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


• 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


• 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


• 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


• 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


• 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


• 7. Promoting in school yearbooks or church bulletins

– These expenditures should come out of your charitable contributions account, not your promotional budget


• 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


• 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


• 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


• 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


• 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


• 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

Fred J. Tyson

239-201-9587

[email protected]

Biggest Mistakes in Marketing and Advertising Your Practice

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