Marketing
The amount of money spent on
marketing varies widely among different offices, and can range anywhere from
almost 0% up to 20% of income. In order to better evaluate where you can save on marketing, let's
first categorize where we spend our marketing dollars:
As specialists, we spend most of our
marketing dollars on referral sources. This includes gifts and flowers, marketing
materials, lunch meetings, and other things we send our GP offices. The best way to save
in this category is mostly by smart spending.
First of all, a good marketing campaign
based on the different categories you assign your referrals to can
make a huge difference, in terms of both the dollar amount spent and the return
you get from your spending.
As you can see in the "Database"
section, offices are categorized into three groups. Consider
the profile you have for each office and the possibility of a positive
response to a marketing action on which you would spend your money. For example,
setting up random lunch meetings may be one of the least efficient ways to
attract new referrals. However, if you spend enough time and
effort on developing an accurate and comprehensive database of your existing and
potential referrals, you may be able to set lunch meetings with only the doctors
who are really interested in working with new specialists.
Another way to save in this category
is by using the internet.
Utilizing technology-based marketing
may also help you replace costly traditional methods with more efficient systems.
An example of this is using permission-based email marketing to send your newsletter
to GP offices.
As a specialist, the Yellow Pages may not be the
main avenue for marketing your practice, but it is an option for some. This method can be a huge drain on your
resources, yet again and again we have bought ads in the Yellow Pages without any
reasonable return. In the first year of my practice, I myself paid a high
price of $1000 a month for three ads in three Yellow Pages. After a year, I
followed up and found that I had an amazing return on my investment! I had 3,
yes three patients who found my name and came to my office because of my
ads!! That is a price tag of $4,000 per patient!
Where the question of how to
spend on marketing
is concerned, the answer is simple; it has to make sense. If the return is anything less than
seven to nine times of the investment, that financial drain should be stopped
immediately.
For
the most part, Yellow
Pages ads are a
thing of the past. This is not to say that they don't work at all, but when it
comes to choosing a dentist most people do not use the Yellow Pages unless they
are new in the neighborhood and they have a dental emergency.
Also, an ad in the Yellow Pages has
to be significant to work. I believe the worst kind is the one in the middle
price range; you either want to have a huge ad, or a very small one. Paying
a lot for medium sized ads probably has the lowest return ratio.
Another major issue to
consider is the structure of
your community. Is there more than one phone company and more than one Yellow
Pages directory? If this is the case, your investment value reduces even more. What about the number of
dentists with your specialty who have ads in your area? Do you have to go through pages and pages of dental
ads before you get to your own? If so, you are wasting your money and should
seek
more efficient ways to spend your marketing capital.
Another potential mistake is
to advertise in a Yellow Pages directory that is not the main one everybody uses. These
days every publishing company has a Yellow Pages, and advertising in these
(although they offer lower rates) is often only a benefit to the
publisher!
Yellow Pages ads sometimes work though;
the key is to offer something unique to separate yourself from others. This
especially works when you are in a smaller community with fewer competitors in
your area. Even then, first do a trial run and measure the returns carefully.
Here is yet another tempting advertising method.
Almost every day we receive
solicitation letters about this kind of advertising.
This is a good way to introduce your
practice to potential referrers, but I strongly believe it has to be part of
a
systematic campaign according to your findings in potential offices' profiles. Again,
use of our "Database" can save you a lot of money. Your mail should
accompany a phone call or other method of communication that sets the stage
for the marketing material to be sent.
You don't want to send letters to an
office with an in house specialist when you can do the same to a
newer practice, with a much better result.
If you are using a company for this purpose
never commit yourself to long term
contracts, even if they are offering hard to resist deals.
The rule of thumb is that you do not want
to spend more than $30 to $50 to attract each new patient.
Referral services are rather expensive,
but there is one thing in particular that I like about them. Most of the time they offer some kind of
screening before sending a patient. You don't have this luxury with other
advertising methods, which is why you should not pay too much for each patient
that is coming through them. Another benefit of referral services is that
they give you the advantage of group marketing. For example, joining a service
like 1-800-Dentist® (registered trademark of Futuredontics, Inc)
provides you
with exposure through professionally made TV ads, which would not be available to you
any other way.
If you are a member of any referral
service and do not experience the return you are looking for, you
have two options; either end your relationship with the referral service or, if
the root of the problem is on your side of the deal, evaluate and fix it. For
instance, if it is your office that is unable to bring a person
referred by a service into the practice and convert him to a patient of record,
it may be your practice that needs to be looked at before dropping the referral
service.
I
have never had a good experience with this
kind of advertising. Unless you are running a huge multi-specialty office, or you
are offering something that is unique (advanced snore prevention treatment,
large dental implant groups, etch.) media ads can be very expensive.
You also need to keep in
mind that media
ads only work when they are repeated. Therefore, you cannot expect to see a significant
return simply by placing a single ad in a local newspaper or on the radio. So, if you are
not planning a serious and well-planned campaign, it may be better to keep your
precious marketing dollars away from media ads.
This is by far my favorite
marketing method. Although, it costs almost nothing, it is extremely
effective. It is the best way to save on marketing costs. Some
offices spend up to 20% of their income on marketing. If you can operate
with only marketing inside your office, you can save a lot of money each year.
If you can even transfer half of your marketing to inside marketing, you may be
able to save as much as $25,000 a year for a $500,000/year office!
Another advantage of inside marketing is
that patients who are referred by others patients are the best patients. They already
have a positive image of your practice and are more likely to stay with you and
accept your treatment plans. Moreover, the reduction of your dependency on GPs for referrals
is also a good thing.
When you have your office setup the way we
have shown you, your referrals will come to you automatically. Of course, you
can do a few things on your part to boost your referral rate:
- Print business cards for every
staff member in your office (1000 card can cost around $30. If they refer one
patient, it is paid for; besides, it makes them feel good.)
- Ask your patients for referrals.
I know it is difficult and it was the same for me, but even if you don't like
to do it directly, let them know that you appreciate when someone refers
patients to you.
- Have your staff ask for
referrals. After a pleasant experience, and when your treatment coordinator is done
with his/her presentation, he can hand the patient a few of his business cards and
say, "Give these
to your friends or family who may need a specialist and have them call me directly,
I will take good care of them."
- Remember that the key to getting
referrals from your patients is creating a great
Image.
Any one patient you get through inside
marketing is literally saving you money on other marketing methods.
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