Post on 11-Apr-2017
Biggest Mistakes in Marketing and Advertising Your Practice
• 1. Promoting at the wrong time – On a limited budget, start your promotion just
prior to your busy season and end it just prior to a seasonal fall-off
– Don’t spend your money promoting during dead times unless you’ve spent sufficient money promoting during the up times
– It’s always less productive and costs more money
Biggest Mistakes in Marketing and Advertising Your Practice
• 2. Choosing the wrong office location – The right one is in an area with an advantageous
professional to population (or company) ratio
– The wrong one is selected solely on the basis of where you want to live
– A freestanding building almost always offers better outdoor signage opportunities than a professional building does
– And signage is so crucial in attracting the public that, if done well, it can produce a third of your new patients or clients
Biggest Mistakes in Marketing and Advertising Your Practice
• 3. Not knowing how to handle objections – If some professionals could hear their staff members
handle an objection from a caller, they might well be distraught
– Then they’d surely know they’re losing big dollars because their front desk often shoots answers from the hip
– Instead: Script out sample answers for each common objection — no money, no time, no interest, no need and I’ll think it over
– Results: optimal answers and many more appointments
Biggest Mistakes in Marketing and Advertising Your Practice
• 4. Not answering price queries correctly – When people call to ask how much, don’t just
mention the price
– First, explain the unique benefits of receiving the service or product from you
– Then quote the price
– Without explanation, your services are just like everyone else’s, so price can be the only determinant
– With it, you can charge even more
Biggest Mistakes in Marketing and Advertising Your Practice
• 5. Not preparing a marketing plan
– Without analyzing your competition, your objection, your budget and to whom you’re directing your promotion, you’re susceptible to two potential disasters
– One — being swayed by salespeople into buying poorly designed and incorrectly targeted promotions
– Two — failing to consider all important variables
– Both lead you to big losses and dead ends
– Instead: Construct a marketing plan first
Biggest Mistakes in Marketing and Advertising Your Practice
• 6. Sponsoring clubs or sports teams
– If it’s not mandatory that the players come in (or are brought in by parents) for a free service so you can meet them, then recognize your sponsorship as altruism, not practice building
Biggest Mistakes in Marketing and Advertising Your Practice
• 7. Promoting in school yearbooks or church bulletins
– These expenditures should come out of your charitable contributions account, not your promotional budget
Biggest Mistakes in Marketing and Advertising Your Practice
• 8. Putting your name in your ad’s headline
– Rarely does a practitioner have enough public recognition to have his/her name entice a browser to read
– Instead: Head the ad with strong benefits for coming to you, and keep your name and logo at the bottom
Biggest Mistakes in Marketing and Advertising Your Practice
• 9. Writing direct mail yourself – Direct mail is the most difficult type of promotion to
create – Why? – Because it requires that specific techniques be built into a
piece to stimulate immediate response – Practitioners rarely have the knowledge — or the talent – Unfortunately, most copywriters aren’t familiar with
them – Instead: In direct mail, it almost always pays to hire direct
mail specialists – Your response rates can jump 20 times
Biggest Mistakes in Marketing and Advertising Your Practice
• 10. Cutting prices first
– Prices should be the last element in your marketing formula to fiddle with
– Before cutting prices, promote other aspects of your practice — experience, new services, selection, hours, convenience, etc
– If all else is ineffective, then play the price game
Biggest Mistakes in Marketing and Advertising Your Practice
• 11. Not knowing your bottom line – If it’s to attract new patients or clients or to retain old
ones, that’s the goal – If it’s to please your colleagues (or competitors), that’s a
different goal – And each one produces a different kind of promotion – If a promotion is well-done, your competitors will feel
threatened, as they should – If they don’t, it’s probably not well-conceived – Knowing which goal is your true bottom line from the
beginning saves you money and anguish
Biggest Mistakes in Marketing and Advertising Your Practice
• 12. Not coding and tracking your advertising
– Without effective tracking of which ads are producing how much in what media, you can’t stop the losers and pump up the winners
– So to greatly improve ad results, insert keys into your ads — false phone extensions or individual telephone lines for each specific medium
– That way, you know the source as soon as they call
– Asking them where they heard about you yields 30% to 50% incorrect responses
Biggest Mistakes in Marketing and Advertising Your Practice
• 13. Practice brochures that don’t sell you – Most don’t because they contain extraneous or
even negative selling points, like what to do in an emergency, a warning not to miss appointments, a requirement that you pay at once, etc.
– Instead: Put all the rules in an inexpensive brochure to be given to existing clients or patients
– Put only convincing copy in your practice brochure