Practice owners are reporting that it is harder than ever to get customers to part with their money.

The fundamental behind this is that money is simply an idea backed by confidence. The higher people’s confidence, the more optimistic they are about the future, and the more willing they are to spend money.

Right now the U.S. dollar has fallen to a 6-month low against major world currencies. Combine this with the news media doing an efficient job of feeding the public a constant supply of bad news. Confidence is low.

According to Brazil’s weekly magazine Veja, when the Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bündchen signed a deal to represent Pantene hair products, she demanded that Procter & Gamble pay her in euros.

Ouch.

So how do you keep increasing your practice despite the fact that people are hanging onto their dollars tighter than a bulldog hangs onto his favorite chew toy? The secret is in understanding what is needed to convince your patients they need your service and to adjust your strategy to the current mindset.

Let’s go back to the definition of “money as an idea backed by confidence.” Before any money changes hands, a certain amount of confidence is needed. Without the correct level of confidence, a transaction never occurs.

Patients need to be confident in the value of the service you are offering. They need to be confident that your service will be as good as promised. And, they need to be confident that you and your organization will deliver.

So, with your prospect’s confidence already low, you must do more things than usual to raise their confidence high enough for them to become a patient.

That means that what worked last year may not be enough to convince patients today.

Let me give you an example of someone who has successfully adapted to this change in buyers’ attitudes.

Dolly Cahill Johnson is one of my favorite fine artists. You’ll see examples of her work that I have collected over the years in both my office and my home. (Check out her exceptional work at www.skysongstudios.com)

She regularly exhibits and sells her artwork at art festivals throughout California and has the opportunity to be in direct contact with art buyers.

There is an old maxim about art and the economy: “Art sales are the first thing to go and the last thing to come back when the economy is tough.”

Evidentially, the economy hasn’t met Dolly. She is doing better this year than last year. She began stepping up her promotional efforts months ago. She also noticed a shift in the attitude of potential buyers and took action.

Previously, when a potential buyer saw an art piece that they liked, but the colors were slightly off for the room they had in mind, they were fairly easily convinced to commission a new similar piece with the desired colors.

All that has changed. Lately, buyers’ willingness to commission work has dropped as buyers’ confidence in the economy has correspondingly dropped.

What is interesting to note is that Dolly targets affluent buyers. Her prospects have the money to purchase art. When they see a piece they like, they often buy it. The average purchase is usually between $5,000 – $10,000.

What has changed is their confidence in the future. If a buyer can see the art they want, they buy it. If they can’t see it right now, they don’t.

Dolly addresses this confidence gap a couple of ways. For one, she has dramatically increased the amount of inventory she brings to shows. This increases the probability that customers will see the “right” piece for them.

She has also added confidence-building techniques to the selling cycle:

- What if you take the art piece home and it just doesn’t fit the room? No problem, bring it back for a full refund.

- Not sure how the art should be displayed? She and her assistant will happily come to help install the piece for maximum effect.

- Can’t decide between a couple of different pieces? No worries. She will schedule a time to meet you at your home to select the right art. (Don’t be surprised if you buy both – and love her for helping you do so.)

By adding enough confidence-building components to the transaction, she overcomes the buyer’s confidence deficiency and makes more sales.

So how can you adapt your practice to this economic environment and lowered confidence?

Here are just a couple of strategies:

- Be sure your promotional materials include a multitude of facts that validate the effectiveness of your service.

- Add patient success stories and endorsements to show how others have benefited from your services.

- Reverse the perceived risk by providing satisfaction guarantees.

- Put together an offer that is so irresistible that people overcome their inertia and become a patient.

There is an art to putting together an irresistible offer. Ideally, it should not only boost your income, it should create a profitable relationship, and maintain the value of your service.

Do this well and you can see some dramatic increases in your practice. Do it now, because every day you wait you simply leave money on the table.

Want some expert help in modifying your marketing to work in this low confidence era? The first step is to have a no-risk, no-obligation discussion to discover a plan of action that will get results. Call (800) 595-1288. I look forward to talking with you.

To your success,

Looking for help getting the right message to produce exceptional results for your practice? The first step is to make a simple phone call. Call Sentium to set-up a no-obligation telephone consultation. It will cost you zero, zip, zilch, nada, but could give you answers that can dramatically boost your results. Call us at (800) 595-1288.

______________________

Reading a borrowed copy? Get your own Free subscription to Marketing Rocket Fuel at www.sentiumdentalmarketing.com

Richard Wilson is the Founder/Chief Marketing Strategist for Sentium Strategic Communications which helps companies dramatically improves their sales, growth and profitability. Over the past 32 years, his clients have ranged from start-ups to major technology companies.

If I could quantify it in strictly physical universe terms, I could get an honorary PhD at just about any university in the world.

What I do know is that it works. I have seen it occur more times than I can count. When our clients apply this principle they see increases in their business.

What is this universal law? It is the very interesting phenomenon of where the act of promoting a practice will increase the number of people who reach for your service. Don’t say “duh” quite yet. The strange part is that often the people who become interested are not the people who received the promotion material.

According to the laws of direct response advertising, when you send promotion to a targeted group of people, a percentage of them respond. This is classic cause-and-effect thinking. It is the foundatio upon which all business models for marketing are built.

So how can anyone explain that when you mail to a group of prospects, you may have no responses from them, but you suddenly get an increase in, say, the number of referrals?

It is like rolling a bowling ball down the lane, missing all your pins, but having a group of pins drop in the unoccupied ally next to yours. The act of rolling the bowling ball down the lane caused pins to drop. They just weren’t the pins you were expecting. In either case, you get the points.

Practices who carefully track their results find that:

When you increase the volume of promotional activity, activity in your practice will also rise. When you decrease the volume of promotional activity, activity in your practice will slide.

Yet, it is quite weird is that often the increase comes from somewhere other than where you were promoting.

A number of years ago, I had a dental laboratory as a client. Dental labs and their technicians create crowns, bridges, or dentures for dentists’ patients.

If you were to walk into my client’s main work area, you would have seen a number of large shelves that held small, plastic trays. Each tray contained an impression and instructions from the dentist. At a glance, you could look down the shelves and have a pretty good idea of the amount of work in the lab.

About a week after we sent out a new direct mail piece, I stopped by the lab. As I walked in, I looked at the shelves and saw that they were full. Some trays were stacked two and three high in order to accommodate all the new work.

It was a sight to make any good marketing geek smile. Seeing it was like hitting the winning shot in a playoff game and seeing the crowd go wild. Except in this case, the wild crowd is a room full of production people with sweat coming off their brow. (Sometimes the production people don’t cheer when I walk in. Go figure.)

I found the lab owner and said, “Wow. That last promotion really pulled!” He shrugged and replied, “Not really. That piece was for selling denture relines. All of a sudden, we got flooded with work, but these jobs are all for crowns. So I guess the promotion wasn’t effective.”

Hmmm. Sales had been relatively flat for the previous six weeks. A promotional piece went out. Suddenly, the number of orders jumped. (Even though the orders were for another service.)

Well, that wave of work passed and the sales volume fell back to its previous level.

For the next two years, every time promotions were mailed, there was a rise in the business. I tracked it very carefully. But, the client couldn’t connect those two events because the increased service was often different than what was being promoted. It was too “illogical” for him to believe.

Would you water the tomatoes in your garden and expect to have your strawberries suddenly grow?

It’s common for people to miss the connection completely. It is easy to do.

An associate of mine, who provides printing services, is a statistics master. She tracks not only her primary business functions, but all of the other activities that contribute to getting a final product out the door.

By carefully comparing trends and years of data, she conclusively shows that when the promotion activity is increased, there is a corresponding rise in the business volume. Every time she takes her foot off the gas and decreases her promotion activity, the business volume goes into a slide.

And yes, by applying this information and stepping up her level of promotion, she has her business growing despite all of the problems of being in a tough economy.

So, how does one explain this weird phenomenon? Voodoo? The metaphysical flow of energy in the universe?

Here’s what I decided a long time ago. It just doesn’t matter.

One doesn’t have to be able to explain things mathematically to see that they are true. You can simply apply what works and get a positive result.

So, how do you apply this in your practice? Here’s are the key points:

1. Know that you can directly influence the amount of patients that come in by how much promotion you put out.

2. Always track your advertising results so you can improve the effectiveness of your efforts.

3. Know that sometimes results come from unexpected places. It can be hard to directly connect some increases to specific actions. But I assure you that cutting back on your promotional efforts will put things into a decline.

Have you experienced crystal voodoo mojo magic where you promoted one thing and got responses for another? Drop me an e-mail and share your experience.

Looking for assistance in getting your advertising producing bigger results? Give us a call and we’ll set up a no-obligation discussion to sort out your best plan of action. Call (800) 595-1288. I look forward to talking with you.

To your success,

Looking for help getting the right message to produce exceptional results for your practice? The first step is to make a simple phone call. Call Sentium to set-up a no-obligation telephone consultation. It will cost you zero, zip, zilch, nada, but could give you answers that can dramatically boost your results. Call us at (800) 595-1288.

______________________

Reading a borrowed copy? Get your own Free subscription to Marketing Rocket Fuel at www.sentiumdentalmarketing.com

Richard Wilson is the Founder/Chief Marketing Strategist for Sentium Strategic Communications which helps companies dramatically improves their sales, growth and profitability. Over the past 32 years, his clients have ranged from start-ups to major technology companies.

Usually, I am not very fond of things that are described with a three-letter acronym. Those would be things like IRS, CIA, and DOA. There is, however, one noticeable exception. Spending a little time understanding this can have a substantial impact on the viability of your practice and on your personal income.

The acronym is ROI (or, Return On Investment).

Relax. I promise this isn’t a write-up about accounting. And yes, it will all come back to marketing. But humor me for a moment and let’s look at just a couple of numbers.

Suppose that a year ago you decided to invest $10,000. What investment would have given you the best return for your money?

I’m not even going to suggest the stock market. According to today’s figures in the Wall Street Journal, your $10,000 would now be worth about $5,487.

In troubled economic times people often choose gold. So how would that have done for you? Well, according to Goldprice.org, your $10,000 investment a year ago would be worth $9,248 today. Sadly, that’s better than stocks, but you’ve still lost money.

Is there somewhere you can invest and not only protect your investment, but make money? Yes. Ironically, that place is your very own practice.

Specifically, I’m referring to an area of your practice that most people don’t even consider an “investment.”

One of the greatest (and therefore financial) leverage points you have is in refining the message of your marketing materials.

Direct response advertisers track the effectiveness of their advertising pieces the way a hawk tracks mice in a field. They know that improving a message can easily double, triple, even quadruple the number of people who buy a service.

I personally know of one instance where changing the headline in an ad improved the response rate by 19x. No. That’s not 19 percent. That’s a 19 times improvement.

It’s the difference between one person responding and 19 people coming in the door with their checkbooks in their hand.

Suppose you upgraded the message in your practice’s ads, your mailings, or even your website. Could you see the same 19x result? Probably not (although it is possible!) But would you be happy with an improvement of a far more modest 50% increase in sales? Even a truly pessimistic 15% improvement could significantly improve your bottom line.

Let me give you a real-life example from a discussion I had with a client earlier today. He’s in the professional services business and a new client for him roughly equates to $10,000 in fees.

His existing website has some serious problems. Some sections are incomplete. And there’s nothing in his current selling message that makes him any different from his competitors.

We agreed that his website probably unsells people more than it convinces them to call.

We reviewed a couple of strategies that will easily make the website much more effective and increase the number of people seeking his help.

So, here is the Return On Investment part:

By investing $10,000 in revamping his selling message, if he gets only one new customer in the next twelve months, he will have recovered his entire investment.

If this new and enhanced site generates only one new customer every three months, he will have generated additional sales of $40,000.

Being only slightly more optimistic, if the new and enhanced site generates one new customer every month, he will generate additional sales of $120,000. Plus, the site should continue to generate new customers month after month beyond the first year.

As an investment it sure beats gold, doesn’t it?

There’s an old saying that “the best investment you can make is to invest in yourself.” As a practice owner, it makes sense to invest in enhancing the message in your marketing materials.

Remember, it costs the same amount of money to run an ineffective ad as it does to run an ad that gets people interested in your service. The difference is in the results that are generated.

So, how do you get the expertise to improve the effectiveness of your message?

There are a lot of advertising people, many of whom claim to have all the answers. How do you separate the posers from the professionals?

Remember, advertising is supposed to sell something. If the advertising expert can’t show you bottom-line results they have created for others, excuse yourself for a moment and slip out the back door.

Other poser tip-offs are frequent use of the terms, “breakthrough,” “edgy,” or “next generation” instead of “response rates,” and “return on investment.”

In many ways, an ideal advertising partner is a part empath, part communicator, and part calculator.

They need to be able to understand your service in its entirety.

They need to be able to crawl inside your patient’s skin and know what worries or inspires them.

They need to be able to distill the right message so it communicates in seconds and motivates people to respond.

They need to understand how to help you invest your marketing dollars so you get a solid return on investment.

If you’re looking for an ideal advertising partner, you should call Sentium Strategic Communications at (800) 595-1288.

Why? Because we’re highly skilled at creating the right message to produce exceptional results.

So look to how you can invest in your own practice’s success by enhancing the message in your marketing materials.

Right now, that’s even better than investing in gold.

To your success,

______________________

Want to know how to make your marketing strategy more effective? Schedule a free half-hour telephone website review by calling Sentium at 1 (800) 595-1288.
______________________

Reading a borrowed copy? Get your own Free subscription to Marketing Rocket Fuel at www.sentiumdentalmarketing.com

Richard Wilson is the Founder/Chief Marketing Strategist for Sentium Strategic Communications which helps companies dramatically improves their sales, growth and profitability. Over the past 32 years, his clients have ranged from start-ups to major technology companies.

A man entered a metro station in Washington DC and started to play the violin. It was 7:51 a.m. on Friday, January 12, right in the middle of morning rush hour. During the next 43 minutes, 1,097 people passed by as the violinist performed six classical pieces. Almost all of them were on the way to work.

Three minutes went by before something happened. A middle-aged man noticed there was a musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried up to meet his schedule. A minute later, the violinist received his first dollar tip: a woman threw the money in the till and without stopping continued to walk. A few minutes later, someone leaned against the wall to listen, but the man looked at his watch and started to walk again. Clearly he was late for work.

The one who paid the most attention was a 3-year old boy. His mother dragged him along while the boy tried to stop and look at the violinist. Finally the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk, turning his head all the time. Several other children repeated this action. All their parents, without exception, forced them to move on.

In the 43 minutes the musician played, only seven people stopped to take in the performance, at least for a minute. Twenty-seven gave him money, most of them on the run — for a total of $32.17. When he finished playing and silence took over, no one noticed it. No one applauded.

No one knew this, but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the finest classical musicians in the world. He was playing some of the most elegant music ever written on a handcrafted 1713 Stradivarius violin worth 3.5 million dollars.

Three days earlier, Bell had played to a full house at the 2,625 seat Boston’s Symphony Hall, where fairly good seats went for $100. He has been awarded the Avery Fisher Prize for outstanding achievement in classical music and regularly plays over 200 international engagements a year.

This is a performer whose talents can command $1,000 a minute. Yet that day he was given a little more than thirty-two dollars for 43 minutes of passionate playing.

This is a true story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste, and priorities of people. The questions they wanted answered were: in a commonplace environment at an inappropriate hour; do we perceive beauty, do we stop to appreciate it, do we recognize the talent in an unexpected context?

To the shock and amazement of everyone involved in this experiment, the answer was a resounding “no.”

While no one predicted this result, (they expected large numbers of people to collect and even had contingency plans for crowd control) it makes complete sense.

Without the correct context to indicate quality and value, most people don’t perceive it.

If you were to take an abstract painting done by an acclaimed artist, take it from the museum where it hangs, remove it from it’s frame, and hang it in a restaurant where there are pieces of original art for sale, very few people would notice it.

In a museum it might be a $5 million painting. In a restaurant, it may not even get noticed at $150.

Let’s apply this to your practice. A great deal of how your prospects perceive your service’s value has to do with how it is presented. This absolutely affects your bottom line.

Does your presentation say finest musician in the world? Or, does it say street musician?

Many marketing tests have found that people will frequently designate one of two identical items as being distinctly better than the other simply because it is packaged or presented more attractively.

Direct response advertisers often find that offering the same item at a higher price increases the number of people who buy. This works because price is one key indicator people rely on for quality and value.

Do this exercise. Take a look at all of the places where your practice comes in contact with your prospects. Consider every aspect from your website, brochures, and even your office. What do they say about the quality and value of your service?

Now, don’t just blow this off. Take a real, candid look. Review everything as if you were a potential patient and give yourself an honest answer.

Are you presenting everything in a way that best represents the real value of your service? Or, are you undermining your own success?

You may find that you have work to do.

The good news is that improvements in any of these areas can have a significant impact in your overall profitability.

To your business success,

______________________

Ready to kick sand in the face of this whole lousy economy? We can help with marketing that makes sense. Call Sentium at 1 (800) 595-1288 to set-up a no-obligation telephone consultation. It will cost you zero, zip, zilch, nada, but could give you answers that can dramatically boost your sales results.
______________________

Reading a borrowed copy? Get your own Free subscription to Marketing Rocket Fuel at www.sentiumdentalmarketing.com

Richard Wilson is the Founder/Chief Marketing Strategist for Sentium Strategic Communications which helps companies dramatically improves their sales, growth and profitability. Over the past 32 years, his clients have ranged from start-ups to major technology companies.

Lies. Damn lies.

I made a mistake. I should have known better, but I did it anyway. I started reading a newspaper. Almost immediately, I started feeling depressed and overwhelmed. I put down the newspaper and took a walk.

Let me share with you how the current media talk can adversely affect you and your practice. I’ll also share a strategy that can help you sail through the next few years.

Here’s the first step: Stop believing generalities. Deal only with specifics.

“Everyone is broke.” “No one is buying anything.” “Everything is bad, and it only is going to get worse.”

Not only do these types of broad generalities produce a “deer-in-the-headlights” effect, they are not true .

Part of success is being able to differentiate between one thing and another. When you look at the economy and your patients, you’ll see that all patients are not the same. Everything is not all bad. There are market segments that do well despite recessions.

For example, over the last weekend, movie theaters across the nation had some impressive results:

The top 12 movies took in $128.8 million, up 32 percent from the same weekend last year. (as compiled by Media By Numbers LLC)

So, while “times are bad,” evidentially they are not bad enough to miss the opening of Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa.

An interesting thing happens during tough economic times. The bottom end of the market — the low-cost leaders — do well. McDonald’s, the world’s largest hamburger chain reported that global sales of restaurants open at least 13 months rose 8.2 percent in October, topping analysts’ targets.

The high end of the market also does well, as affluent buyers are not as adversely affected by economic downturns. Rolls-Royce is continuing to see rising sales and seems to be bypassing the credit crunch. Figures released last month showed RR deliveries up 7.5 percent from the same month in 2007 marking a 42.8 percent increase in deliveries since the start of this year.

It’s the middle range of the market that gets hammered.

Put it this way: this is a great time to be selling Mercedes Benz, and a tough time to be selling Chevrolets. General Motors’ stock value is now at a 62-year-low and analysts report that GM is burning through cash fast.

So what’s the take away message? If you want to increase your profit margins, you need to target more affluent customers.

Yes. It is counter intuitive. While the media is saying everything is down, you’re best strategy is to be aiming up.

This may mean revamping some of your services. Can you add prestige and value to an existing service to turn it into a high-end, super service? The goal is to transform your service into something irresistible. To become high-end, it needs to become an exceptional experience.

Compare the typical barbershop experience with the Grooming Salon in McLean, Virginia. Here, men line-up to receive a $50 haircut that also includes an open bar. In addition, you’ll find hot lather shaves complete with steamed towels, rich lather, and silicon-enhanced aftershave lotion.

If the basic men’s haircut can go upscale, so can your product or service.

Another application of this strategy is to look at the people in your patient base who are doing well and create a plan to get more patients like them. It requires an effective program to attract and close this new high-level of customer.

Want some expert help in developing and implementing this type of strategy? The next step is to call 1(800) 595-1288 to set up a meeting. At Sentium, we are currently working with our clients to identify and best leverage viable opportunities for the current economic scene.

In the meantime, ignore the negative generalities for the media. Focus on specific areas where you can see success – both with your patients and in other affluent segments. Get a plan in place that helps you develop your new upscale strategy.

To your business success,

______________________

Want to know how to make your marketing strategy more effective? Schedule a free half-hour telephone website review by calling Sentium at 1 (800) 595-1288.
______________________

Reading a borrowed copy? Get your own Free subscription to Marketing Rocket Fuel at www.sentiumdentalmarketing.com

Richard Wilson is the Founder/Chief Marketing Strategist for Sentium Strategic Communications which helps companies dramatically improves their sales, growth and profitability. Over the past 32 years, his clients have ranged from start-ups to major technology companies.

Don’t despair. There is something you can do about it.

First, turn off the TV. Don’t buy the newspaper. Turn your car radio from the newstalk station to some relaxing music.

Take a walk and look at things until you’re feeling better and the world doesn’t seem quite so hostile to you and your practice.

OK. Now you’re ready to get started.

Let’s look at some facts. Current unemployment is about 7.7% in the hardest hit parts of the country. Stop and think about that for a moment. If that’s true, then that means that 92.3% of the population is still employed!

These people still eat food, wear clothes, drive cars, and need dental work.

Despite what the media might want you to believe, all of the money did not disappear overnight. People are still living their lives. Many are still living quite well.

A few days ago, Apple Computer announced its 4th quarter results with a gross margin of 34.7%. This was one of their best quarters in history. A key factor in their success? Sales of the iPhone – one of the most expensive phones available today.

Tiffany & Company, (the world famous jewelry retailer) reported its earnings for the fiscal fourth quarter rose by 40 percent.

United States sales of Maserati sportscars from Italy have hit an all time high.

The point is that while it’s true that times are more difficult than they were a year ago for many people, there is still a great deal of money to be made.

Historians often forget to mention that many millionaires were made during the Great Depression.

The deciding factor for your practice is what you do over the next few months.

The absolutely vital thing to do is to step-up the level of advertising and promotion for your practice.

A research study done by McGraw-Hill analyzed 600 companies in 16 different industries in the last major recession (1981-82). Their big finding? Businesses that maintained or increased their advertising averaged significantly higher sales growth. This occurred both during the recession and for the following three years.

Even more impressive, sales of companies that were aggressive recession advertisers rose 256% over those companies that didn’t keep up their advertising.

I know this seems counter-intuitive. When you hear the news, the first reaction is to cut all expenditures, grab your teddy bear and hide under your desk until the recession goes away.

(Even if you were to make it through the recession, with that strategy your practice would contract and become a shadow of what it is today.)

It’s time to kick sand in the face of the “sky is falling” media and take your destiny into your own hands.

What’s ironic is that your competitors will actually help you. You see, many of them will cut their budgets, grab their teddy bears and hide under their desks.

This means less advertising competing for your patient’s attention. You may even find that advertising costs fall as the media has to scramble for advertisers.

Right now, your practice is swimming against the tide. You need to swim harder or you’ll be swept out to sea. But when the tide shifts and goes your way, not only will things be much easier, but you’ll be miles ahead of your competition.

The three most important things to know about keeping your practice growing in tough times are: promote, promote, and be sure to promote.

You may also want to see how you can shift your efforts to a more affluent, recession-resistant market. At Sentium, we work with clients to help them explore those higher-margin options. There are some hands-on, proven techniques for going upscale that I’ll share with you in your next Marketing Rocket Fuel.

Until then shake off the bad news and get moving.

Ready to kick sand in the face of this whole lousy economy? We can help with marketing that makes sense. Call Sentium at 1 (800) 595-1288 to set-up a no-obligation telephone consultation. It will cost you zero, zip, zilch, nada, but could give you answers that can dramatically boost your sales results.

To your business success,

______________________

Ready to kick sand in the face of this whole lousy economy? We can help with marketing that makes sense. Call Sentium at 1 (800) 595-1288 to set-up a no-obligation telephone consultation. It will cost you zero, zip, zilch, nada, but could give you answers that can dramatically boost your sales results.
______________________

Reading a borrowed copy? Get your own Free subscription to Marketing Rocket Fuel at www.sentiumdentalmarketing.com

Richard Wilson is the Founder/Chief Marketing Strategist for Sentium Strategic Communications which helps companies dramatically improves their sales, growth and profitability. Over the past 32 years, his clients have ranged from start-ups to major technology companies.

There is a dirty little secret in the world of website creation and using the internet to build your practice. Many people have been led to believe that having a website alone will immediately mean that they will start getting a flood of new business.

Why not? Their practice is now on the internet, where billions of people are surfing every day. It would make sense that if they had a beautifully designed website they should have people flocking to their door.

The sad truth is that most practices go ahead and have a site designed, put it up, and then a horrible thing happens.

Absolutely nothing.

Here is what many website designers fail to mention when they talk about creating a website: A website is a response mechanism.

It is like a vending machine: it just sits there. People have to go up to the vending machine and then decide to actually buy something.

The most beautifully designed website in the world will produce nothing – unless there is a strategy to get people to arrive at that website.

(And no, hoping that you might get lucky and someday have Google rank you in their top ten sites is not a viable strategy. I’ll tell you more about getting your website ranked high on Google in a later Marketing Rocket Fuel.)

In fact, the website is really the second part of the formula for an effective marketing program. The first part is getting in contact with patients and getting them interested so they come to your website.

So, before you begin building your website make sure you have a two-part strategy. Part 1 is to reach out to your patients, contact them, let them know that there is information of value or something of interest at your website. Part 2 is to do an effective job of impressing them when they arrive at your website.

Of course, there are a number of different outreach strategies that work. Amazingly, one of the best strategies that we’ve found with practices is to combine direct mail along with websites.

As strange as it seems, the World Wide Web is actually making good old-fashioned direct mail more viable than ever before. (Wasn’t e-mail supposed to put the US Postal Service out of business?)

It’s ironic that the best selling combination seems to be a blending of activities from both the “dirt world” as well as from “cyberspace.”

So, is a website an effective tool for a marketing program? Absolutely. Will it work by itself? Absolutely not.

For best results, combine the strategies of both an outreach program along with a response mechanism.

Reach out to your patients, get their attention and then draw them back to the website. There you can provide more information, and stimulate their interest so they raise their hand and say, “I want to talk to you about being a patient!”

Get both strategies in place, and you’ll start seeing the results you really want for your practice.

To your business success,

______________________

Want to know how to make your marketing strategy more effective? Schedule a free practice-evaluation telephone meeting by calling Sentium at 1 (800) 595-1288.
______________________

Reading a borrowed copy? Get your own Free subscription to Marketing Rocket Fuel at www.sentiumdentalmarketing.com

Richard Wilson is the Founder/Chief Marketing Strategist for Sentium Strategic Communications which helps companies dramatically improves their sales, growth and profitability. Over the past 32 years, his clients have ranged from start-ups to major technology companies.

This can be a huge mistake.

The problem is that there is often real and long-term harm done to a practice when prices are cut. The problem with heavily discounting on a regular basis? People’s perception of the value of your service begins to erode.

The second factor which comes into play is that by building a patient base which is motivated simply by bargain pricing, you have targeted very un-loyal patients. The moment anyone else provides the same service for less, those patients will simply switch to the dentist with the lower price. It’s a very shaky way to build a practice.

Finally the more that a service is discounted on a regular basis, the less “real” the regular price becomes. After paying the discounted price on a regular basis, what patient would be foolish enough to believe the suggested price?

The Price Cutting Alternative

Here’s a strategy for building an effective and powerful offer without necessarily killing a practice on price. The secret is very simple: add additional value. Instead of selling less, sell more!

Here’s a real world example I experienced with a client who had a string of pizza delivery stores. At that time, almost every competing pizza place within a 20-mile radius was couponing very heavily. The standard coupon that businesses would offer was two dollars off of a large pizza.

With an ever present two-dollar coupon, people got used to reaching into their pockets and handing over a ten dollar bill. Eventually, this approach trained their clientele into paying ten dollars for a large pizza instead of twelve.

There was an additional unintended effect with this approach. Whenever the customer didn’t have a coupon, they tended to get upset. They went through all of the emotional reactions associated with a price increase!

They’d paid two dollars less the last three times they bought a pizza, and now suddenly they had to pay more. They were annoyed. People would make comments that implied that something horrible had just been done to them. Rather than appreciating all of the times that they had gotten the pizza for ten dollars, they hated having to pay twelve dollars for the same pizza.

I recommended changing strategies. The thought was, “could we give something extra and keep the price at $12.00, yet have people perceive this as a better deal?”

The solution ended-up being a six-pack of Pepsi. Most people perceived a six-pack of Pepsi as being much more desirable and valuable than two dollars off on a pizza. Customers could choose between diet or regular Pepsi.

With this new offer, people happily paid the higher price and the number of people responding to the coupons increased.

Now, the truth of the matter was that the six-pack of Pepsi cost $1.64. So the client kept more money giving away a six-pack of Pepsi than discounting the cost of the pizza by two dollars.

This way, when people had a coupon, they got a wonderful extra item. If they didn’t have the coupon, they still paid the normal price for the pizza; they just didn’t get the extra “goody.”

By using this creative strategy, the client was able to differentiate themselves from their competitors. They were able to provide a higher level of perceived value to the customers. They avoided eroding their own product value. And, they got new customers who who were attracted to the “better deal.”

You can apply this strategy whether you are selling products or services.

The lesson is: don’t be so fast to bomb your price. What you might want to look at instead is “are there ways you can enhance your deals, add to the perceived value, and make more money in the process?”

The difference to your bottom line can be dramatic.

To your business success,

____________________________________________

If you would like to discuss improved follow-up strategies for your practice, call Sentium at 1(800)595-1288 to schedule a free half-hour telephone consultation.
____________________________________________

Reading a borrowed copy? Get your own Free subscription to Marketing Rocket Fuel at www.sentiumdentalmarketing.com

Richard Wilson is the Founder/Chief Marketing Strategist for Sentium Strategic Communications which helps companies dramatically improves their sales, growth and profitability. Over the past 32 years, his clients have ranged from start-ups to major technology companies.

The simple truth is that dentists which experience consistent growth do a good job of knowing what’s happening in both their marketplace and their practice. Armed with this information, they respond correctly to changes in their marketplace. The X-factor for growth? It’s how they approach the fundamentals of business. These dentists know that marketing and promotion activities are the fuel that drives the sales volume of their practice. So, they make these activities the cornerstone of their operations. When there’s a downturn in the marketplace and their competition tries to ride out the storm by withdrawing – they grit their teeth and step-up their marketing and promotion activities.

This basic keeps them on a growth path even while other practices decline.

For many people, this approach is counter-intuitive: they are effectively being accountants instead of leaders. They believe that you should only market when you have “extra” money for it. They don’t realize that it’s the marketing that creates the income for the practice to survive in good times and bad.

Here is a quick test to see if you naturally have the promotional X-factor in your practice skill set:

You notice that your practice volume is down 20% so you:

a. Hope the problem will right itself and go drown your troubles in a large latté.
b. Cut all your expenses and hope to get through the slump.
c. Increase the volume of your advertising and marketing.

If you answered either “a” or “b” you might join the “It’s the economy!” club of struggling dentists. However, you should forget about making the list of top 10 dental practices in the United States.

If you answered “c” you have the right viewpoint for growth and may want to begin planning tax shelters for all of the additional income you’ll generate.

A Funding Strategy for Growth

So how do practices that experience consistent growth create the budgets to continually market to prospective patients? It’s really pretty simple. Most often they set aside a portion of their gross income which funds their marketing.

This approach allows them to grow their marketing budget as they grow their practice. It’s a dynamic approach, so literally the more success they have, the greater success they can achieve.

Most of the clients I work with reinvest at least 10% of their gross revenues into marketing to grow their practice. One for one, this puts them onto a fast path for increasing income.

What to do next

Get a large marker and a piece of paper and write “marketing and promotion activities are the fuel that drives the volume of my practice.”

Put it alongside your computer monitor to remind you to keep this cornerstone for practice growth in place. Then start marketing. With this fundamental in mind you can focus on creating a multiple-source system for assuring the growth of your practice.

To your business success,

______________________

If you would like to discuss improved growth strategies for your practice, call Sentium at 1(800)595-1288 to schedule a free half-hour telephone consultation.
______________________

Richard Wilson is the Founder/Chief Marketing Strategist for Sentium Strategic Communications which helps companies dramatically improves their sales, growth and profitability. Over the past 32 years, his clients have ranged from start-ups to major technology companies.
______________________

Reading a borrowed copy? Get your own Free subscription to Marketing Rocket Fuel at www.sentiumdentalmarketing.com