Welcome to the commodity train. Destination: Irrelevance City, with stops in Price Warburgh and Declining Marginshire.

When ordinary features-and-benefits-based communications struggle to distinguish your business from the pack, it may be time to take your messages somewhere else — Into the heart of the customer experience.

In education, travel, luxury goods, food service, hospitality, professional services and other industries in which the thing sold is a thing lived, you need to communicate what it feels like to see, hear, touch, or taste your product.

The following points form a rough road map that can take your business from a place that’s obscure in your prospects’ minds to one that is tangible, vivid, and highly desirable.

Who: Personalize the experience

When value is locked in the experience—whether a dynamic classroom, an invigorating executive retreat, or an indulgent spa—objective “facts” fail to capture the subjective essence of your product. For that, you need a personal perspective, and none is better than that of your customers themselves.

Direct quotes, testimonials, day-in-the-life narratives, and even brief biographies can introduce the sympathetic element that allows prospects to project themselves into the experience you provide.

Insider secret: First-person (”I” or “we”) isn’t necessarily the only or even the best way to go. I recently created a set of student profiles for a graduate business program. Instead of first-person testimonials, I interviewed the students and created third-person (”he,” “she,” or “they”) profiles. Doing so allowed me to dig up and present important background facts—military experience, entrepreneurial successes, previous economic handicaps—that students would have neglected to mention, or would have found awkward to discuss without sounding immodest. By using the third-person approach, I was able to shape a compelling narrative for each student while incorporating direct quotes that created immediacy.

What: Illustrate the experience

Seeing is believing—even in language. The more graphic you are, the easier it is for readers or viewers to immerse themselves in your copy and imagine themselves within it.

When selling an experience, a bare-bones list of bullets won’t do; you want to create copy so rich that it envelops the reader’s senses.

Insider secret: Don’t rely on adjectives to carry the weight of your descriptions. Instead, reach for unexpected images that illuminate the uniqueness of your experience. Take the famous Royal Riviera Pears, for example. The people at Harry & David could have said that their pears are sweet and juicy—nothing special about that. But, instead, they said the pears are “so big and juicy, you have to eat them with a spoon”—and launched a direct marketing empire that thrives to this day.

How: Demonstrate the experience

It’s not enough to promise a special kind of experience, you have to prove your ability to deliver it. Why should the customer simply believe that you’re capable of fulfilling your promises? This is an opportunity to align your features into a larger story: how you do what you do.

Insider secret: If your expertise is a crucial part of the customer’s experience, create materials that serve as physical representations of your specialty. Don’t just focus on your business or even your service; instead, develop content packed with insights and suggestions that prospects will find immediately useful. By doing so, you build credibility that leads to trust—the necessary first step toward building a relationship that will lead to real business.

Where: Make your waiting room an integral part of the customer journey

Engage your patients with captivating content that gives them insight into the inner workings of your practice. Digital signage is rapidly being interwoven into the communications fabric of healthcare facilities nationwide.

It is an integral component of today’s patient experience. Digital signage impacts patients and their families, employees, and practitioners with relevant, audience-specific messaging that directly connects patients to their caregivers.

Such a connection affords healthcare providers the opportunity to positively impact the total patient experience by driving people to take action.

Differentiate your service and step away from the norm by creating unique, audience-centered content that is current, visually captivating, and relevant to your audience.

Hearing News Network (HNN) will complete the waiting room experience, create brand awareness and ensure that your patients are educated and informed while they wait.

Such a connection affords healthcare providers the opportunity to positively impact the total patient experience by driving people to take action.

The importance of unique, audience-centered content that is current, visually captivating, relevant to your audiences, and sustainable cannot be stressed enough.

Digital signage is a living, breathing system that needs to be continually fed, and in healthcare that means a “healthy”dose of the right kind of health content.

Your digital signage content should:

• Elevate the level of professionalism and branding in your facility.
• Streamline communications throughout your organization.
• Relieve patient anxiety and address FAQs with “what to expect” messaging.
• Support your quality initiatives and patient loyalty programs. Let your audiences know where you stand on quality. Digital signage is the perfect opportunity to showcase your “transparency.”
• Encourage patients and others to use your other services and inspire them to refer their friends and family.
• Establish your facility as a health resource for holistic hearing care, and offer patients insight into all types of technologies.
• Support provider efforts in patient education.
• Help patients and their families access care and understand processes, procedures and most importantly “what to expect” when they leave your practice and begin a life of hearing better.
• Encourage referrals and event registrations.
• Let people know they are important, their time is valued, and their healthcare concerns are legitimate.
• Recognize outstanding employees and introduce new staff to your patients instantly.

We will also put your name in to win a FREE HNN System valued at $1800 for an entire year! The draw for a FREE HNN system will take place November 30 and December 31, 2011.

Are you a Unitron Unite member? Are you interested in getting to know Unitron instruments or the power of Unitron’s practice development strategies? We have a program to fit your practice;

1. Existing Unitron Unite Gold Members can allocate HNN as your annual GSB. More information
2. Are you a Unite Bronze or Silver Member? Go for the gold with HNN. More information
3. Ready to try Unitron Instruments on your patients. Let Unitron and HNN work together to enhance your patients experience. More information

Looking for a good reason to launch HNN in your waiting room?

We have just released an exciting new special. Limited to the next 20 subscribers only…
HNN will pay for your hardware (free media player).

Click Here – For more detailed information

This won’t last long!