Hey there,
You're about to learn secrets that have my competition up in arms, complaining to the State Boards, and literally ripping their hair out.
They don't like what I am doing, they waste their time complaining, wondering when they'll get another new patient, while I consistently make more money, get all the new patients, and practice how I want to practice.
They use all their time waiting to find "the magic pill" that will give them a succesful practice overnight, and continually complain about how the dental marketing industry is devaluing dentistry...
But the honest truth is...
Direct Mail is how I built my practice.
When I graduated from dental school, there was unemployment of nearly 20%, inflation reached 19%, consumer confidence was at an all-time low, there was a “credit crunch” and there were gas lines (at gasoline stations where you buy gas for your Yugo, not at the all-you-can-eat buffet!), and so on.
In other words, when I got out of school and was trying to start my practice, it was tough! Going to the dentist was in last place in order of priorities for most people, and even established, experienced, and highly successful dentists were struggling.
In fact, after graduation I went to 12 offices looking for work (the dentist who was going to take me in as an associate after graduation, died during my senior year of dental school). It was at the 13th office where I was finally offered a job to go from room to room as fast as I could and remove all the enamel from a tooth in preparation for a full crown.
There were 12 rooms and there was another person just ahead of me giving anesthetic, and someone after me taking the impression.
It was my first introduction to assembly-line dentistry.
Anyway, I decided that I hadn't put in 8 years of hard work, long hours, serious study, and huge financial commitment for this. So I found a dental practice where the Doctor let me use 2 treatment rooms and all I had to pay him was 10% of my collections.
It was a good deal (a great deal) but his desperation was an indication of just how tough times were back them.
A few months later I found a practice for sale and so I bought it. The retiring dentist had just come off his best year ever. His total collections for the previous 12 months was a grand total of $44,337 (not a typo... that was $44 thousand for the year. Less than $4000 per month!)
This was where I started. Three years later I was up to $7000 - $8000 per month, but it was hard work, frustrating, and with the additional staff person, and the new equipment payments and the expansion of one to two treatment rooms, the profit margin was minuscule. (Student loan payments are another story!)
Dr. Mike Scott and the Famous Rainbow Postcards
It was about that time that I got a flyer in the mail about a seminar by Dr. Mike Scott.
He was going around the country putting on these half-day programs telling about how his direct mail was working wonders. I think his selling point was:
3600 New patients in 36 months!
Well, to me with a total patient base of less than 500 (and this after 3 years of handing out business cards, schmoozing at business meetings, joining the Chamber of Commerce, visiting other dentists, and getting exactly 1 new patient referral from another dentist in town) this sounded like something I needed to check out.
As it turned out, Dr. Scott had the most unusual practice I'd ever heard about. He lived in Utah and flew in to somewhere in California every Monday morning, worked long days Monday and Tuesday, then flew home late Tuesday night.
But he did enough production in those two days to have a practice about 3 times the average dental practice in America .
He built up a huge patient base, and kept the new patients coming in with those simple postcards.
The postcards said something like this:
Our Gift To You And Your Family
Call our office within the next 7 days and our gift to you and your family
will be an initial examination and necessary x-rays for just $1.00!
The card was in full color and had a beautiful picture of a rainbow over a forest and little stream with a little Bambi next to the water.
It was a great card and it worked like crazy.
Our first mailing was 5000 postcards and after the dust settled we had about 70 new patients who had responded and actually been seen in our office.
What Worked and What Didn't
Over time we experimented with different aspects of the card. For example, we did the $1 offer for a few months and then we tried $10.
The response didn't change one single bit.
Then we tried $29.95 and the response was slightly less, but not much.
We then went to $49.95 and that's where we noticed a big drop off in numbers of calls. However, it still worked. It worked because even though the number of patients decreased, the unit of sale in dentistry is so high and the patient retention is potentially so long, there is ample opportunity to recoup the investment costs.
Actually, we recouped the investment costs by about the 3rd day after doing the mailing.
We did discover that you have to include 2 things and these are essential. Leave out either one and it suffers.
1.) Time Incentive
2.) Financial Incentive.
One thing I learned from Howard Farran was that a 50% offer works better than a straight price deal.
When you offer a discount deal, you can use a big number like 50%, which is an excellent financial incentive, yet you can still limit your loss on that initial sale.
In other words, you can offer an initial exam and x-rays for 50% off, and still collect $40 - $70 for the procedures.
What we did in our office was draw a circle around our office on the map that was big enough (12 - 15 blocks) to include a population base of about 20,000 - 30,000 people.
We then divided up that group into 7 groups of 3000 - 4000 in each group. We called these groups “Rotations.”
We were able to divide up these groups based on the Carrier Routes.
The Carrier Route is the route the letter carrier walks every day when they deliver the mail. A Carrier Route normally has 400 - 500 addresses.
So we divided up the local area into these 7-8 rotations and every month we simply mailed out the cards to one rotation right after another.
We did this for about 4 years and in that time we built up the practice to a patient base of about 4000 people. (NOT 4000 active regular patients, but 4000 people who ranged from active to 1-extraction-every-4th-year people.)
This was a large enough group to support the hygiene department and keep the new patient referrals going.
What makes the postcard so powerful is this: People will respond and make a call to come to the dental office in one situation...
When Something is Wrong!
In all the years we tried every kind of marketing there is, including postcards, it always came down to this one simple thing: People will call when they have a problem .
It's one of the cardinal rules in advertising: You Cannot Sell Prevention, You Have
to Sell the CURE!
You cannot sell wrinkle cream to an 18-year-old. You can't sell a baldness product to someone with a hairy head. And you can't sell porcelain veneers to someone who thinks their smile is OK.
This is why direct mail (and other forms of advertising, TV, radio, etc) tend to be so difficult. For most people in the world, unless they're IN PAIN... they simply don't perceive the need to go to the dentist.
Postcards Work as Well as Ever
You can request an actual sample of the postcard we're using to expand my practice into the economy denture/partial denture business.
See how simple it is? It's just 2-color, simple, easy-to-understand copy, big enough to get noticed, and best of all... economical.
This is all you need.
Does this card work? Well, we started 1-year ago and today we're up to $3000 per day (over $48,000 per month.)
Now, I realize in this day and age of $200,000 - $350,000 per month practices... this isn't a breath-taking number, but you have to remember that in this kind of a practice, we have the entire month's overhead paid for before the end of the 4th day of work for the month!
And it's all due to this simple little postcard.
It was always my philosophy that for all the people within a 7-10 block radius of my office, I was going to be their dentist.
So we just kept mailing out these little postcards month after month and some folks didn't respond until the 5th or 6th time they got the card.
Some folks hung on to their cards for years (until something broke, or until they had a problem) and then they would call and say, “Is this offer still good?”
Anyway, if you want to check this out more, call my friends @ EMC Dental Marketing. Their number is: 1-800-311-1390 . They are all set up for this and all you've got to do is tell them which offer you want to use (Call our office within 10 days and our gift to you will be initial consultation and necessary x-rays) and they'll take it from there.
They can handle the graphic design, and the Carrier Route stuff, too. In fact, they handled the design, layout, printing and mailing for many of the postcards i've done, and many more across the United States, as well.
Right now there are 10,000 - 15,000 people who live or work within just a few blocks of your office (7-8 blocks) that don't even know you're there!
You can prove this to yourself by getting a Reverse Directory (where phone numbers are listed by street instead of last name... this is how real estate agents make their living. They locate a neighborhood where homes are likely to sell then call the owner and get the listing.)
Call a few homes within a few blocks and ask them, “I'm looking for a dentist, is there
one near you?”
The answer you'll get 90% of the time will go: “No, I don't know of any dentists around here. All I know about is that one down there by the McDonalds.”
Anyway, contact them at EMCdental.com , or by calling 1-800-311-1390 and they'll get you started.