Dental Marketing commentary for dentists, orthodontists, dental specialists, dental laboratories, and other dental related businesses. This dental blog is written by dental marketing coach and consultant Dick Chwalek. He focuses on Connective Communication.
This linked video presentation below provides general overview of how dentists should put together their marketing plan.
The details provided are helpful in deciding how to allocate resources with all the options available. And how to avoid spending everything on online advertising and many social media options, which are very effective, but do not cover the whole range of how and why consumers make decisions.
The video provides answers to how the dental consumer is "gathered" up, the new dental patient is "created" and the process of continual "improvement" to make success consistently possible.
Do you feel that businesses should care more about the person, and less about their wallet? http://t.co/6yt0p12d5n
— That Guy You Know (@TGYKCCR) September 5, 2013
Do you feel that businesses should care more about the person, and less about their wallet?
-- Same question tweeted by @TGYKCCR
My Answer, Comment...
Depending on who this question is addressed to: the consumer or the employee, there are various ways to come at this, which include...
As to the consumer, a long term focus is often the best way to approach a business endeavor. Obviously, some concepts like gold mining may have a short life expectancy. Otherwise, if the focus is weighted toward the wallet, the future opportunities can be, and I think often are, missed. In that case the business is pushed toward even more "immediate gains" that will engender abuses on a greater scale. This "wallet weighting" has a tendency to work against the community as a whole, generating more gouge and flight to other areas endeavors, to find more suckers.
Of course, not all businesses that focus too much on the wallet go as far as to do "bad" things, but broad ethics relativity comes into play where will be promulgated a justification of a mushy business model, eyes-averting entrepreneurialism, and "quasi-capitalism".
As to the employee, once the owner/corporation believes it should/must hold all the cards, the likelihood of deriving new life from the company over time is very often eliminated, even if the "main profit ideas" come from the owner/corp. The owner/corp only has a certain amount of life without making the "person" a vital element of the everyday thought process, which creates a true well run company, and then sustains it.
A give, and less take, strategy will outperform the opposite. This does not suggest any "giving away" of "excess funds" but of consistent and persistence of educating for success/believing in the success of the employee within the company. While this is difficult in practice, and the "perks" are constantly undulating in the marketplace, the rewards for developing a good planning structure (no one plan may work forever) is significant, and generates wider and more stable success. If the owner is out for him/herself, it is very likely the employee will be as well. A gambler can lose all, then win big, and pull all the chips their way, but a business owner does not put employees on his/her personal roller coaster of "me first, 2nd and 3rd" and find continued success.
@TGYKCCR trope "I'm used to seeing/hearing"=an owner should/must/does hold all cards. However, when actually the case=
a biz destined 2fail.
— Towns And Chambers (@TownAndChamber) September 5, 2013
I call root canals a tooth-saving treatment to key in on the benefit. My theory about the dissemination of its pain moniker is a confusion (in the mental processing of it) with the toothache pains and waiting to get it taken care of.
You add the floating around of those ideas to that the anticipation of the dental visit, more pain is 'created', and around the office portion of the visit, even more anxiety is generated. The memory of pain and how it's imbedded on the mind over many days, weeks or longer before the visit are hard to remove, if not impossible.
That's why regular checkups are needed. Not only because dentists can often find the culprit before it causes pain, but because then waiting "won't" be extended past six months, maximum. Of course, a good relationship with the dentist means the patient wouldn't wait for the next appointment at all.
They would just call and come in, most often that day or the next.
The meme that root canals (endodontic treatment) are painful is generated a lot like the negative comment versus the positive comment dynamic. My my wife always attributes this communication concept to Walt Disney, which is that a negative comment will spread 17 (give or take) times farther than a positive comment/review.
That said, to improve and tamp down the negative protestations dentists need to get out in front of the problem, online and off line, public (not patients yet) and private (in office/patients).
My focus, Richard The Chwalek, is on the 'marketing/communication' element of the overall presentation in the practice and how it affects what people will think of the practice initially...
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There are three key elements patients need to notice when visiting a dental practice.
While my suggestions will not make it self evident or preclude the need to ask specific questions about a practice's safety precautions, I would suggest these visual cues are being covered for both dentist and patient to take notice of: think perception is reality.
Don't want any consumers walking out before they can ask those safety questions...
The practice should be up to date {much or all of it within last 7-10 years} glistening clean, not crowded, nothing piled up...
The staff should make a point of showing/saying how much time they put into keeping things straight, clean, sterilized, etc.
Patients should see safety info presented in various ways, posters, OSHA compliance notices, handouts, emails, on website, etc.
Tectonic shifting in my seat, not wanting to change, balking at simplifying my Life Lessons and staunching my marketing digressions untoward the mean side of obsession, turning videos into monstrosities of detail verbosity... Blah Blah!
Okay, it might not have been that bad, each time, but it slowed me down to take so much time on producing each video. I could either produce one mini-series a year or 18 House of Cards in the same time period.
Change Comes If We Really Want It, > But Boy It Can Still Be Hard!
Yes, for people (communication consultants) like me, admitting we need to change, but knowing we struggle mightily with it, is twisted ironic. Somewhat like a psychologist who goes to his/her own psychologist right after your session. (It's more common with my therapists.)
Go ahead, razz me about it. I'm fine with it now. A few weeks ago, I would have visibly choked on my inability to make this change. Even a change that I knew 'was coming' at some point. But make me do something before I want, and boy oh boy!
Improving Communication With Yourself
Actually, it's finding the way out of the trap you've set for yourself that's the most difficult. You can see the need, but can't endure (in your head and in a technical manner) all the stumbling that it will require to find your way out.
To de-trap from my pit of obsession with video editing, I 'simply' needed to call myself out as what I was, and determine what needed to be 'shutdown' to access a less productive mode. Yes, I mean LESS, not messing with more stuff, over-productive production!
In my case, it was the shutting down, not the adding to my skills, that required action in the case of video production. It's not that I don't need to add skills, it's just one person can only do so much (or other things suffer).
This trap is almost like loving to paint with acrylics but only having house paint to work with. Plus in this analogy, I would also need more and more acrylics, and take lessons, and do this and that to keep up, and then see more and more I could do. In reality, buying more software, higher level, etc.
Basically I was struggling to give up my 'comfort food' of making all my little detail changes, video snips and rips to smooth out my glitches and flinching, eye bulging and closing eye tics... Okay, I don;t look that bad, well you can determine that...
But as a radio announcer for seven years (mostly in the 80s), who started editing with an exacto knife, I figured I should use this great new and 'simple software' to perfect myself. Yet, it would just add more and more time, which as a small business I don't have much of. Being my own video editor was not something I could or should add to my daily life.
Therefore, I had to decide on near slick perfection and a video done once every few months.
OR a goofy glitch featuring and tic jarring, only weird if you see them actions... (Just kidding. I hope.) video presentation that said what I want, that could be refashioned later, made better hopefully, as well as add more nuance, which is very important in this day and age of constant replenishing of content.
EDIT BOY Relinquishes His Obsessive Grip
> Let's Hope for Long Term.
Anyway, here is how I see myself, as written on YouTube where this was originally uploaded. It's a true tale of obsession.
I be Edit Boy Obsessive, and as this moniker fits me and causes them as well, I have decided to force myself to do my video lessons of life and marketing sessions in ONE TAKE.
I do write some content but no images will be edited into the video for now. Of course, after you get confronted by the perspective of my face or just my nose, there may be a push to cover it all up once in awhile.
That said, it will help me not go into EDIT BOY mode, if I reduce the messing with it type activities.
Underneath all this virtual, I am a complex person with many complexes... Okay, I said it. I am human. My avatar may disagree, but that is why I am in therapy.
What sucks is that "it" costs me double, and once I get it... the avatar a birth certificate, of which I'm in discussions right now with Mark Zuckerberg, James Cameron and Donald Trump, my financial situation could turnaround... Wait a minute.
Minutes later:
No, none of the three would give me a loan, until I said, I would leave them alone.
Moving on, I hope you enjoy my blinking and goofy facial tics that come from my not wearing reading glasses so my eyes aren't sure what to do so they take a stroll or is it a role down the road! ARGH!
General/Cosmetic Dentists, Family Dental Offices and Orthodontists, marketing your businesses can be difficult, not only in tougher economic times, but also with any competition you have from other businesses AND for consumer 'eyeball' time. CopiesAndPrint.com'sGet Personal system is a vital unique promotional technique to add to your marketing and promotion platform.
Online is great (CopiesAndPrint is onlineobviously) but the local market means getting people familiar with doing more than merely searching, click, click, clicking.
It means making sure they KNOW YOU, the local orthodontic practice or dental office and a postcard will actually, physically, and tactilely get in their hands!
It's the tactile, touch the brain with actual touch, experience (it's more personally involved than online as well).
Additionally, the head of the household is 85 to 95 percent likely to touch and/or carry the postcard, and then see and 'remember' your postcard. It may be only a few seconds, but if they need your services now or in the future, who will they more likely be calling, or even searching for?
Yes, you, not the other dental practice in your neighborhood.
Why? Because the family or individual is noted on the printed address (not labels but printed right on the paper) AND also in the design!
It's a very memorable sight to see your name as part of the concept. That combined with the feel and touch of a postcard versus the virtual world that cannot attain this level of hand-eyes memorability!
Review CopiesAndPrint.com by clicking on your dental or orthodontic practice type below.
