power of noticing

The Power of Noticing and How to Use It to Simplify Your Dental Marketing

What she saw on a billboard during a cross-country trip resonated with her. And that word (resonate) is what will separate success from failure in your dental marketing.

Tara Gentile shared her billboard observation in a recent podcast I listened to. Specifically, it was a billboard promoting the interstate location of a Shell gas station that captured her attention.

The headline, she admitted, cut through all the marketing noise observed on countless other billboard promotions along the roadside. This one contained two words in addition to the company logo and the corresponding roadside exit number.

Ready…? Here goes…

“Clean restrooms”

That was it! It occurred to her that what’s on the mind of a road weary traveler isn’t the mass of messages screaming for attention from billboard after billboard.

What a weary traveler wants, desires, and needs is a clean place to stop when necessary. Simple as that.

The emotional, desire oriented pathway from your marketing message to a patient or client relationship is paved with more than good intentions. These days, your approaching message matters.

Approach precedes landing

Gentile also observed the billboard messages that were “lost” on her and probably other travelers. Direct messages from churches calling readers to “Repent,” other companies demanding that you buy, try, call, purchase, don’t live without, etc their particular product or service fail miserably on “approach.”

There must be a better way.

I encourage you to listen to Tara Gentile’s podcast interview here .

I’ll share a few front-of-mind take-aways in this post (and perhaps a few more in the weeks ahead).

The Power of Noticing that Simplifies Your Dental Marketing Approach

Watch

This isn’t about trends. It IS about the specific things your patients/clients are interested in.

Service providers are accustomed to marketing according to the hammer-nail analogy. When you’re a hammer you see everything as a nail.

Practically speaking, there’s more to your connection than serving up what you assume everyone is waiting around to need.

Need typically drives want or desire. And when you’re present in the gap when need arises you’ll make a profitable connection a higher percentage of the time.

For example, online dental marketing often relies solely on positioning via keywords – the SEO Superstars! Your challenge via online dental marketing is to show up in a simple, useful, value-driven way that reveals you’ve noticed their current need(s).

  • Tune into how your patients/clients see themselves. Words and comments leave clues.
  • Turn their words into images. Build “stories” (word pictures) around their needs, wants, and desires illustrated through their comments in post-op consultations, post-treatment follow-up, buyer-personas, post-purchase reviews, etc.

Observe

This is a higher altitude level of “watching.” Your powers of observation provide a sharper understanding about what your patients/clients desire when you make strategic observations.

Observation gets you closer to intuition. When marketing lacks intuition it becomes “noise.”

Listen

This is where conversations occur. Listening puts you in the proximity of hearing what’s being said.

Your ability to listen and act on what you hear will separate you from the mass of other marketers who rely solely on shock-and-awe (the creative fluff or in-your-face approaches that’s typical of so much marketing these days).

To listen you must quiet yourself. It’s next to impossible to listen when you’re talking.

  • Listen intuitively. Avoid making assumptions about what your patients or clients need. Get to know them through intentional surveys, deciphering their chair side questions, etc.
  • Listen between-the-lines. What is not being said, but is still very real to your audience?

You lose nothing, really, by taking a more simple approach to your dental marketing message. Though you stand to gain more marketing-weary-travelers if you’ll deliver what resonates with them.

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discover benefits

How to Discover New and Compelling Benefits to Promote Your Dental Services

discover benefitsBeing unique for the sake of…well…being unique isn’t a strategy. But there is something about a deep-dive into what makes your services and products “unique” that CAN impact your dental marketing success.

Brian Clark shared a post on Copyblogger that I must credit for “seeding” my thoughts on this one.

“In the 1920’s, Schlitz beer went from fifth in the market to a tie for first. All because a sharp copywriter named Claude Hopkins highlighted their water purification process in an advertisement.

Never mind that all beer companies used the same process. No one had told that story before.” [Read more of Brian’s post]

I’m frequently asked by clients and colleagues, “How can you write fresh content about the same ole’ services over and over again.” Their question reveals what they perceive about the dental niche and what’s somewhat accurate (i.e. how much can you write about dental implants, crowns, etc.?).

That question, perception, and Clark’s content lead to a solution and a strategy that can energize your dental marketing content.

A story that’s not been told

Your services and products are in competition. It’s not so much a competitive process that involves whether one is better than another.

The competitive advantage of your products and services has more to do with the benefit-solution outcome. It’s common in most print and online (digital) marketing promotions to highlight the features of a particular product/service.

Why?

It’s easy to throw the terms “greatest,” “state-of-the-art,” “latest,” “cutting-edge,” etc on top of a few specific technical descriptions and garnish it with a smiling-face image or three…and viola!…send it off to your assistant to post on your website. Then wait for your phone to ring off the desk with inquiries, appointments, or purchases.

What’s missing is the “story that’s not been told.” In essence this is what’s known as your “unique selling proposition” (USP).

It’s as simple an addition to your marketing content as Hopkins highlighting Schlitz’s water purification process.

How to Deep-Dive Into Your Services and Products to Discover a New “Story” That Will Deliver Compelling Solutions

List and lead with benefits.

Always be thinking, “What problem does this solve…what solution does this provide…how is this (?) different than any other approach to solving X problem?”

  • Dimensional-ize every benefit you list by going even further beneath the surface. For example, teeth whitening does more than brighten your teeth up to eight shades (benefit). Teeth whitening gives you the confidence to walk into your next class reunion like you’ve just been crowned homecoming king or queen (deeper, dimensional-ized benefit).
  • Find the deeper levels of solutions and benefits that tap directly into the emotions of your patients, clients, or leads.

Appeal to logic with features.

This the proper use of all those features you’re so quick to talk about. Only use them after you’ve uncovered every benefit-solution you can think of that your product/service provides.

The “story” plot thickens when you get their pulse racing with benefits (”Teeth whitening…confidence…homecoming king or queen…!, etc.”). Then you help them rationalize their decision to schedule, purchase, etc with features (”The newest…no-after-taste…teeth whitening product on the market…available in our comfortable, whitening salon…at our new dental facility…”).

Content marketing works. It’s an effective strategy that promotes your dental services and products with a fresh, new “story” that’s unique…and compelling.

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