Blanket application of disclaimers to all endorsements and testimonials is an overreaction to the guidelines.  If a material connection exists between an advertiser and an endorser, there is an obligation to disclose that material connection only where the audience would not reasonably expect that connection to exist.   You may be able to convince your station to change their policy by concentrating on the actual language of the FTC text.

If the endorsement is given in a context where the listener would reasonably expect the endorser to be compensated, the guidelines don’t rquire you to disclose because consumers can reasonably be expected to have taken that fact into consideration when deciding how much weight or credibility to give to the endorsement.  In short, you don’t have to tell them what they already know.

The text of the FTC press release announcing the guidelines is here:  http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2009/10/endortest.shtm.

 The text of the actual FTC Guidelines is here:  http://www.ftc.gov/os/2009/10/091005revisedendorsementguides.pdf

Over the years I’ve also often heard that radio doesn’t work for dentists.  I’ve worked with hundreds of practices, from Anchorage to Miami, that could tell you otherwise, but here’s ten ways you can make this one come true:

1. Assume that everyone listens to your favorite station.  Heck, if the team plays it at the office, then that’s the one where we should buy some advertising!
2. Find out which station has the most listeners and buy that one.  There’s no need to research the demographic mix of listeners.  People are people, right?
3. Try out a station for a month to “see if it works”.   If you’re not getting fabulous results right off the bat, quit and try something else.   That whole “frequency” thing is just a scam to get you to keep buying ads.
4. Instead of focusing your message on high-value services that distinguish your practice (like sedation, implants, Invisalign, etc), just let everyone know that you’re the dentist office “that cares”.  Nobody else cares, and you should let the public know that you do.  If that fails, try telling people that you are a “cosmetic” dentist.
5. You’ve got 60 seconds to get your message across, so make sure you let the audience know every fellowship you’ve earned and every dental association you’ve joined.  People will be very impressed hearing obscure but prestigious names being used.  That’s a good use of your limited time.
6. Don’t focus on benefits and solving people’s problems.  Tell people all about yourself and the features of your office.  The audience will find that stuff fascinating.
7. Don’t give a web address.  Who uses that internet thing anyway? 
8. Even though media buyers are experts at getting the best deals and placing the most efficient schedules, make sure to buy all your advertising yourself.  So what if the radio station pays their commission and you get all their service at no charge.  You’ve got nothing better to do, so why not sit through appointments with every radio rep in town?  Just because the reps work for the station doesn’t mean they won’t be objective – right?
9. When deciding on a budget, just pick a number that feels right.  Even better, just advertise on months when there is a surplus and you feel you can afford it.
10. If the economy slumps, terminate all advertising, and huddle in the fetal position until outside forces change.  That’s what the competition is going to do, so you won’t lose any market share.

As someone who has a  fantastic media buyer, who I always turn to when I need TV or radio, I can assure you that they are still the most efficient way to buy media.  They can do it better than you can, better than I can, and apparently, better than Google can.

First quarter is always a radio advertising buying opportunity, especially January.  The radio industry suffers a “retail hangover” after the holiday season exhausts the advertising budgets for seasonal marketers who depend on year-end gift-giving.  

Dental practices are largely immune from seasonal customer buying patterns.  Dentists are typically best-served by a regular presence on the radio, so except for skipping the last two weeks of December, their radio buying schedule remains the same.

Keep advertising in January, but take advantage of the special discounts available, and buy more.  Even if you can’t afford to raise the budget, find out about rate deals that may stretch your buying power.  Ask your station representative or your media buyer about first quarter discounts, or “one-day sales”, that are prevalent in the industry.

This advice is true every year, but it applies even more so now.  The radio industry is suffering advertising revenue losses, even though radio stations are still adding listeners.   See the NYT article: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/26/business/media/26adco.html?partner=rss&emc=rss   Radio’s biggest clients, car dealers and retail have been stung especially hard by the current economy, and many have cut back ad budgets. Their loss is your gain. 

When stations lose advertisers they have more inventory available.  That’s when they are in the mood for making deals and dropping rates.  Combine that with the typical January advertising climate, and you have the perfect storm of a buying opportunity.

The practices using automatic telephone tracking systems see an unusual number of patients generated by the yellow pages.  This illustrates the inherent weakness of attributing leads based on tracking numbers.  A tracking system is an excellent tool, but cannot be expected to be completely accurate.  Yellow Pages ads and web sites generate many leads that are “secondary” – that is, people go to the web and YP for information after their interest has been piqued elsewhere.

Look at the statistics generated by your website provider to see how people get to your web site.  A business that does little external advertising, but uses Search Engine Optimization, will see that most of their leads come through keyword searches.  A business that uses external marketing sources that include the domain name, will see that many of their leads come from people who have navigated directly to them.  The dual purposes of the web site make it the most indispensible part of any ad campaign.

Similarly, the YP may not be the primary generator of as many leads as it seems on the surface.  It still serves an important function, however.  When people are looking for you in the YP, they have to be able to find you.  Or they may find your competitor instead.  When my clients tell me that “the yellow pages  are dead” or that they want to cancel their ad, I suggest that they just scale back the ad.  That way they save some money, but the large number of people who still look there can still find them.

I’m a big fan of automatic tracking for your phone numbers.  Just make sure that your front desk keeps asking new patients how they found out about the practice.  And if your TV campaign is a significant investment, don’t be afraid to ask a direct question like, “Have you seen the doctor on TV?”.  Every day my clients hear that patients found them through the internet.  When the patient is directly asked if they ever heard the doctor on the radio, they often hear, “Oh yes.  I’ve been hearing him for years.  That’s why I went to the web site.”

Some practices responded by suspending their advertising “until the economy improves”.  This is a defensive reaction that reduces the monthly “nut”, but is unlikely to cause positive change in the bottom line.  Practices that did this are still turtled up, waiting for outside forces to change their bottom line.

When business goes south, marketing is an attractive first target for budget cuts.  That’s backwards thinking however.  Marketing is an investment that generates income, not an expense that should be viewed as a luxury or discretionary.

The efficient marketer realizes that ROI success and failure is measured over years, not just a month at a time.  Your long term efforts are rewarded by an established position in the mind of the consumer.  People still need dentistry, even if some are postponing purely cosmetic procedures.  Don’t be the office that disappears.  Be the practice that’s been around forever – the one everyone knows.  You do that with consistency.

The dental practices who maintained or increased their marketing after the tough month of June rebounded with a strong July.  This illustrates the wisdom of long-term planning, and confirms the efficiency of sticking to a plan.  Yes we need to track, evaluate and adapt – and we don’t throw good money after bad being stubborn.  But a good plan remains a good plan, and a bad month doesn’t change that.

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?

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. 

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.