New Patient Marketing Resource Site For Health Care Professionals

Note: Effective medical or dental practice management for dentists and even for specialists like orthodontists, oral surgeons, endodontists and  periodontists entails not having to be handcuffed to your practice.

Though most of us love what we do in our profession, and many people do put in 60 to 70 hours a week working hard at our profession, most of us would also not mind enjoying the freedom to take off whenever we like to pursue other interests in life.

Small businesses stay small because the small business owner thinks that his or her presence is constantly needed to produce business income.

He or she is right to a high degree. After all, the business owner is usually also the more competent sales person, the producer, the smoother customer service person, the stricter quality control person, etc.

Well, ‘someone’ needs to do the dirty work of making money and so many business owners decide that they shall slave, — I mean, work —  hard for the business until they retire.

Below are two videos which I have made on why some people feel that they are overworked and underpaid.

Read more…

 

As a medical and dental practice consultant, I find that some doctors only talks about their past failures in their medical or dental marketing ideas, or how they have spent tens of thousands in engaging in dental practice consulting with no improvements.

Whether you are running a dental practice or running a restaurant, it is easy to concentrate on problems and forget to see the thing you wanted in the first place.

After all, problems are impinging on you - no money, bad employees, creditors chasing you, governments not giving you the licenses you need, customers not having the money to pay for your services etc.

But, you see, the more you obsess on the problem the more it will consume you to the point, like a horse with blinders on, you will see nothing but the problem.
Read more…

I have never dabbled in the stock markets. I ‘invested’ instead in developing business and practice improvement strategies for my companies and for my clients.

However I do know many doctors who are interested in the answer to ‘what is the best investment that will yield the best returns?’ Let me see if I could present a different viewpoint to you on the subject of making great monies.

 

During 2008 and 2009 many investors and even people who do not consider themselves investors might have had a grim awakening. But as the word ‘awakening’ indicates – it is a good thing.

 

Maybe these next few lines will shade some light on how — if you are interested to have a good ROI or return on investments — to double your investment over and over again.

 

The very activity which does such a thing (double the investment) is done by all companies in which you have ever invested.

 

Every company that makes any type of money at all is a phenomenal marketing company.

 

 

No matter how good the product is, it is only good because the public perceives it to be good. And that my friend is the job of marketing.

 

No matter how good a product is, the marketing has to be at least as good, if not better for the product to sell in large enough quantity.

 

 

Even for a product to be created it usually takes money. Money which investors are dishing out. It takes incredible marketing skill to get that investment.

 

 

I smile when I hear, and I hear it often, of someone discounting the success of some young chap who became successful because he got hundreds of millions in funding for the start of his company. “I could do that too with my product if I had this type of money,” you will hear someone saying.

 

No, you could not. Because you do not know the most important thing right out of the gate — marketing and sales.

 

If you could not sell your idea, market your idea, and thus even if you would get a hundred million from winning the lottery, you would probably blow it and go bankrupt, just as people who win the lottery do.

 

The basics of succeeding in business, in arts, in the entertainment industries etc are all dependent on incredible marketing skills.

 

I bet you have seen many movie stars which you like, as much if not better than some of the mega box office guys, who are small earners compared to the mega stars.

 

“It’s the marketing — stupid,” as former president Bill Clinton might say.

 

So, let’s summarize one more time, as this is of significant importance for you to ever make any money.

 

No matter which stock you invest in, if the company does not know how to market, you (and they) will not get it.

 

This does not mean that product, service and the right time at the market play no role at all – they do. But without ingenuous marketing the best product will fail.

 

One famous example was Coca Cola, which had failed several times before the right person marketed it so that it became what it is today. Another example is Red Bull. Red Bull was a failure before someone who knew marketing did the correct actions to bring it to international success. Each slight product change  — such as adding carbonation to Red Bull – is a marketing move.

 

Marketers know – or find out what is needed and wanted.

 

Did you know that life insurance was called “death insurance” and under that name it was going nowhere in sales with people? Some chap came along and called it “life insurance” (when it really does not insure your life but your death, thus the phrase “I am worth more dead than alive”).

 

Marketing is king.

 

Now, I did not write this for you to look at which company has the best marketing team but for you to market yourself, your service, your practice as well as other services or products you have not even conceived of.

 

Remember Dr. Scholl with his shoe inserts and arch supports for the foot? Most doctors – podiatrists — tell me that his brand of products are no good, cheap and practically useless. I am not getting in the middle of that because I would not know, but it does support my point above. Dr Scholl’s company is filthy rich with what his competitors think is an inferior product.

 

It’s the marketing, stupid.

 

I wrote this issue to show you how you have the power to double your money every single month - if not sooner - and at the same time create a reputation, trust and professional satisfaction no stock investment can ever do for you. And you will make so much money that you can afford to play (and lose) big in the stock market if that strikes your fancy.

 

Look, if you invest $50,000 in the stock market you will earn at the very best about 10% after one year. That is a whopping, or should I say, a lousy $5000. And if you look at what the market was the last two years and probably will be the next two years, then the 10% are anything but guaranteed.

 

Anything but guaranteed, but even if guaranteed, it will bring so little that the money made would not be worth writing home to mom about. The money made will NOT – and I repeat – will NOT put your kids through colleges, get you into retirement early, help your kids with your grandkids’ education. And it will probably not be enough to have a vacation. And if finances are an issue already, it will not enough to pay the bills.

 

How many $50,000s do you have to invest so that you can make – let’s say $100,000 a year? You would need a million ($1,000,000)!

 

Do you realize that just about all doctors I have ever talked to, who are very well-off because of investments in the real-estate and/or the financial markets, have had  good growing practices to begin with in order to be able to invest?

 

So what can you do with $50,000 in marketing money?

 

First of all, unlike in the stock market, you will not need all that money right away, but can spread it out over almost a year.

 

And in the meantime, the money you did put in would already come back in returns and you can (must) reinvest it, and soon you will have much more that $50,000 in playing money.

 

What about if $4000 a month or $1000 a week would bring you back about $8000 in twelve weeks?

 

That would be a 100% return in twelve weeks. What about if I am very, very wrong (but I am not) and the 100% return only happens after twenty four weeks?

That is $4000 earned in only three to six months with only $4000 invested.

 

100 % return in 20 weeks is not all that bad either and this ROI will never be accomplished by the stock market.

 

Now, in order for this to happen you need to invest that $4000 regularly for three months – or let’s say six months to play being the pessimist - and giving yourself a safety net.

 

One of the unavoidable laws of marketing is that you do need to fill the pipeline as we have calculated to be about three months and count six months just to be safe.

 

Is it not easier to come up with $24,000 over six months (probably on credit with no more than $900 a month in payments), and get about $4000 back every month at that point, than to come up with $50,000 and wait for a year to MAYBE get a one-time lousy $5000?

 

Of course you say, “How do I know that that will happen?”

• “There is no guarantee.”

 

No, there is no real guarantee, but if you really look around you will find that there is no such thing as a guaranteed thing in life. Most business owners have this as the only guarantee: they are making less money during economic downturns.

 

• “The economy is bad and people will cut back no matter how much I advertise.”

 

True too. The pie is getting smaller by as much as 50% in the medical field. Some doctors will have a real hard time but will make it through. The persevering power of doctors is large, as I have observed.

 

Some however might go broke despite being good hardworking docs. Whatever minimum amount of service is be needed and purchased by patients will be purchased from doctors whose names are being talked about by the people in town, endorsed by the media and non-profit organizations, as well as businesses.

 

Advertising alone is NOT the way to go, but for all purposes any activities which make noise so that you are seen and heard of is better than nothing. Bad advertising (which is not what you should do) is still a better guarantee for making money than the stock market.

 

• “I have marketed before - I have in fact tried it all and it does not work the way you say.”

 

In my seventeen years of consulting doctors across the country, I have not met a single doctor who actually did ALL the marketing he could have done. Many have told me that they have done it all. Yeah right! Even the advanced doctors who claim to have done community activities and general public relations have not even scratched the surface. Literally none of them – ever!!

 

• “I have a high overhead of 90% and thus I need to sell eighty thousand ($80,000) worth of service to make the $4000 marketing money and the $4000 profit as you have described.”

 

That is a tough one. I have heard this so many times that I believe it might be as big of a reason why doctors and small businesses do not market as they should, and rather waste their money with weird investments. They simply do not know the basics about marketing anymore than I know medicine, or a man knows what a women goes through during pregnancy.

 

So, let’s shed some light on how much new business you need to generate to cover your optimized marketing budget.

 

Let’s take the extreme of 90 % overhead as mentioned above. This high overhead is usually not because the costs are too high but because the income is too low. So any dollar you take in more than you do now will have a very, very high percentage of profit on that extra money. You see your overhead will not go up just because a few new patients walk in. Maybe 10–20% of material cost, for a dentist for instance, might be added on but the other 90% of that newly made money will also be new profit. Thus you will make at least $8000 profit on about $10,000 of new income.

 

Discount the $4000 you spend on marketing and you are left over with a net profit of $4000 in about three to six months.

 

I hope that the above explanation makes you want to make more money rather than worrying about cutting costs and saving.

 

• “Even it would work, I simply do not have money, neither for stocks or marketing.”

It is simple. You do not have money for investments or for marketing because you did not market enough and correctly for a long time.

 

As Albert Einstein said, “If you want things to change while keeping on doing the same things, you are insane.”

 

Financial duress is no different than bodily illness. All you have to do to get well – or at least get better- is to stop doing what makes you sick and start doing what makes you better. You do those changes even if they have only a chance of making you better and keep making changes until you have found the best possible cure for your body. What other choice is there? Staying sick and thus getting sicker? Not a choice!

 

Business success and finances are no different at all! It is not as serious if you are wrong with some expansion plans (marketing, in this case), all you lose is some money. Compare this to the area of health: what happens if the treatment you undertake goes awry?

If you are a dentist, you can hire dental management companies to help you organize your office, but the domain of dental office marketing (beside servicing your patients) is still the main channel that will create lots of income.   Engaging in sufficient dentistry marketing will also solve stubborn personnel problems.

 

Go ahead and start focusing on marketing your business – you cannot help but win big in this investment.

 

Helmut G Flasch

P.S: Our live teleseminar series is starting for the new year. Our latest event on internet dental marketing will help you start 2010 with a big bang:  “How to Attract a Truckload of Internet New Patients in 7 Days or Less”

One thing is for sure, and that is that business marketing for any product or service is even more problematic during any recession, such as the current low consumer spending, on/with discretionary items.

 

I remember a saying I have learned about 20 years ago in the real-estate business: “other people’s money” (OPM). Even if you do not use other people’s money for a down payment, or the renter’s money to cover the mortgage payment, you probably still use the bank’s money to get the loan, right?

 

You see, OPM is more present than you might think at first glance.

 

Of course - use other people’s money for your marketing. Why didn’t I think of that?

 

But how do you go about that is the big question.

 

First of all when I say OPM, I must point out that getting money only for your marketing is extremely limited thinking.

 

After all, what would you rather have: $100,000 in marketing budget – given to you by some organization and you never have to pay it back OR Several small and large organizations promoting – actually endorsing you and your service - to millions of their clients, members, etc over and over again?

 

To make the choice a bit simpler – advertising is less and less believed in bad economic times and it hardly has any pull at all. If you having a dental practice and is doing some dentist advertisements, a dental ad can cost thousands of dollars (for some cosmetic dentist marketing) and yet the moment you stop the running of the ad, your audience will not remember you.

Other companies and organizations promoting you is called endorsements. It is equivalent to referrals, just on a much larger scale. People remember you much better than a traditional ad.

One of our new clients, a doctor who some years ago was even a consultant for a national practice management consulting company, realized the truth of the lesser pull on advertising when he put out 6000 direct mailers and paid $1700 for it. Even when he had used all the marketing knowledge he had learned, and taught the doctors when he was a consultant, he got not even a call, never mind a patient.

 

He made (and was teaching) the king of all mistakes in marketing. He is trying to build a marketing system by his own without the help of organizations which have already built such a system and are actually willing to put his message on.

 

To contact millions, even only hundreds of thousands of your prospects via organizations which already have an “in” with your prospects is worth much more than the $100,000 spoken about above.

 

Besides, do you really think that anyone will ever give you $100,000 for marketing which you do not have to pay back? I know you don’t.

 

So, the key is to get the same $100,000 and more, in legwork, support, distribution of marketing materials and endorsements.

 

You don’t need money if you have “friends” (very powerful friends, in the form of organizations, media and people living in the community) endorsing and promoting you to millions over and over and over again.

 

You see, most business people try to re-invent the wheel when it comes to building (marketing) their business.

 

To a certain degree all small business owners, including dental and medical practice owners, have a small and outdated thinking – which is the only reason that their businesses are small.

 

Most doctors and small business owners try to build a full marketing infrastructure from scratch with their own money. Doctors, all over the country, soon realize that this is very expensive and does not bring much results (simply because the effort to create such an infrastructure is usually too big for the small business to amount to anything).

 

The next step doctors usually take is to stop marketing or cut it down even more (even though one of the reasons it did not work in the first place was the insufficient amount of marketing despite the doctor thinking it was a lot). Trying to create your own marketing infrastructure can easily be compared with trying to build your own car or for a person to try to “reinvent” the root canal without going to school and using already invented tools.

 

But that waste of misspent marketing money and misspent time is NOT the saddest thing in this whole story.   No, it is the non-attainment of a big and booming practice, the lack of satisfaction of not being perceived as an extraordinary practitioner of a successful practice and of course not making money, which is the much greater loss.   Can you see that?

 

There is a lot of money lost – never made – because of trying to build a marketing infrastructure from scratch and on your own. Marketing for dental or medical offices need not be expensive if you know how to use other organizations’ resources to reach your audiences.

 Don’t be upset at medical and dental marketing companies for charging you lots of money in marketing your dental practices. Lean how to use other organizations’ power to reach lots of people with their existing infrastructure and audience.

 

Why build roads and trucks when you can put your message for free on big trucks, which are already running down the highway towards your destination at great speed?

 

Why try to invent a car (despite the fact that you are not a car builder) which is already invented and offered for free?

 

What if you could get the corporate world as well as the non–profit world, and the media sponsoring and endorsing you, your services and your practice?

 

What about if those entities will be endorsing you as an absolute expert and a community leader?

 

What if well-known companies and non-profit organizations start carrying your messages?

 

By the way, I mentioned at the beginning of this article that those companies and non-profit organizations, as well as the media, are actively looking for your message.

 

You probably wonder, “Why would they be looking for my message – I am just some small unknown guy?”

 

Giving you those needed details would take too much space in this article. But they do look for your help.

 

You see, just as there is a precise technology for pulling a tooth, getting rid of a cold, building a bridge etc, there IS a technology on how to get the sponsorship of corporations, non-profit organizations, media, other medical practitioners etc.

 

Don’t try to build your own marketing train, when all you need to do is to hook on to a high speed train!!

 

Contact us and we will show you how to hook onto a high speed train.

 

You can also reach us at 800-625-2002 for the best free medical and dental marketing tips and strategies!

 

Helmut G Flasch
Founder of “Un-Advertising” Marketing Strategy
Author of “Double Your Business But Not Your Troubles”

P.S: Does this concept applies to specialized fields like cosmetic dentistry marketing (cosmetic dental marketing) dental implant marketing or dental big case marketing in general?

Yes - 100%. You do not need to put out expensive dental advertisements or pay lots of money for a fancy dental office website to reflect your high end services, you can use the concept of “using other people’s money” just as easily. 

Even if you are a dental specialist like orthodontist, periodontist, endodontist or a oral surgeon, if you want to have an effective orthodontic marketing campaign ( or any campaigns to increase referrals from other doctors) you must learn how to have a larger word-of-mouth campaign that is spread by the entire community rather than depending on only a handful of general dentists in your area.

Contact us at 800-625-2002 or enroll in our FREE CEO briefing for a personalized medical or dental marketing consultation.