s Relevant TV features short-form content. This increases the liklihood of your visitors seeing something that will get their attention.

More importantly, It’s Relevant gives you the freedom to upload your own videos and messages. Playing your messaging alongside content that your visitors are genuinely interested in watching is the best, most-effective way to get those messages across. Because It’s Relevant isn’t just a medical display, you can count on the only medical-related messaging being your own approved videos. This is important, because you’re not always in control of what shows up on your TV when it comes to other services. With IRTV, you’re in control.

Getting It’s Relevant TV for your Vaccination Sites

You can find out more about It’s Relevant TV here. Chat with the TV experts about any questions you have regarding custom TV networks, or schedule a demo to see the technology firsthand. Custom TV software is the future of medical office television as more and more clinics are seeing the advantages to canceling cable in favor of a customizable, personally-branded network.

Free Waiting Room TV Service | Businesses & Medical Offices

Looking for free waiting room TV service for your business or medical office? Cutting cable in favor of waiting room TV software is a step in the right direction; but settling on one of the self-proclaimed “free” TV services is just as bad, if not worse, than what you just got rid of. If you take anything away from this article, let it be not to fall for “free.” You always get what you pay for. Certain waiting room TV services, like this one, are as close to free as you’ll get; with features that make it worthwhile, and tools to even offset the cost.

If you’re paying $0/month for waiting room television, it shouldn’t be because it’s costing you $0/month. It should be because it’s generating enough revenue to cover the monthly cost.

Why is a Free Waiting Room TV Service a Bad Idea?

When something is advertised as “free,” it generally means that it isn’t costing you any money. However, that doesn’t mean that it isn’t costing you something else. Free is good when that free thing is complimentary, or a bonus; a thank-you for choosing X, Y or Z, with the hopes of leaving a good first impression. When that free thing is a TV service, or a brand-new television; or both, chances are that provider is taking advantage of you in some way.

How can you tell if you’re being taken advantage of?

If something is too good to be true, more often than not that’s usually the case. A free TV + content that you pay 0$/month for? It might seem like a win-win, but beneath the surface there’s something disingenuous going on. There’s no two ways of looking at it — whether you’re a restaurant, a gym, salon, dentist, or even a hospital, you have something these service providers want; a captivated audience.

Day-in and day-out, you’ve got visitors coming in and waiting — sometimes for 10, 15, or even 30 minutes. That’s a long time, and that’s precisely what these providers are looking for; to turn your TV into an electronic billboard. For who? Themselves, and their happy advertisers. They might throw you a bone and give you the ability to upload your own ads on the side, but not without your messages competing for the spotlight.

If you thought commercials were bad…

Try endless looping commercials for drugs, treatments, or nonsense-conditions that you or your doctors don’t endorse; it’s on your TV, visitors will associate it with your brand, and nothing short of turning it off will stop to it.

Recommended Read: “Top 5 Reasons a Free TV Service is Bad for Medical Offices

An Alternative to Free Waiting Room TV Software that’s still Free, and 100% Safe

One of the downsides of a free waiting room TV service, as described above, is that fact that someone else is reaping all of the benefits while you’re stuck with their ads playing on your TV. But what if that “someone else” was someone you chose to instead? Someone you trust, or a non-competing brand that your business supports.

It’s Relevant TV, a company that provides custom TV networks to businesses, is unique in that it offers shoppers a $0/month Sponsor-Supported package in which you choose a trusted company, organization, or fellow business owner to cover the cost of your monthly subscription. In exchange, they get to feature their brand and messaging on your TV in a way that is mutual, non-intrusive, and most-importantly; safe for your business.

Check to see if there are any local businesses that you can partner with!

Choosing a brand that pairs well with your business, who has your best interests at heart, is a lot better than letting someone you don’t know; who you’ve never heard of, profit off of your business’ TV. Partnerships are, and always will be, a great marketing strategy.

A Safer Way to Shop for Waiting Room TV Software

The best way make sure that you’re getting a TV system that’s built to serve your brand is to consult with someone in the industry itself. The TV experts at ItsRelevant.com are there answer any questions you might have about what to look for when it comes to waiting room TV technology. Schedule a call with them, or ask to arrange a demo if you’re serious about a custom TV network.

If anyone should be making money off of the TV in your business or medical office, it’s you, or a partnered brand. Your TV, your space, and your visitors are extraordinarily valuble to these advertising companies; so much so that these “free TV services” are able to deal out free TVs and iPads like playing cards. The cost of that technology is nothing compared to what they’re making off of you.

Business Owners: Get More Mileage out of Your Videos

Does Your Business Have A Video?

More and more businesses are creating videos and seeing the value. Videos are a great way to demonstrate a product, detail a service, or introduce people to your staff. Videos can be time consuming to create, and expensive to make. While we have observed a growth in the number of businesses making videos, the majority of them fail to think about the next step: How do you get customers to see it?

We see the video process as having two parts: Production & Distribution. Production is the planning, shooting and editing of the video. Distribution is taking the finished video and putting it in front of people. While there has been a great increase in attention paid to the production, distribution is something many forget to focus on.

Where Are You Putting Your Finished Videos?

So where do your videos go? How do you get them seen? How do you measure the success of a video you’ve made? These are all questions you should ask yourself.

We’ve found that many business owners take a “Field of Dreams” approach to video distribution. The famous quote from the movie, “If you build it they will come”. If you build a great video and throw it on YouTube, you will soon find that your intended audience will not find it automatically.

It’s similar to printing fliers. Just because you’ve printed 100 fliers and have them stacked in a box, doesn’t mean people will seem them. You have to do the work to get those 100 fliers into 100 prime locations to reach your desired audience. Video works in much the same way. Even though you aren’t passing out physical videos, you do have to think about how to place them in front of people you want to see them. Youtube, your website, community pages etc. are all places you can start. We have found a primary space for these videos should be on TV in your business location(s).

Putting Your Videos on TV

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This doesn’t have to be your TV solution.

Having your videos on TV will draw more attention to them.  It will get them seen by customers that are more likely to act upon your messaging.

There are many ways you can get your videos onto TVs in your locations. We have details the top methods in this article: 3 Ways to put your videos on TV.

The problem with most display solutions is that they loop. Unless you have a large library of content at the ready, people are going to watch the same thing again and again with no break and nothing new. Maintenance and upkeep are also issues – often needing to brave a utility closet full of wires, re-load physical drives or USB sticks, or having to hire a specialist in order to update or fix what’s on the TV.

Making the Most out of Your Videos

Putting an easy-to-use system in place that will play your videos and mix them with other TV programming is key.  It’s Relevant TV takes the majority of the work away- providing your business with relevant TV programming, and a way to make the most out of your media.

It’s Relevant is a cable alternative that provides businesses a TV solution in the form of a living network of short-form content. IRTV’s library of videos is broken up into categories for you to choose from based on your customer’s interests, and gives you full control over what’s on your TV. The service provides compliments to your own videos as well as complete management of one or multiple TVs. IRTV tracks everything so you can know how many times each of your videos were displayed, along with specific timing and location.

The big difference between It’s Relevant TV and other solutions is in the content. IRTV provides interesting and entertaining content while inserting your own messages and real-time social media for people to see while engaged.

Visit itsrelevant.com to learn more about the easy-to-use and cost effective TV solution.

Why Customer Retention Should be a Higher Priority than Customer Acquisition

In-Location Marketing vs. External Advertising

Customer retention is key. Most marketing budgets center around getting a company’s message out to the masses. TV commercials, print ads, billboards, sponsorships, direct mail, are all forms of external advertising that are commonly used to attract new customers to businesses. But once you bring someone in, what are you doing to get them to come back?

Companies that have to advertise all of the time in order to stay in business are likely not doing enough to keep their customers happy.

Many business owners focus most of their efforts on attracting new customers in order to make more money. But you don’t only need new customers! If your goal this year was to grow your revenues by 10%, would you care if that increase came from new business, or increasing the average spend from your current customers? Of course not! More revenue is more revenue.

Money earned from new customer vs. existing

They look the same, don’t they? Because they are! An added dollar earned from an existing customer is just as good as a dollar form a new one. But it’s proven to earn that extra dollar from an existing customer than to get it from a new one.

“Research shows that it can cost up to 30 times as much to get a new customer as it does to keep an existing one. It pays to stay very close to your customers, so you know their exact needs, today and tomorrow. Your aim is to be irreplaceable as their supplier.”
Mike Johnston, The Chartered Institute of Marketing

An Inexpensive Solution

It’s Relevant TV has come up with an easy way to increase customer retention (getting customers to come back more often). Each custom TV network IRTV creates is unique to each business that displays it. Short-form TV programs grab the attention of visitors while the integrated real-time social media and promotional tools help get the business’ message across.

If you own or manage a business and have a TV, It’s Relevant TV offers a free consultation. You can explore various types of programming with an expert and start to craft something that will do much more for your business.

For more information check out It’s Relevant TV’s official site: http://www.itsrelevant.com or call their U.S. Headquarters at: (203) 588-1689

 

 

The “Set It and Forget It” of Business Television

“SET IT AND FORGET IT!”

-A 90’s Studio Audience

 

Who could ever forget that line? If you watched any infomercials during the 90’s, then chances are you’ve heard of the inventor, salespersona, and founder of Ronco; Ron Popeil. Now if you haven’t watched the video and left to get a mouth-watering rotisserie chicken by this point, let’s take a closer look at that famous slogan.

Set It and Forget It.

The idea of “Set it and Forget it” was a major selling point of the Showtime Rotisserie. We’re all busy people, and the less effort we have to put in to get things done the better. Plain and simple; why would someone slave over the hassle of making a chicken when you had a tool to manage the hard parts for you? Especially when you need to focus other things.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with managing something yourself. If you enjoy doing the hard work, power to you; however if you’re a business owner, time is money.

It’s Relevant TV provides a “set it and forget it” service for your business TV.  The custom channel runs on its own and pulls tailored content from a vast media library for viewers to enjoy. It lets you be busy elsewhere doing the things you need to get done. No more paying for cable and worrying about what to put on; the quick segments and broad categories are catered to appeal to a wide audience, and ensures that fewer people are disappointed by what they’re seeing.

But Wait, There’s More!

It’s Relevant does more than put original content on your TV, there’s a whole list of other features that come with it. From sharing and deals you’re offering people, to promoting your social media for all to see; it works for you. You’re in control.

With IRTV, you literally set it and forget it.
Interested? You can call toll-free: 1-855-ITS-RELE
or visit: http://www.itsrelevant.com for more information.

 

Amazon Fire Stick: Don’t Risk Sticking Your Business

Technology is Changing TV

Amazon Fire Stick, Chromecast, and Smart TVs are steadily emerging over the horizon, more so now than ever. With access to services like Netflix, Hulu, or HBO Go and devices that allow you to stream those services on your TV, cable is on its way out.

TV has come a long way since the 1920’s, and as we get closer to 2020, looking back on the history of television during the last one hundred years and seeing how far we’ve come is pretty amazing. Today, televisions are just about everywhere you go. Everywhere. And they have been for a while. That’s because TVs are a staple of technology – we use them to reach out to one another, stay informed, and keep ourselves entertained.

If you’re a business owner who caters to crowds, or often has people waiting or sitting for lengthy periods of time, then chances are you’ve got a TV within sight for the exact reasons just listed above. Which is great, the comfort of your customers is key – but in this rapidly advancing world of technology, it’s easy to get carried away when trying to build an inviting waiting room experience.

Between all the technology available to business owners coupled with the drive to maintain customer satisfaction, the ease of putting something up like Netflix powered by an Amazon Fire Stick is second nature. So why wouldn’t you do it? The answer is simple. Because it’s illegal.

NETFLIX TERMS:

The Netflix service and any content viewed through our service are for your personal and non-commercial use only. During your Netflix membership, we grant you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, license to access the Netflix service and view Netflix content through the service. Except for the foregoing limited license, no right, title or interest shall be transferred to you. You agree not to use the service for public performances.

Using those services with a “set it and forget it” mentality without regard for the licensing terms and conditions can be dangerous for your business. The people who enforce the rules on media licenses take this very seriously. For more information regarding why you should think twice about setting up services like that in your business, check out this article on using Netflix in your business.

Personal Use is Different than Business Use

In the end, the licensing rights tied with those services only applies to personal use. Setting them up in your business is a no-go. But if you think about it, TVs and plug-ins like Fire Stick and Chromecast were designed with the home setting in mind, not business settings anyway.

fire

So you can’t use a Fire Stick in Your business to deliver any real TV content. Up until recently, this left you with only one real choice: cable TV. And while it’s legal to run cable in a business setting, cable TV isn’t designed for the benefit of your customers and your business. It’s Relevant TV is.

Custom TV from It’s Relevant

It’s Relevant TV bridges the gaps between TV, customer satisfaction, and business messaging using unique digital sinage software – creating a more inviting place for visitors. The service provides businesses with content and control that makes for an all around better TV experience. IRTV creates a custom TV network for each business with access to a vast library of original content divided into a number of categories you can pick and choose from. On top of the TV content with more meaningful controls, your business also gets room to advertise additional services, reach out to customers, and share your latest social media posts. It’s Relevant TV turns your television into a tool for your business.

Television Decided the Election. What Decisions is it Making for Your Customers?

Regardless of  who you voted for in the presidential election, your decision was influenced by television. Between the constant TV news coverage and the paid ads that ran, everyone formed judgments and impressions based on what they saw and heard. TV makes a lasting impression. Let’s take a look at what this means for broadcast television, and for TVs inside your business.

24/7 News Networks Care About Their Businesses, Not Yours

Today’s 24/7 news networks turn a 1-day event into months of drama. They take the normal “coverage” and inject scrutiny, conspiracy theories, and sex scandals to bring viewers on a rollercoaster of ups and downs before the grand finale (election day). News feels more and more like entertainment, and that’s not by accident. Plenty of intelligent people have already pointed out that networks do this to boost ratings and generate greater revenues for the crowded networks. And while I would agree that revenue is a driver, I feel that the larger problem is a growing laziness among the people that design the format of these shows.

The News used to be a place that you would come for facts and knowledge. It was the work of large teams of people that spent days or even weeks to bring you researched programs that included quotes from actual experts and your trusted newscaster.  The best part was that you left each broadcast better informed than when you began watching.

CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite reports that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.
Trusted CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite

Things have changed. While the basic format of having a news anchor inside a studio reporting on the day’s top stories has been constant for decades, the pressures to do more with less money is changing the face of it. The fact of the matter is it’s much easier and far less costly to put a few people around a table to argue about a topic than it is to research and report on a news story.

News reporting can be extremely costly, especially for TV. I ran a video news company in the Northeast for almost 4 years, and we put a lot of work into each story the staff produced. From sourcing a story idea to setting up interviews, cross checking facts, recording the actual video, finding b-roll (cut-away shots), editing the video, fact checking, publishing and distributing the story – it took hours just to produce a minute or two of content. It’s hard to sustain a business with the kind of effort needed to do news reporting right.

Replacing the Reporters & Experts

Taking a look at most prime time cable news shows you see a familiar pattern these days. At the top of the hour you have the team of reporters and experts that are unbiased and reporting the facts of the day without forming judgments. All sitting or standing in the beautiful professional studio.

Then a few minutes later the professional journalists and experts peel away, and a panel of professional-looking people start to share their opinions – in the same space. Panel members can say whatever they want to say and their statements appear to be researched, authoritative and official. It feels like you are hearing from other experts when in reality you are hearing from surrogates (people that will stand by the candidate they support no matter what).

If you recognize any of the people below, then you have come across exactly what I am writing about:

clinton-trump-surrogates
Some of the many 2016 Election Surrogates

This Would Never Happen Anywhere Else

Imagine a doctor’s office for instance. You schedule an appointment with a well-established practice. You go to the office and sit down with someone in an exam room. The person gives you their opinion on your physical condition and makes recommendations on things you should do once you leave. It feels a lot like you just sat down with a doctor and got a medical opinion.

But what if the person you sat down with isn’t a doctor at all?
What if he/she wasn’t a nurse, or even in the medical profession?
What if you found out that the person you saw and heard from is merely someone that knows of the doctor, nothing else? Their medical opinion would hold absolutely no weight.

This is exactly the problem with the overuse of surrogates and non-experts in news programs today. They have the appearance of authority and are happy to share their opinion even though it’s not necessarily in your best interest.

Unbiased vs. Balancing Bias

For years the news industry has strived to be fair, factual and unbiased. However, in this election season we took one of the most noticeable turns away from that. The strive now seems to be more towards “balancing the sides”. Instead of sticking to the facts, these broadcasts allowed people to share their opinions much like facts, just as long as someone on the opposite side of the argument could do the same.

This created some real distractions within the campaign. Ultimately it may have created some single-issues for voters that moved them one way or the other in the election. Hearing that Trump “sexually assaults women”, or that Hillary “will be put in jail for deleting her emails” creates serious concerns for voters. But all of these kinds of things were being spoken countless times a day by people who looked to be authorities on what they were talking about.

You know it’s bad when the news broadcast has to fact check itself.

Television has Become Bad for Businesses

While television as a whole has more offerings than ever, and is seen in increasing numbers of stores and public places, it’s not helping businesses as much as it should. With endless channel choices at our fingertips, TV is great for the home. You can easily tune from one channel to the next when faced with something you don’t like, but not in a business.  More and more stores, offices, and public places are installing televisions simply because they can. Unfortunately, the programming the businesses choose to display on the screen often does more harm than good.

The bottom line is: even with endless channel choices, you can’t control what appears on any given channel at any given time. You could watch CNN for instance and enjoy a heartwarming story about one of the CNN Heroes.  But just one minute later you’re faced with disturbing images of war and terrorism half a world away. This can be off-putting and depressing to customers as they watch in a business.

Even when the topics aren’t disturbing in nature, they are often exhaustingly overplayed. It’s hard to forget the months of nearly non-stop coverage of missing Malaysian Airlines flight 370. With no new information CNN had to constantly improvise, bringing up new theories, even having anchors use toy planes.

cnn-malaysian-airlines-370-overplayed

It’s not just news stations that cause stress, discomfort, boredom or other negative feelings. I’ve heard complaints about even the most neutral of channels like The Food Network and The Weather Channel. People have different tastes, and leaving them with only one programming type for an extended period of time is a surefire way of losing their attention or worse: becoming a bother to them.

Take Control of the TV in Your Business

As a business owner, it is up to you to make the right choices for your business. You may have spent time choosing the colors of your walls, the hours you are open, the people you want representing your business, the type of music that plays, and the kinds of refreshments you offer to people when they visit. All of these examples are things that have some influence on the way people perceive your business. It’s the interactions your customers have with each element that dictates their overall satisfaction of your location.

TV has arguably one of the greatest abilities to shape how people feel. The combination of visuals and sound leave a lasting impression on people. What impression do you want your customers to leave with? How do you want them to feel when waiting at your place of business? What do you want them to know about your business, values, and offerings?

We’ve found that the happiest customers are the ones that get to see a variety of content.  They don’t want to feel like they are being bombarded by advertisements. For this reason, we created a platform called It’s Relevant TV that provides an ever-changing assortment of short-form television shows. The service blocks out competitor advertisements and gently brings the business’ own messaging and real-time social media onto the screen. The custom networks can operate with or without sound; all of the video content can be overlayed with optional subtitles.

It's Relevant TV

An experienced editorial team screens the included licensed TV programs before delivery to the businesses. All of the programs that we distribute are family-friendly.  We keep all political coverage short, to the point, and truly unbiased. It’s Relevant gives each business 50 categories of video content to choose from. This ensures that the programming isn’t just risk-free, but is topically oriented to visitors of the specific business. The business easily controls the messaging and social media syndication.

Learn from the Election

This election season, one thing was obvious: the campaigns understood the power of television. They knew that messaging seen on TV will stick in people’s minds and influence their decisions. This is why we saw the campaigns push their  surrogates to TV. The lazy TV networks were happy to invite them on because it saved money and filled their airtime.

TV has tremendous power over decision making. Don’t be lazy with yours.
Make sure your TV is working in your best interest as a business owner.

Written By: Jonathan Krackehl, President & CEO of It’s Relevant TV