Dental Business

eye to eye dental marketing

How to Meet Your Audience Eye-to-Eye in Your Dental Marketing Content

Sometimes the strain is too much. In my case it was the strain I consistently felt in my neck.

A practical Christmas gift solved that problem. And it prompted me to think about a principle that can keep your dental content and dental marketing from being well…a pain-the-neck.

I’m at my desk for the majority of each work day. My stand-up desk, though efficient and good for my overall health, even so created ongoing tension in my neck and shoulders.

Looking down at my MacBook Pro all day left me sore at day’s end.

I browsed for a more ergonomic solution. And viola!

The Rain mStand.

This gorgeous piece of aluminum looks sweet on my desk top. More important, it provides the lift I need  to bring my MacBook Pro to eye-level.

Mom hooked me up with one for Christmas. I’m stoked about it.

Everything’s at eye-level now. Neck-strain gone!

Got me to thinking about marketing-strain.

What’s that you ask?

Consider it any promotion, copy, or piece of content that fails to meet your reader, client, patient, or customer at eye-level.

Eye-to-eye or “die!”

Might seem extreme. But in a world of “hey-look-at-us-and-how-great-we-are” marketing it removes the pain.

Marketing that’s so feature heavy and bloated with industry-speak that it weighs your core message down isn’t compelling.

There’s a better way.

How to Create Dental Marketing Copy and Dental Marketing Content That Meets People at Eye-Level

1-Get personal

Your dental marketing strategy has one purpose, ultimately. It’s to consistently meet your patient/client at their personal “pain-points.”

To clarify, not all patients/clients are at a pain threshold all the time. Much of the time they’re simply looking for a solution to a problem.

This demands that you personalize your strategies.

Speak to each as an individual rather than a collective group. For example, use the word “you.”

This trains you to think in terms of a single person. You’ll naturally write, promote, market as if you’re speaking to them alone.

More important, they’ll feel it too.

2-Stop “selling”

Might seem strange to hear that said in a discussion of marketing. True, “selling” is the outcome of your dental marketing.

Though you perhaps don’t like to think of what you do as “selling” it’s the reality of marketing.

But…

It’s important to understand that the concept of “selling” is much different than the approach that feels and sounds “salesy.” Before you dismiss this point as a matter of semantics, think about it.

“People (you included) don’t like the idea of being sold.”

It’s more a matter of connecting their personal desires, emotions, problems to a solution. That connection is where the real value of “selling” takes place.

You create a “fan” over time by how you engage them with your solutions. If you sound, write, promote like a 15 second tv commercial you’ll do nothing more than numb your market.

Tap into your patient’s/client’s emotional buying motives. It’s reflected in a classic marketing formula according to Theodore “Ted” Levitt:

“People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole.”

And that, my friends, leads to a third and final idea…

3-Solve problems

The “drill” (according to Levitt) isn’t the ultimate, desired solution. The “hole” is!

In our feature-intensive marketing language it’s easy to forget the problem-solution-benefit equation. That is, how your services/products are described or packaged isn’t as valuable to your patient/client as the solution-benefit it provides.

Know your “audience” and you’ll speak to their pain. Listen to chair side conversations, consultant feedback, online reviews, search data, social media data and conversations, etc.

Mine conversations for problems that your unique services/products can solve. Create content that highlights how the problem/pain is solved.

Your dental marketing value will increase within your niche when you give your patients/clients consistent reason to trust your expertise.

Get eye-level. Your pain and theirs will disappear.

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content strategy

What Simple Intuition Can Do for Your Dental Content Marketing Strategy

He’s smarter than I give him credit for. And there’s another more valuable trait that he’s developing at a young age.

I’ll let you in on our grandson’s growing personality in a moment. On a related note, there’s a trait within his intellectual development that applies to how your create your dental content.

Our grandson is six (”and a half…” as he’s quick to remind). The time I spend with him is priceless.

Being a freelancer and solopreneur has it’s perks. Especially when I can take a day off and spend time with the “B-man” as I call him.

I had that opportunity on a recent school holiday. Following breakfast, I reflexively viewed my incoming email on my iPhone as he was playing on the floor in our family room.

That’s when he schooled me…

“I thought you were taking the day off, G-pa!?”

Busted!

He made a connection that face-in-phone means work. He’s six and already more intuitive than I realize.

Intuition

Your power of observation or your ability to use your intuition can improve your dental content creation. It’s natural to make assumptions about your target audience.

After all, you’re a dental professional. You provide a certain set of services and the assumption is that people know it.

How people access your particular brand of services is the issue. Most approach who you are and what you do with questions.

Those questions – as we’ve discussed before – are your gold mine for creating compelling, useful content to promote your services.

Assume less – Intuit more

Your patients or clients are consistently in search of solutions to their “pain” or problems. And like most, they type a word or phrase in the form of a question into their chosen online search engine.

They, like you, do this more often on-the-fly via their smartphone or tablet. Pain, a problem, an unforeseen setback invades their space and they go searching for a solution.

Content Intuition and What It Can Do for Your Dental Content Marketing that Assumptions Cannot

Intuition creates real-time opportunity

Thoughts are fluid. You are always experiencing a constant stream of them.

So are your patients and clients.

It’s essential that your intuitive content finds its way to their thought consciousness. Your success rate will increase as you appear on their conscious “radar” consistently.

Monthly content…that’s a stretch. Sure, if it’s dense as in a content rich newsletter, industry case study, or informative ebook.

Start with a bi-weekly published content. But consider the opportunity-value of appearing in their space with useful content on a weekly basis – this is optimum.

Why? Your patients/clients are busy.

And volume of content they consume for information, entertainment, support, etc is off the charts.

Be there consistently. Be there usefully.

And you’ll occupy a small space in their content stream.

Intuition compels an informed response

The information your patients or clients search for depends on their current need, mood, pain, etc. Getting a response relies on your ability to intuit their condition.

How?

Listen!

  • Set up listening “stations.” Encourage your business team, consultants, assistants, hygienists to develop an open-ear approach. Train them how to pick up on the signals your patients/clients are sending. Develop ways to log/archive that data.
  • Create content around the questions, pains, problems, and solutions being sought by your patients/clients.

Remember that useful information compels…and “sells.”

Intuition conforms to the solutions you provide

Other “listening stations” are your online reviews, ratings, and strategic surveys. This is useful as you use your intuition to access what’s being said on and between the lines.

  • Get intentional by using surveys. Brief, targeted surveys can help you tap-into the needs, wants, and desires of your patients/clients. Avoid lengthy, complicated, or irrelevant questions. Ask what you really want to know.
  • Use reviews and survey data to create a content editorial list. Craft content around answering the questions and problems with solution-oriented content.
  • Provide variety. Informative content can be shared via a blog, podcast, video, short courses, webinars, etc.

Give your “audience” numerous channels to connect with you. They’ll appreciate the convenience and your intuition.

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compelling content headlines

How to Create Headlines That Compel a Positive Response to Your Dental Marketing Content

How important are headlines? Before I reveal how to create them, understand that your dental promotions, dental web page copy, and even your dental blog posts can succeed or fail based on the headline.

Advertising and copywriting legend, John Caples, once said they are the most important part of your advertisement. He proved his point by committing four of his 18 chapters to them in his book, Tested Advertising Methods.

Your headline copy can make or break your dental marketing. This is why they’re so difficult and occasionally time-consuming to write.

Professionally speaking, I invest the first phase of writing to the headline. You should expect to do the same if…you want to compel your reader to engage with your content.

Your headline has ONE  job

Your headline MUST grab your reader’s attention.

John Caples adds this jolting perspective – “If the headline is poor, the copy will not be read. And copy that is not read does not sell goods.”

You could say, “I”m a dental provider, I don’t ‘sell’.” I encourage you to not get caught up in the semantics of what is or is not “sales.”

Bottom line, your headline compels or it doesn’t. The middle ground is littered with well intentioned, creative, salesy hype, or lame attempts at trying to be cute.

How to Create Headlines that Compel Your Readers to Keep Reading to the Point of Doing What You’re Asking Them to Do

(By the way, there are two bonus insights in that sub-heading.)

1-Promise something.

Too many promotions are vague. Vagueness should not be confused with compliance with dental industry marketing standards.

There’s a difference in making unsubstantiated claims about a treatment or service and being vague about the benefit they can potentially deliver.

Make a promise that introduces a benefit.

“Who else wants whiter teeth – in less time?”
(Promise: whiter teeth, less time)

“Great new discovery controls bad breath – makes your teeth healthier too.”
(Promise: fresher breath, healthier teeth)

Those promises include practical benefits. The stated benefits compel your reader to read deeper into your promotion to discover more.

Promised results or benefits compel your reader to stay in the conversation with you via your promotion.

  • List at least 5 benefits of the service you’re promoting.
  • Use specific, direct wording that establishes your service as THE solution (promised result) for taking action.

2-Embed an image in your reader’s mind.

What your reader can see themselves using, doing, etc will compel them to take action. Avoid language that’s overused, technical, industry-oriented, insider-based, etc.

You “know, like, and trust” your industry, right? This makes it natural for you to feel as though everyone else (including your patients/clients) do also.

This is where “How To…” headlines work well.

“How to [COMMON TASK] That [REWARDING BENEFIT].”

The “common task” creates an image of an action, activity, priority, etc. And again, you compel with a “rewarding benefit” – in this instance, something the reader can “see” themselves enjoying, etc.

3-”State a fact.”

Facts establish credibility. When you can highlight a fact in your content headline – do it!

Your reader will be drawn deeper in to your content. And they will begin to trust you as a credible source of information.

Select portions of your positive reviews or testimonials. Remember: You can protect the identity of your source by using their first name initial or their full name initials (e.g. “E” “ES,” etc.) for attribution.

Here’s an example:

“…I went to my high school reunion and the compliments made me feel like I’d been crowned homecoming queen!” – JS. Want the Same Results?

Research data sources of your product or service. Share benefit oriented statistics in you headline.

92% of Our Dental Patients Said This One Thing Eliminated Their [PROBLEM]

If You Do This Two Times Per Year You Could Reduce Your Dental Treatment Costs by [X]%

Facts help compel a response.

4-”Ask a question.”

Questions create curiosity. They also produce engagement with your solution or answer.

In the previous headline example using the quotation (“I went to my high school reunion and the compliments made me feel like I’d been crowned homecoming queen!” – JS Want the Same Results?) the question creates curiosity on two levels.

1) Tell me more about the “results” and 2) Give me more information about what she did to achieve them.

Questions also give your reader a way to process their assumptions. Your question-oriented headline can create a “Hmmm, I haven’t thought about that before…” response.

Your reader will begin to engage with your content by answering the question you posed. It’s important that your question headline prompts curiosity.

A question headline works for a simple reason. It creates a compelling reason to stay with your content and eventually take action as result.

There is more to a promotional headline than creativity or cuteness. Lead with benefits and you’ll win more often.

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