The Dental Marketer

When you advertise whitening, it is important to remember the marketing axiom of promoting benefits instead of features.  Your audience is not interested in the exact percentage of peroxide that you use or the name of your take-home-whitening kit.  But they will respond to a message that tells them a dentist can whiten their teeth better than any over-the-counter product.  Everyone wants “the best”, and only a dentist can offer it.

Your competition, of course, is not just the other dentists.  See this article, comparing over-the counter products: http://www.realsimple.com/realsimple/gallery/0,21863,1629594,00.html.  The headline reads, “These shining at-home brighteners will give you something to smile about (without having to face the dentist)”.  Apparently, some view not seeing a dentist as a benefit.  Counter this with the truth - your method is undisputable better than anything else available.

It makes sense to hire experts.  Most of us shouldn’t fix our own plumbing, repair our own cars, or prepare our own tax returns.  We hire experts to take care of these things. 

Dentists are experts in oral care, but generally, have only very basic knowledge, and no expertise in marketing.  There are hundreds of dental marketing experts out there.  Why do so many dentists hesitate to hire them?  I have a few theories.

Most dentists want to avoid unnecessary confrontation.  They suspect that the minute they contact a marketing expert they will be bombarded with a high pressure sales pitch.  Who needs that in their life?

Some of the “experts” try to package everything together and charge standard monthly fees for membership or licenses.  You probably have enough monthly expenses, and don’t need more, especially if you don’t need the whole “bundle”.

Some dentists have found that they can do some of their own marketing - and get decent results.  Why pay someone to do what you can do yourself?

The reality is this:  If you have the time, patience and money, you can eventually learn to market yourself as well as a good marketing expert.  For most this doesn’t make sense.  Most would be best served spending their time in the operatory - where it is most valuable. 

Oh and don’t kid yourself - you can’t buy media better than a professional media buyer.  Neither can I.  If it seems like you can it’s probably because your information is coming entirely from the media representatives you are buying from.  They only make money by keeping you coming back for more.

Different experts are good at different things.  If you see a direct mail piece that makes sense for your practice, find out if you can hire the expert just to do that piece - without buying the whole service bundle.  It may be that you can - and you just have to ask.  If not, move on.  There are experts who work like you do - fee-for-service.  Don’t buy more than you need.

There are marketing experts out there who are excellent at what they do, and earn every penny you pay them by dramatically increasing your ROI.  I work with people like this every day.  Find the ones that fit your personality, that have the services you need, and are willing to sell you just what you want, and not just their standard “package”.

Some times we don’t make any changes to what we’re doing simply because the changes never occur to us.  Just in case you need a little inspiration, here are some things your colleagues are up to, and projects I’ve been working on lately:

1. New Radio Commercials.  Your current commercials may be generating patients just fine, but you may do even better if you add a couple new commercials to the library.  Sometimes a different twist on the message is all it takes to inspire that new patient to call.
2. Effective Web Content.  People look at web sites before they buy.  Make sure that the information on your site is accurate and compelling.  When’s the last time you read it? 
3. Solid Logo.  This is an easy one.  If you don’t have one - get one.
4. Promotions and Offers.  Lifetime whitening and referral incentives are still solid producers.  Add one to your message.
5. Non-specialty specialties.  Your State Board determines what is technically a specialty, but you can still offer non-specialty services that set you apart from the crowd.  Let the community know if you offer sedation, implants, Invisalign, six-month braces or Lumineers.
6. Good print pieces.  Review your direct mail, brochure and yellow pages ad.  Make sure that the message is still accurate and compelling.
7. Video.  Dental practices are using video for their web sites, patient info DVDs informational loops for the waiting room, and 30-second tv commercials.

A marketing campaign is like a shark - it needs to keep moving.  If yours has been standing still lately, pick a project off of this list and get started.

To a certain extent, you are who you say you are.  If you continually reinforce to the public that you are the “implant dentist” or “the sedation dentist”, eventually that reputation takes on a life of its own.

“Owning”  your market means penetrating the public consciousness to a degree that you become the default choice for the service you own.  This requires a serious and long term commitment to your marketing campaign, and most likely will use a variety of media.  Some clients of mine who “own” their markets use a combination of web, radio, direct mail, tv and billboards.  That’s sounds like a big investment - and it is.  But none of my clients started their campaigns so aggressively.  Each started with a modest budget, using one or two media, and grew the campaign over a period of years as the ROI built them a marketing warchest.

I have clients spending as little as $1000 a month and as much as $20,000 a month on radio advertising.  Both of these are exceptional cases, and you’ll most likely have a budget somewhere in between.  Most of my dental clients start with budgets between $2500 and $5000 a month. 

That may sound expensive, especially when you multiply by twelve to see your annual spending.  Maybe you think you can’t afford it.  But if it is done right, there is no such thing as advertising that is too expensive.  If it gets you the expected return, advertising is an investment, not an expense.

Proper planning, that views advertising like an investment, will budget advertising dollars for the course of the year in the same way that you should be funding all your investments.  Marketing is not something you spend money on when there is a little extra at the end of the month.  You need to make a long-term plan, commit to it, and stick with it.

So sure, $5000 a month does add up to $60,000 a year.  That same campaign, if properly planned, should add a minimum of a quarter-million to your production that same year - and likely much more.  Can you afford that?

Marketing is a marathon, not a sprint.  This is especially true with higher ticket items like advanced dentistry.  I love fast results, and have been fortunate to see them on many occasions, but I always caution my dentist clients to focus on the ROI of months and year’s - not days and weeks.

Not every campaign works, and at some point you have to stop throwing good money after bad.  But if you have a good plan, and a sound strategy, it is best to give your campaign time to mature.  Most dental advertising campaigns have some element of direct response - we love when people respond immediately. But you’re also branding the practice and building up your presence in the mind of the community.  This pays dividends over time, and gets better and better with the passing months and years.

Don’t spend all your time, energy, and resources constantly revising the plan.  Don’t come home from every seminar with visions of duplicating someone else’s plan, only to change your mind in a month or two, and head in another direction.  Figure out who you are, who you want to be, and devise a plan to let the community know.  Then stay focused on the plan, and give it some time to work.

The yellow pages are not dead.  Neither is terrestrial radio.  Newspapers are still kicking.  All three of these mediums are in decline due to increased competition from newer technologies, but they are not dead yet.

Search engines provide a new way for consumers to find products and services in their area.  Many rely exclusively on the internet for their consumer reasearch and information, and never even pick up  a phone book.  But if you think that nobody uses the yellow pages anymore, you’re just wrong.

People have been predicting the collapse of terrestrial radio from the first days of Sirius and XM satellite radio.  They’ve both been transmitting for over five years now, but they are still very far from dominating the market.

You can’t ignore the impact that new media is having on old media, but you don’t need to abandon what’s working either.  It’s all about efficiency.  If it ain’t broke - don’t fix it.

You should be tracking the reults of all your marketing.  If yellow page leads are slipping, consider downsizing your ad.  But before you eliminate it completely realize that that many patients who have heard about you may still go looking for you in the yellow pages to find your number before they call.  Don’t spend money on a radio ad that leads a potential patient to the yellow page ad for your competitor, just because they couldn’t find you.  Keep a token presence at least.

Satellite radio has taken away some terrestrial radio listeners.  But it will never be able to replace the local news, weather, and traffic available from terrestrial radio, and it can’t give the local flavor that listeners enjoy from their hometown stations.  CNN and Fox News will never replace you local tv news programming, and terrestrial radio has a lot more life in it for listeners as well as advertisers.

Many dentists hesitate to start an ad campaign on the radio because of fear.  They fear that the campaign won’t be cost-effective, that the public will be offended by their campaign, and that the local dental community will be displeased.

If you know what you’re doing, the campaign will be cost-effective.  Radio campaigns can be extremely profitable for dental practices.  No ad campaign offers 100% guarantees, but smartly designed and well executed plans have proven successful for thousands of dentists.  If you know your target market and efficiently reach them with a compelling message, you have a good chance of success too.

I have executed radio campaigns for hundreds of dentists, and I have never seen any appreciable public backlash to a dentist advertising on the radio.  If your message is appropriate and respectful, you will actually get compliments.

But your peers may hate you.  Advertising on the radio still feels unconventional to old-school dentists, and some of these guys have been resisting every new media since dentists started appearing in the yellow pages.  Some dentists will also dislike your ads out of a feeling of self-preservation.  Orthodontists sometimes feel threatened by Invisalign and “Six-Month Braces”; many oral surgeons fear competition from dentists using sedation; and even general dentists may worry about losing business to the guy who just started speaking to the community over the airwaves, when he couldn’t or wouldn’t do it himself.

You can’t worry about those guys.  You didn’t start advertising to win a popularity contest.  You did it to grow your business by letting the community know about the services you have to offer.  If another dentist feels threatened by this - that is their problem, not yours. 

A recent New York Times article described a dropoff in Lasik eye surgery procedures: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/24/business/24lasik.html?_r=1&scp=3&sq=lasik&st=nyt&oref=slogin  This slowdown is also affecting other elective medical procedures like breast augmentation and botox skin injections.  Since cosmetic dentistry often competes for those same discretionary dollars, this reduction is consumer demand has implications for the dental community as well.

If we assume that the sluggish economy will make some consumers less likely to opt for elective procedures, like veneers, for instance, what is the proper response from a marketing standpoint.  Does it make sense to reduce your marketing campaign until the economy turns around and the target customers are more ready to spend?

One might consider shifting dollars from purely aesthetic procedures to more “necessary” dentistry, but I’m not sure even that step is necessary.  If you’ve been branding yourself as “The Cosmetic Dentist”, you want to keep building and reinforcing that brand, even in tough times.  During the Great Depression, brands like Chevrolet, Kelloggs, Proctor & Gamble, and Camel made great leaps in market share by continuing and even increasing their marketing efforts.  Some companies who pulled back never made it out of the Depression.

People will always have needs, regardless of the economy.  There will always be a market for your services, even if the pool shrinks some.  Make sure that your voice continues to be heard.  When the economy improves, consistency and longevity will be part of your brand, and the public may have forgotten the name of your competition.

Last month my media buyer presented her recommendations to a dentist who was new to radio advertising. His market is relatively small, so the budget allowed us to use three different stations.  Two of the stations made sense to him, but he hesitated to accept our recommendation for the third, saying, “Nobody listens to that station.”

What he was really saying was, “I don’t listen to that station and neither do the ladies in the office.”  Since they don’t listen to it, they all assumed that nobody else did either.  Now this kind of anecdotal evidence has some value, especially in smaller markets where accurate statistics aren’t as easy to come by.  But personal preference, and the listening habits of friends and family, should not be the the main factors in your decision. 

Here’s the right way to do it:  Decide who you need to reach, and then find out what stations they listen to.  If your target is soccer moms, you’ll find that they tend to listen to different stations than middle-aged businessmen.

Hundreds of markets are carefully tracked, some up to four times a year, to see who’s listening to each station.  This tracking collects an enormous amount of information, but the most important to you are age, sex and wealth.  Analyze this to find out where your target patients are.  Make a list of the five best stations, and then  compare rates to see which is the most efficient.

I don’t listen to Rush Limbaugh myself, but I’m a big fan of his results for my clients.  His program attracts high income 35-64 year-olds that I’m looking for in many of my campaigns.  The point is this - it doesn’t matter what you like, it just matters where the right customers are.

By the way, that third station, that the dentist resisted, generated more than half of his phone calls last month.

You get what you pay for.  Radio advertising offers a good example.

Radio stations base their rates on the size of their listenership.  Typically 80% of their audience can be reached during the “prime time” of 6am to 7pm on weekdays.  Correspondingly, this is the most expensive time to advertise.  The “off hours” of weekday evenings, overnights and weekends have smaller audiences and are sold less expensively.  They are cheaper because less people are listening.

Radio stations still need to sell this time.  To do so, they often establish “packages” that contain little or no “prime” and a good deal of the nights and weekends.  On paper, and especially to the untrained eye, these deals look good.  If the station sells time for up to $200 per minute, a package with an average rate of $50 looks like a steal.  The efficient marketer, however, needs to make sure that he is not comparing apples to oranges.  $50 is less than $200 obviously, but does it offer the same bang for the buck?

Experienced media buyers determine the value of commercial time by analyzing statistics like cost-per thousand (CPM) and cost per point (CPP).  These figures illustrate the price per listener, which is the key number.  Even more important is the price per target listener.  Your plan to reach middle-aged women cannot be efficiently executed if the listeners are largely teenage boys.  When you examine a potential schedule, you need to look for the times where your money will work the hardest.  It’s quite likely that the $200 spot in prime time will reach more than four times the target audience than the $50 off-hour commercial.

Let me be clear on a one thing.  Non-prime commercials can be an effective part of your campaign.  I use them all the time to build frequency in campaigns that use mostly prime time.  Some campaigns can be efficiently built on broad rotators, which run through all days and dayparts.   You just need to be clear on what the time is worth to get the most for your money.  And remember that cheaper is not always better.

Sometimes it’s frustrating to hear that results will take time.  When you spend thousands of dollars on something, it’s only natural to want a return as soon as possible.  But marketing is really more of a marathon than a sprint.  The best results come over time.

It’s not unheard of for an advertising campaign to produce an immediate return, but that’s usually the exception to the rule.  We hope for short-term response, but we plan for long-term results.  Keep this in mind when you chooses among your marketing options.  Once you pick your method, give the media enough time to produce.  In most cases, the approach of “I’ll do this for a couple months and see how it goes” is a mistake and a waste of money. 

Why are results better over the long run?  One of the main reasons is because consumers are likely to need multiple exposures to a message before they respond.  Radio advertising provides a good example.  Radio is a frequency medium, which means it works best when your ad makes repeated impressions on the same listener.  It can be expensive to make multiple impressions on a listener, especially in the larger markets, so it’s important to buy a station that you can afford.  If you can’t afford to commit for at least six months, then you need to pick a less expensive station or put off radio until such a commitment is realistic.

One good media buyer I know tells his clients, “In the first month, you’re going to lose a (heck) of alot of money.  In the second month you’ll lose a little less.  By the fourth or fifth month, you’ll start breaking even.  And after six months, you’ll start making alot of money.”  Now that first part might sound a little bleak, but if you’re planning long term, your investment won’t be evaluated by early results.  At the end of the year the aggregated profit over the months should more than make up for a slow start.

I’ve seen dentists get multiple new patients the first day they ran a radio ad.  That’s great for morale, but it’s not necessary for a successful campaign.  Some of the best campaigns have started slow and built up over time.  Make sure you choose marketing methods that reflect this reality, and that your decisions are made for the long-term.

One great thing about web sites is the wealth of information you can track.  You can see how many people come to your site, where they come from, what pages they view, and how long they stay.  Several systems are now available to help you track phone calls. 

I use one system that enables you to see where every call comes from, track their caller ID and other call details, and even lets you record each call.  This tracking is especially useful for those practices who are using several marketing methods.  Now they can use different phone numbers in the phone book, the web site, the direct mail piece and the radio commercial.  All the numbers ring straight through to the office, but now the team can track exactly where each call came from, and see how each call was handled.

Recording the calls creates an opportunity for you and the team to evaluate the performance of the front desk, and helps identify strengths and weaknesses that make a huge difference in converting phone calls into patients.  Be aware that some states require you to let a caller know they are being recorded, and this can be done with a recorded message if you like.

Tracking the calls gives you a wealth of information about your calls.  You can see patterns in the time they call and adjust your front desk schedule, or put a team member “on call” and forward calls right to their home or cell phone.  It will become obvious whether your front desk is converting calls or chasing people away with bad technique.  You’ll even have the option to capture addresses so you can map out excatly where your calls tend to come from.

 The kind of information you generate with call tracking helps make your campaigns more efficient.  If the front desk has a problem with conversions it can be addressed.  If the print ad is not drawing calls, that budget can be shifted to the tv campaign that’s producing.  If people always hang up when they get your answering machine, you can change the message or direct the off-hour calls to a live person.  Call tracking helps you make the most of your advertising dollars by showing you what campaigns are working and how many of the calls you receive actually turn into patients.

Your website is an online brochure for your practice.  One of its great advantages is an almost unlimited amount of space to tell every story you need to tell.  You’re not limited by the square inches of a yellow pages ad or the seconds of a radio commercial.  Take all the space you need to explain your services with all the detail your advertisement lacked.  Remember, however, that it should be organized well enough that a viewer can find what they need quickly and easily.  This is especially important when you’ve advertised a particular service in your ad.  

If you’re marketing Invisalign, and the ad directs consumers to the web site, make sure that they can find the promised Invisalign information.  In a case like this, I would recommend that you have your webmaster put a very prominent starburst on the first page that says, “Information on Invisalign”.  When the viewer clicks it, it should hyperlink right over to the info.  It might seem obvious, but sometimes this gets overlooked.

Before you spend thousands on an advertising campaign, take a look at your website and pretend you are seeing it for the first time.  Ask a friend to do the same thing for you.  Is it easy to find what you’re looking for?

The dental practices that get the best marketing results are the ones with strong teams.  Dentists rarely answer their own phones, so they need to rely on their front desk to convert those hard-earned phone calls into patients.  Once the patient arrives for the appointment, the dentist will only be with them for a small percentage of the time they are in the office.  The rest of the patient’s time will be spent with team members.  During this time with the front desk, the hygienists, the dental assistants, and other team members, that patient will be forming his or her opinion about the practice.  If you can’t rely on your team to make a good impression, and help that patient say “yes” to the treatment you present, you are at a competitive disadvantage to the dentist who can.

Marketing is designed to bring good prospects to the practice.  The campaign itself is successful when it generates a sufficient quantity  of new leads who contact the office with two essential attributes - the need for your services, and the means to pay for them.  But the most impressive ad in the world can’t convince this prospect to make an appointment or accept your treatment plan.  Your team needs to do this.

The most successful practices I work with are the ones with the strongest teams.  It is the distinguishing factor between the office that receives an adequate ROI from marketing, and the practice that enjoys extraordinary returns.  I can’t stress this point enough.  Surround yourself with a strong team, that is personally invested in their own performance and that of their teammates, or you will be leaving money on the table.  The efficient marketer never leaves money on the table.