Dental Articles
The 'Brain On' Dental Marketing
Filed under | Dental Marketing Consulting
Marketing IS communication. Communication makes things work. Nothing occurs in our society or changes our approach to living without a heavy dose of communication. Dental patients, dentists, and dentistry practices all work (or don't) with gears greased by communication and the 'marketing' surrounding it.
Of course, our brains are always there to mess things up. The mind easily falls into stereotypes. The cerebellum will often travel down the rabbit hole of wackiness. Our prehistoric noggin presets can and will, without warning, leap over the logic wall. Therefore, we need to take the time to strategize rather than merely let our evolutionary senses propose pre-programmed reactions.
One of the most influential tidbits of scientific data about how our brain works that I have learned is its connection with our eyes (or maybe its disconnection is more accurate). Basically, we make things up - because the communication between our eyes and our brain has a tenth of a second delay.
While I am not totally versed on this science (info and links below), the eyes-brain interaction has significant potential to cause consumer confusion and monetary conflagration. We think and do many things that are not very likely to produce the results we expect - when it is all said and done to us, and dunned from our wallets.
Our brains are 'marketing' to us without our full contact awareness radar engaged. It struggles to warn us of the impact all this input will have on our lives. This is not about marketing from marketers - but our brain, which is moving at blazing speeds - and still can't keep up with our eyes.
We conjure up concepts to fill in the blanks...
Dental patients can want fees to be what they were from years gone by or expect someone else to pay for it. Yes, it will be the dental insurance companies, which often send the money by courier within a few minutes after the office manager telepathically desires reimbursement :-)
Dentists might expect marketing that easy to deploy, ready off the shelf, in the online thingie of marketing stuff, and/or is nearly free of cost or risk.
Dental marketing consultants/coaches like myself wish for dentist-clients who understand all of these things and fully appreciate the complexities of the 'right' marketing plan.
Even with this knowledge, I still fight the tendency to conjure up the consultants brand of rabbit hole delusions. My 'one-tenth off the mark' proclivity is: the perfect symbiotic communication idea that changes 'consumerkind' and gets me that Nobel Prize for marketing science. I see it. It's right there. Seems like every tenth of second it's there and then it gone, and then back in less than second, and, and...
IS THERE ANY HOPE FOR US?
What can be done if we all see, believe and understand things with a different 'eye' for reality? Mainly, OPEN UP our brains...
We need to shake, rattle and roll the melon around. Stretch the gray matter spongebob some. Stir up the creativity noodle a little.
That means everyone involved: patients, consumers (current dental visit avoiders), dentists, all dental professionals as well as us marketers and consultants. Make communication the goal - rather than simply focusing on response rates and ROI.
When it comes to advertising and marketing to current and potential consumers of dentistry the depth and breadth of malpracticed, malnourished, misapplied and miscommunication is obvious in the dental health data and statistics.
As to us marketers/consultants, dentists should make sure what you to believe about (or see in) our theories and tactics is actually healthy for your office revenues and personal finances.
Marketing & Dental Care
COMPARISONS TO CONTEMPLATE
Sometimes a comparison of your marketing beliefs to that of your patients' and the general consumer's dental care beliefs can be helpful. Besides some comparisons, I will throw in some dental care analogies as well.
1) Start locating the fault lines in the online sweat slop, flop sweat idea factories.
There are tons of online concepts to help you move forward, but remember a lot of one thing usually hits a diminishing returns plateau.
I work with various online marketing partners. They can achieve great results. However, online is a hampered in its ability to create new patients, especially if it is based on search of some form or another. The well can run dry for the short run or the long term - in your location - because of competition, number patients avoiding the dentist, etc.
For example, flossing is good, but not if done just once a month. Fluoride is good, yet after so much of it the positive effects do plateau.
2) Always navigate back to an evidence or science-based reality. Otherwise, you will flounder in a sea of short term solutions.
Patient To Dentist: "Can't you just fix this one tooth doc even though you recommended 12 to restore? Then we can see if my just get by diagnosis works."
Dentist To Consultant: "Dick, what if we do one dental postcard mailing and then determine if you have cured the common cold with it?"
3) Ground your marketing plan in what will actually work rather than getting seduced by the drivel of simplicity being advertised on the internet.
While my belief system is not completely science based, jumping off ten story buildings without the perfect flight guidance system has long been something I avoid.
While you might not believe the same things I do, my faith says, using only 'seeing' to believe is problematic. "We have eyes but we do not really see" - how we think we see.
Have doubts and be skeptical, but avoid falling into the same rabbit hole too many consumers do with dentistry. "I am afraid of the dentist because of all the drilling they do." "They will pull my teeth and it will hurt - like it did when I was ten! (which was 40 years ago)"
Of course, the response for many of the dentists I work with would be: "I do conservative dentistry (less drilling) and recommend dental implants and offer many comfort elements (like sedation)." However, a substantial portion of the general consumer and even dental patient population are still seeing a projector playing super 8 film from some tenth of a second past life.
Their doubts and concerns about dentistry, which THEY have not challenged in many years, have become calcified into 'stereotypes their brain is still seeing'.
While your faith is up to you (if faith is your thing), closing your eyes to UNREAL marketing ideas and thinking strategically about communication makes a lot of sense.
Especially, in light of our current knowledge as scientists (or wannabes) that the 'miracle' of sight (evolutionary and/or supernaturally produced) is not flawless and has a penchant for telling lies to eyes 10 percent of time.
NOT PERFECTION: CONTINUAL ASSESSMENT/ENHANCEMENT
Perfection is not the current human condition, we are a work in progress. Seeing with every tenth frame 'made up' from gray matter projections is an obvious example...
Imagine if you had to rely on someone's eyewitness account to absolve you of some crime or accusation. (An article I Googled) Now think about how you were influenced by a dental office marketing solution you recently saw online. What rabbit hole is closest to their advertising pitch?
The slippery slope of marketing hocus pocus has seduced many. You can see farther and more clearly by not putting on the beer loupes many marketers are offering you. Avoid grabbing the next marketing rabbit that runs by.
Rather, close your eyes and think about how you could move forward with an ongoing, pragmatic and proactive (not reactive) strategy. My recommendation is Connective Communication.
This strategy is not a magical marketing mantra you rub on. No oracle pitchman will massage your marketing genie lamp. Amazon's patented one click simplicity software and Staples Easy Button can't help here either.
Connective Communication is a step by step, comprehensive approach that starts with a reality - gleaned from many perspectives - to insure its relevance. The data inputs and outputs are continually analyzed to increase consumer awareness and improve the acceptance of services dentists like you offer.
CONCLUSION - Brain On Dental Marketing
To end, I will now trounce my marketing and consulting competition by combining hubris with hyperbole.
NOTE: this carrot flogging challenge is in jest - so don't fully ingest it. Otherwise, you will unknowingly slide into a wascally wabbit, rabid, hybrid, wormhole (like a rabbit hole but in outer space) which will teleport you to a marketing Twilight Zone.
Here we go: Competitors take this... (Voiced by Rod Serling)
While Connective Communication has not yet been considered for the Nobel Prize in marketing science, it is a formula the dental community desperately needs to employ. This elegant PIe chart equation - solves the theory of everything OR will forever banish from the earth the prehistoric perceptions of dental care value.
Now that we are back from the Zone. Call me. We'll talk (without the lame puns). Discuss what is possible. Then make positive changes.
866-453-1026 - ext 251
Dental Marketing Blog Entry, Article by...
- Dick Chwalek
- Dentist Coach, Dentistry Consultant
- NDA Founder & Member Consultant
- American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry Member
- www.NicheDental.com
- 11765 Bishop Ave NW
- Monticello, Minnesota 55362
To provide the most comprehensive and greatest range of services, I work with a number of strategic marketing partners. You get superior flexibility. Are able to utilize scalable strategies. Track it all. Learn from the data to enhance the marketing. Then see in maximum reality results, for the long term.
Visit www.NicheDentalCollaborate.com
'Tenth of Second' Discrepancy Information
By David M. Eagleman
> Two 'Brain Time' Excerpts
"Therefore, the tenth-of- a-second window may be the smallest delay that allows higher areas of the brain to account for the delays created in the first stages of the system while still operating near the border of the present. This window of delay means that awareness is postdictive, incorporating data from a window of time after an event and delivering a retrospective interpretation of what happened."
"But as we begin to understand time as a construction of the brain, as subject to illusion as the sense of color is, we may eventually be able to remove our perceptual biases from the equation. Our physical theories are mostly built on top of our filters for perceiving the world, and time may be the most stubborn filter of all to budge out of the way."