It’s often been said that one of the best things you can do for your health department is to give free service.

A benefit of offering free Wi-Fi is increased customer time spent on the premises. Customers are bound to stay longer if they can remain connected. As many as 62% of businesses report that customers spend more time in their business if Wi-Fi access is offered. Around 50% of customers spend more money as well.

I recently had Sunday breakfast at a quaint coffee shop at a beachside resort. While sitting there waiting for my order, I decided I would log-on and use their free Internet access. In my settings I saw their Wi-Fi and clicked to begin browsing. The first thing that happened was it took me to the coffee shop’s Facebook page that said “Check-in at our coffee shop to browse free.” That single act of clicking on their Facebook page created an automatic “like.” What a brilliant idea!

By providing free Wi-Fi to your customers you are creating an opportunity for them to stay engaged in your health department longer. And because 60% of customers will buy more products the longer they stay engaged with your business, it just makes sense.

In coaching our clients on ways to cross-sell, I am constantly promoting the use of heretofore-unused opportunities (like messages on-hold and queue marketing where there is a captive audience for their message). Requiring your customers to view your content, message or “like” your Facebook page on their way to using the free Wi-Fi is a perfect example of that. This is the essence of social media.

Let’s say your health department wants to promote the CDC anti-ecigarette campaign. Why not create a situation where WiFi users are required to visit a page that shares stories by ex-smokers that were successful in quitting tobacco? Creating the automatic Facebook “like” scenario does something else, it forever links that customer to your future Facebook posts.

The world of social media is being built, brick by brick on the word “like!” By requiring the Wi-Fi user to land at your Facebook page and click “like” in order to surf the web, you will create more traffic and “likes” to your site. Getting them to visit your website can also enable tracking with cookies and other technology that allows you to see what services or products your customers buy or what topics they search for. Ever buy from Amazon? This gives you the unbelievable power of target marketing.

When I founded one of the first commercial web development companies back in the early ‘90s, I realized that 95% of businesses had no idea what the Internet was and how valuable it could be to their business. This was truly like the industrial revolution happening all over again.

Today, with social media and the power of “likes”, sharing and stories by people who benefitted from your health department, there is an entirely new industrial revolution happening! This revolution, while not industrial, is just as profound. So why not offer free Wi-Fi to your customers today?