How to Market Neuromuscular Dentistry - Page 2
Step 4: Execute your plan.
A. Define your position.
Open the yellow pages to "dentist" in just about any city, and you'll see pretty much the same thing in every ad. Every dentist offers identical skills: crowns, dentures, fillings, teeth whitening, gentle treatment. If you were a consumer, how would you choose one dentist over another?
The same principle applies to marketing neuromuscular dentistry. What is different about your practice? Is it the technology, the personalized service, the amount of training you have? It's called positioning, and it allows you to break through the rest of the advertising clutter competing for a patient's attention.
Without a well defined position, you're just another dentist. What's yours?
B. Outline Your Marketing Schedule.
You'll need to create a calendar that lists each medium or strategy you want to employ and when it will hit. Instinct often leads people to space out their media dollars evenly, placing only one ad per month is that's all their budget allows.
I'm going to ask you to think like the head of a corporation instead of a dentist. Think of the introduction of NMD to your patients as a new product launch. Quite likely, you will be (or already are) the only dentist in your market area who has training in neuromuscular principles. Therefore, you will be launching this service to a public with little or no knowledge of the benefits of your product.
Market penetration in a product launch is a little bit harder for dentists to accomplish, or at least requires patience. Brands such as Coke or Ford have seemingly unlimited resources to introduce a new brand to the market. They spend tens of millions of dollars to "introduce" you to their new diet soda or SUV. They use heavy media schedules that incorporate radio, TV, print and the internet to literally blast the new niche position into the consumer's mind.
The key to launch your NMD "product" successfully is the right mix of reach and frequency in the most appropriate media mix within your budget parameters. Product launches require an initial burst of energy to help establish your position in the prospect's mind. This can gradually be scaled back to a maintenance level. Considering the available marketing budget of most practices, a full run blast of TV, radio, newspapers and magazines all at once is most likely out of reach. Try to find one or two mediums where you can communicate your message with frequency while reaching the greatest possible number of people in your target audience.
For example, a full-page, full-color ad in a major lifestyle magazine may reach 60,000 targeted prospects, but they will only see your ad once a month. A daily newspaper can tell your message up to seven days a week, but may reach a lot of readers who aren't interested. A mix of the two mediums, however, might work well. The same goes for combining any other mediums, such as TV or radio.
C. Communicate the message.
The primary goal of a marketing message is to capture the attention of the reader/viewer/listener. This is where creativity comes into play. People are constantly being bombarded with messages and information. Our brains have created filtering devices to screen out the unwanted information, allowing only what we have determined as "important" to come through. A well-designed brochure, a catchy headline or a creative television spot helps to break through the clutter and says, "STOP!!! Take another look!"
What is important to each person is constantly changing, depending on their personal priorities at that time. For example, a patient may see your ad ten times but not stop to read it until the day they are experiencing facial muscle pain or a migraine headache. Only then will your message get through their filters and become important to them.
Once you have their attention, you have only seconds to keep it. Think about it from the prospect's perspective. They're thinking, "What does this have to do with me? How can it improve my life?" If there is no personal benefit, the brain will disregard the message and move on.
The next step is to move the reader to action. There's no way you can communicate everything a patient needs to know about NMD in one single ad or spot, so you invite them to learn more: for example, "Visit our website," "Schedule a complimentary consultation," "Call to request a brochure." Any of these actions brings people closer to you and helps further define your position in their minds.
Both internal and external marketing strategies are important in the development of your marketing plan. Internal marketing can be described as strategies that don't incorporate the use of mass media. This can include everything from the atmosphere of your office to brochures to specialist- and patient-driven referrals.
External marketing is typically defined as anything that includes the use of paid media to present the message, including print (newspaper and lifestyle magazine ads), direct mail, radio, television, billboards, public relations and websites.
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