Dental Consultant's Blogging Using Wink-Nudge Effect from NDC: Do Direct-Mail Postcards Work Today?

For Consistent Success: Call 1+888.380.0020

NDC, virtually but not literally based at NicheDentalCollaborate.com, provides a platform for various 'strategic partners' of mine at Niche Dental (NicheDental.com) in developing and providing comprehensive solution oriented value to dentists, dental offices and other dentistry professionals.

At the virtual-reality site hosted by NDC, I, Dick Chwalek, will provide at various times, blogs that are somewhat more impulsive, ironic and idiosyncratic.

WARNING:  Below you will find one of those blog entries, the type noted above (i, i and i). Please get parental approvable before excusing yourself from reading this blog in its entirety. The BRB (BLOG RATINGS BUREAU) demands your attention to this item. As a pre-cautionary tale, precognitive suggestion and incoherent reminder: Looking away, avoiding this responsibility or using your freewill has many figurative, unintelligible and illusory consequences.

Dentists: Do Direct-Mail Postcards Work Today?

With online advertising, such as Facebook, Twitter, dental blogs, Google Plus and many others, many, even most dentists might think direct mail, or specifically dental postcards have lost their value. Maybe those dentists figure mailings will drop lower each day as more and more types of Internet-based marketing are added to the communication quiver.

Yes, this assumption by online marketers of print marketing supplantation and gone bye-bye postal annihilation is correct. You got me. I give up. What was I thinking, merely promoting a product I make a profit from?

What I actually mean, is NOT!

Well, first: Accusing me, the gentle soul of marketing, of a conflict of interest is very interesting at least, and usually something I take personally, and as a threat to my ethics. But today I will let it slide. Just stand aside, and no one will be alarmed by my not so thick skin.

Moving beyond my damaged image and hurt feelings, I object to your/online marketer incorrect assertions that suggest some kind of mailer/printer marketing apocalypse has occurred. Online marketers, while not totally swallowed up by their own swirling swimming pool of conflicting interests, do have some mottled enamel in the game.

Pi = 3.14+ =  Three Main Elements of Connective Communication©

These online marketer philatelist hating fanatics push what might be called (and actually called by me) a self fulfilling prophecy of off-line, printed postage paid dental postcards gone poof positive, which is patently puffed up and pitifully proposed, yet potently promulgated!

Yet, as a dentistry communication specialist, I harrumph at the insolence of these dental marketers! (I am also a dental marketing consultant for online and off, but only when it suits my needs. Or in this case, when it separates me from the chaff, I want to be separated from to look better than others but not make me look purposely pompous.)

So what's this online versus off line (mailing/print type) marketing harrumph all about? Do I have a case against its accusation that postcards are not working for dentist offices impudence? I do! I do have a case!

In short, here is my recalcitrant rebuttal:

Dental postcards work! Just because! That's that!

~~ Sadly that doesn't even work with my two teenagers, but if you're a parent, it's worth a try after a long day at work.

Therefore, I will run through my list of why dental postcards work, which is the more professional way to run a marketing firm. As every other marketing firm will explain it online, here are the TOP FIVE REASONS yada. yada... Isn't that the way we do it?

Well, sorry to disappoint you. I only have time for the TOP THREE REASONS:



Why Dental Postcards will help dentists attract more patients, and 'reactivate' the current patients.

• #1 Postcards work!
• #2 Because they do!
• #3 Because I said so!

 ~ Remember I'm a dental marketing consultant. Oops. I meant to say, I'm a communication... special person. Specialty case. Special, because my mom said so. So there!

While this type of blogging is mostly a frustrating experience for the reader (even for me most days), it shows the persistence I have for demonstrating to dentists that just because someone said so, does not mean it's so. So when you dentists hear some online marketer –– yada, yada, yada –– don't open wide and swallow.

NOTE: Effective communication is not about cornering the market in one type of 'technology' or keeping up with the latest cool thing, it's about what actually works.

Connective Communication© - something I developed* - there was no such thing as Communication before I came along, I threw in Connective 'just because' it creates an alliteration. Yet, this original Communication idea I think I developed first, provides all the elements of what works.

• Improving: making everything better (as dentists are able, which includes case acceptance, dental websites, branding/logos)
• Gathering: new patients (includes online) these are the consumers already looking
• Creating: Making Value Important, Activating consumers, reactivating current patients

I guess, the ones above are my THREE, which actually form my Connective Communication© Approach. But don't think of it from a marketing stuff perspective, think instead of building a systematic matrix of what works.

For example in the world of dentistry, fluoride is an amazing 'technology' that is available in two basic forms. Fluoride is found naturally in wells and underground aquifers or through public water systems, drinking fountains and such.

However, as much great work as it does, too much of it will cause teeth to turn brown or what those experts call fluorosis**. So don't let online cool-ade-high-tech drunkenness turn your marketing all yucky.

Feed the need of all 'elements' of communication to get what fills your coffers but is also quite shy of greed.

For More Information, here is my Connective Communication© Case Study, it has videos, client examples, testimonials, and more.

Call Oli Gonsalves of The Other Office/Express Dental Marketing

• 1+888.380.0020 

To develop your postcard campaign or to set up 15 to 30 minute complimentary consult with me (Dick Chwalek).

Blog Written, Posted by

Dick Chwalek
NicheDental.com
~ Dentistry Communication Specialist
~ Dental Marketing Consultant

Dick is also a co-founder and
member of the Northern Dental Alliance.

Where first was published:
Direct Mail Postcards Dental Marketing blog.

*Truth be told, I was not the person who came up with the concept/word Communication. It was my great great great...

**(Please, no fluoridation-is-dangerous comments. I work with big pharma, and am guided by blue helmeted govt types, so I am not interested in and weary of fluoride conspiracy leeries or queries.)

Connective Communication© Marketing, The 3D Difference: Improve, Gather, Create

A THREE Dimensional System

– Freed From Generic, Founded on Value, Focused On Success

• Reliable, Credible Consistency

• Four Influential Communication Bedrocks:

• Exceptional Budgeting: Flexible, Scalable, Accountable

Connective Communication©

CLIENT CASE STUDY

• Relationship began August 2008 with New Logo and Website development.

• Elements scaled up and phased in at client pace with goals in place.

• Complete 'Connective' approach achieved June 2009.

• Improving Results Recorded by February 2009!

• Average 33+ New Patients Per Month Since at least September 2009.

• 22+ Months Straight Growth 10%+

• Starting Mid 2009 - Overthrowing the Downturn!

• Alone in the Pack - of 500 dentist 'group' – Only dentist with upward sales!

• June 2010 Best June EVER!

• ALSO, His BEST MONTH EVER! 

• 2011 FOLLOWED with SIMILAR RESULTS

Reliable, Credible Consistency

• You are a vital part of the success

• Collaborate on Concept foundation

• Approve all elements: design/message

• Updates/Ongoing Element 'pieces'
• - also approved by you

• You have Final Say Throughout

• Otherwise: You let go (it almost runs itself)

Four Influential Communication Bedrocks

1. Value Rich Website (New or Enhance Current Plus Ongoing Updates)*


2. Ideal Audience Directed Mailers (Consistency Rather than Volume)*


3. Optimal Online Strategies (PPC/SEO to Social+)*


4. Public Multiplier Marketing (X-factor for 1st 3 bedrocks)*

*Each Bedrock can be integrated into your current system - in many cases

Exceptional Budgeting

• Flexible, Scalable, Accountable

• Goal: to Build Your 10 foot ladder

• Determine Goal before begin

• Figure out initial marketing 'pieces’ within each Element

• Budget Size May Start Wherever Feasible: except it is vital to...

• Commit To An Optimal Timeline For Phase in of All Elements

Marketing Budget Structure

• Management/Consulting may apply--depending on your plan/decision

• Separate Element Agreements: Usually for Bedrock Elements, M/C and misc

• Element Pieces may have their own separate agreements as well – achieving more flexibility

• Terms are yearly in many cases/some shorter

• Agree to Budget - then proceed

• Review Patient Data to find 'gems' (practice software generated)

• Track Activity (results/accountability/refinements) Upgrade, Enhance continually

• Scale up as needed - with focus on timeline

• Reasonable Scale Up is in 9-12 Months

Faster Scaling? Yes, Yet...

• A measured pace has strategic benefits

• Still Results are very possible sooner!

• The 'Complete effect' takes time to build:

• As MORE public/patients move toward a decision and greater value acceptance.

Establish the System, Refine When Needed…

• Otherwise Let it RIDE!

• Think: Prototype, fail. Prototype, fail less. Then the success-type emerges.

• Rather than: Perfection snail. Perfection never nail, so success impale.

Avoid What I call 'Perfection Stretching'

• Taking the time, and more time, and more time to may make that marketing something better…
• Meaning 'that marketing something' will never really happen, get done, etc.

• Rather than Perfection Stretching: Inspire to Require Release of Overseer Wires
- Hand over the reins to consistency and professional depth:
- Then see new patients revenue-rain gauge fill up and enjoy the reign of practice success!

GUARANTEEING SUCCESS**

**DENTISTS: I, Dick Chwalek, guarantee Dr. __Your Name__ will only be successful if Dr.__Your Name__ does what is necessary to make it happen.

Trite? Trick? Or TRIPLE Raise the Possibilities?

Like all successes, we must do what works. Not hold back, produce. It is the same for me, you, as well as your patients...

• Patients that do HALF of what works

• The result: often be less than HALF

• Of course, some 'luck out' and others are just satisfied with less.

• If you want MORE Dr. ___Your Name__= Connective Communication©.

• It is a Flexible, Scalable, Accountable and Success Positioned System.

While you are NOT locked into a preset/generic plan with the Connective Communication© system, only going part way or holding off too long is problematic as well.

Like a ten foot barrier that requires a ten foot ladder, building anything less means not overcoming the barrier.

However, piecing together 'all main elements sufficiently' is better than crafting one element well: perfect ladder rungs but a very weak supporting structure can greatly diminish the other element's value.

FIND OUT MORE and...

Start Guaranteeing Success!

Niche Dental Co-Consultant 

Oli Gonsalves

1+888.380.0020

ogonsalves@nichedental.com

Oli can answer many of your questions.

Then set up a meeting with me - depending on your needs/requests

Sincerely, 

Dick Chwalek

NicheDental.com

Dentist Marketing Coach, Dentistry Communication Consultant


Previously Post on NicheDental.com