dental email marketing
3 Dental Marketing Strategies That Increase Your Influence Without Wasting Your Budget on Cold-Contact Approaches
I recently received a cold-contact via my website. It prompted my thinking about prospecting, attaining new dental patients or clients, and what works and what doesn’t.
First, they get an “A” for effort. In fact, it confirms what should be common for anyone building a practice or business of any kind – some action is better than no action.
What about measured action?
By “measured action” I’m referring to the process of thinking strategically about your steps to patient/client attainment. Strategy matters.
But too much of a measured, strategic approach can equal no action. Over-thinking strangles progress and momentum.
Think. Strategize. Act!
It’s preferable to find a sweet-spot for your dental marketing strategy. What delivers consistent results?
That’s a tough question to answer. And it’s more difficult to answer if you’re not open to new (albiet relevant) approaches for making a dental patient/client connection.
There was a key thing missing from my earlier mentioned cold-contact’s effort. We had no current or ongoing conversation.
I do not know anything about them…their business…their track-record…their reputation…their circle of influence (this is huge to me). It begs another question: how would any of these issues have been solved?
Glad you asked.
Marketing (dental included) rises and falls on consistent, authentic “conversation.”
How to Create Effective Conversations and Build Your Influence Without Wasting Your Marketing Strategy (and Dollars) on Cold-Contact Methods
1-Stop trying to make a creative splash
Author and consultant, Jim Collins, is known for his challenge to give more attention to your “stop-doing list” than to your “to-do” list. I agree.
Item one on your “stop” list is this – quit trying so hard. The default action when marketing or re-branding your services is to think creativity, color, and colossal.
There’s more to having influence than new, bright, and bold initiatives.
- Adopt a problem-solution mindset. Dive into your patient’s and client’s “pain-points.” Grasp what keeps them awake-at-night, the big-3 problems they’re currently facing, what they don’t know or understand about the benefits of your services, etc. Now…put pen to paper about how you can solve those problems!
- Adapt your content to provide answers to questions and solutions to problems. If all you deliver is promotions, deals, and sales your audience will grow numb to you. Again, create useful, valuable content around the solutions you can provide for their problems. Be an advocate more than an advertiser.
- Attach a listening “device” to everything you do and every service you provide. Simple surveys, “How’d we do…?-questions, or focus-groups of select patients/clients are simple sources of data you can use to expand your valuable influence.
2-De-trendify engagement
Good words and ideas get lost when they become trendy. This applies to the term “engagement.”
I’ve avoided using the term because it has become sooo trendy. But there’s too much to lose if you toss it aside.
The gold essence of engagement is making a connection.
Does your dental marketing suffer from too much effort and not enough engagement?
- Talk to your audience instead of promoting to them. Measure the ratio of useful content (the kind that answers questions and solve problems) to promotional pushes. Give more than you ask for.
- Engage with your dental patients/clients around the solutions they seek rather than the latest deal-of-the-month promotion. Consumers are smart. They’re on to you and they can smell a promotion from a mile away. What if you gained influence over time via trusted, consistently delivered content on your blog/article web page, a newsletter, or emails with links to your content?
3-Be yourself
Your marketing language reveals much about your character as a business. If you rely on hype or salesy promotions you set yourself up as having to conquer a prospect.
Rather, be a normal, conversational, inviting presence.
- Use the everyday language of your patients/clients. Write conversationally. Speak to your audience as you would to a friend. Keep it one-to-one in tone.
- Avoid tech-speak, insider-terms, or worn-out marketing fluff (e.g. “state-of-the-art,” “cutting-edge,” and any word that ends in “-est” – best, greatest, latest…).
Sure, any patient/client development action is better than none. Give more measurable attention to building the relationship so that when you do show up it feels less…well…”cold.”
The Power of One Word That Increases the Emotional Response to Your Dental Marketing Content
I underestimated how much a simple, handwritten note could encourage someone my grandson’s age. It’s the same power that intentional, personal content has over generic, every-person content that’s common in marketing, including dental marketing.
The note to our six year-old grandson arrived in a hand addressed envelope. It was from one of his children’s ministry leaders at our local church.
The message was simple. It affirmed his consistent presence there weekly, acknowledged his growing leadership, and offered some encouragement to his ongoing spiritual growth.
When I read the note to him, his face immediately revealed the power of personal words. His response – “Read it again, Gpa…,” something he asked me to do not once, but two more times before tucking it back into the envelope with a smile.
“You” trumps “We” (and other generic, impersonal content).
Here’s what I know from experience. Had the note been a computer generated, typewritten “Hey, <FIRSTNAME>…” form letter I don’t believe it would have made the impact it did on our grandson.
Sure, there’s a time and place for template reply mail. But I must admit, in this highly engaged, data-driven world we live (and market) in, that brand of content is received with increasing feelings of, “Oh, another form-letter…” [tossed in trashcan alongside other junk mail].
Communicating with a specific person in a way that’s impersonal, collective (just one of the crowd) fails to make the necessary, emotional connection that compels a profitable response to your content.
When your website copy, marketing promotions, email marketing series’ – you name it – speaks to more than “One” person it misses it’s intended goal.
You are hard-wired to respond emotionally when communication is aimed directly at you…personally! If you even smell that the message is mass produced, I get it, you’re out and on to something else.
How many life-changing products and services are lost on generic blasts that feel as if it’s intended for anyone who happens to pick it up? That all changes when it feels like the words are for “your-eyes-and-ears-only.”
How to Use the Power of “You” to Increase the Emotional Response to Your Dental Marketing Content Online or Offline
Make it “personal.”
Picture yourself having a conversation with one person. When you write content, speak into a microphone on a podcast, or look into a camera for a YouTube, Periscope, or Blab broadcast imagine there’s one person in front of you.
Eye-to-eye toned conversation will reach out from your words and make an emotional connection. And that’s the kind of connection that compels your reader/listener/viewer to take action as result of your content.
- Read everything about your “audience” until a clear, individual persona comes into focus.
- Believe that what you are sharing via your content will change that one person’s life in some way.
- Think like that one person and talk to yourself as if you are them, hearing what you’re communicating. How does it sound? Would you do what you are asking them to do? Etc.
Talk don’t tell.
The power of “You” focused communication is it’s conversational voice or tone. Are you motivated as much by technical, overly-hyped verbiage as you are by clear, down-to-earth, let’s have a chat themed conversation? I think not.
- Write like you talk. Simply and clearly speak to your reader, listener, or viewer as if you are one-on-one…face-to-face over a cup of coffee.
- Speak “with” not “at” or “to” your reader. They can sense if you’re not personally interested in THEM the moment you act like you’re trying to impress or “sell.”
Get intimate.
Think of intimacy as being up-close-and-personal. I’m not saying be a “close-talker” (if you’re a Seinfeld fan you’ll remember that classic episode).
I’m referring to the shift from generic, crowd-centered, mass-marketed marketing hype to assuring your reader/listener/viewer that you’re into THEM. Their needs, wants, desires, emotional-drivers, pain-points, etc.
- Find your intimate voice. This starts with using the word “You” as much as possible throughout every piece of content you create.
- Be so “You” intentional that your reader/listener/viewer considers you their new “best-friend.” Intimacy doesn’t have to be weird or touchy-feely. It’s a connection.
- Put yourself in their “shoes.” This includes admitting your understanding of their needs, wants, and desires as you admit your “weakness” when appropriate. See their battles and stand in the fray with them.
That note my grandson received… It’s prominently posted on the wall of his bedroom.
The same emotional response applies to the person consuming your content. Keep it personal.
Your Simple Strategy for Becoming a Memorable Dental Industry Authority
I attended a memorial service for a family member of a long time neighbor. What I encountered has been my experience many times over about leaving a legacy.
It also brought to mind a principle that can turn your dental marketing content into something memorable rather than something forgettable.
A son of the deceased offered a touching moment during his eulogy. Now in his 50’s (I assume), he recalled a moment with his dad when he was five years old.
Age five! It’s not unusual that your best memories are those simple moments that revolve around a lesson learned or practical, loving words related.
And it’s equally true that your dental marketing content, promotions, emails, whatever strategy you choose are most memorable when they do one thing.
Answer a question
Content marketing – in any niche’ – is really that simple. It’s as uncomplicated as listening to your audience – their questions, their problems, the deeper issues they face and writing useful answers to them.
A bias for helping
Marketing can easily digress into an attempt to impress. You can be lured into the latest online trend or be tempted to talk…talk…talk about all the nuances and technical eye-candy associated with your products, services, and procedures.
That’s common. But…it’s as forgettable as a laugh inducing, Super Bowl commercial that’s creative and entertaining but fails to connect you with the product and leaves you asking, “Now what was it they were promoting?”
What connects gets remembered
This is why it’s vital that you know the intrinsic value of your dental content. I’m frequently asked a couple of questions about dental industry websites.
1-“Do we really need blog posts/articles on our website?” 2-“How frequently should we publish blog/article content?”
Those questions reveal a need AND a strategy. And I’ll take a strategic approach to answering them because in essence that’s what I seek to do here on my blog each week – answer common questions (expressed or implied) with useful answers.
Your Simple Strategy for Becoming a Memorable Dental Industry Authority Whatever Your Specialty Is
1-Intentionally invest your best marketing energy (and dollars) in publishing useful information.
The simple answer to question 1 – “Do we really need blog posts/articles on our website?” – is “YES!” If for no other reason, it reveals you’re listening.
And that’s the essence of content marketing. To listen is to have no other alternative but to be useful..helpful.
As a dental professional you do not have the practical opportunity to be face-to-face for as long as it would be necessary to answer your patient or client questions. Timing is an issue as well.
Your clients and patients often do not have questions during the hours you’re available in-office or on-site. But they will search for them via their mobile devices, smartphones, tablets, and other available technology that gives them online access.
My question for you: “Will you show up in their search results?” And if you do, will they find the memorable answer(s) they’re searching for? (I’ll cover this in greater detail in future posts. Stay tuned.)
- Set up “listening outposts” throughout your dental practice or dental service business. Your dental assistants, dental hygienists, front-desk business team, customer-service reps, field consultants, managers, etc are your “ears.” Ask them to keep a running list of the relevant questions they’re asked by patients or clients. Review your list regularly.
- Hire a copywriter/content strategist to create blog/article content around simple, non-technical answers to those questions. Why hire? Because you’ll delay what you do not have the time (or expertise) to do. Content marketing is as strategic an endeavor as it is simple. There’s an art to writing an SEO optimized, practical, informative, readable, and actionable post or article.
2-Apply a publishing frequency that’s driven by your desire to establish yourself as the go-to authority.
The answer to question 2 – “How frequently should we publish blog/article content?” – is not as much about saturation as it is about being compelled to deliver valuable information.
If you’re listening…really listening to your “audience” you will always have something of importance to share. Now it’s more a question of strategic opportunity.
- Publish/post your blog/article content at a minimum every other week and at a maximum every week. Consistency plus informative value is the-new-black. Gone are the days of content mills that write a paragraph or two packed with dental keywords on a topic that is written about for the sole purpose of baiting the search engines. It’s essential that you create and deliver content that has substance. And your substance comes from “listening” to your audience.
- Monitor your published content via online tracking tools and good-old-fashioned conversation. I’ll cover the practical side of online search tools in another post. For starters, lurk around in your web hosts built-in tracking systems. Ask your IT team or an up to date, tech-savvy colleague about the best apps or software that will give you a window on your content “love.”
Really, it’s all about the “love.” Love for your audience, for your expertise, and the memorable value you consistently deliver via your content.