Have you made a New Year’s resolution for your marketing? Here’s one. If you do one thing this year with your marketing, you should resolve to make it consistent. People need to see, hear, feel or experience your message 5 to7 times before they will act on it. That means the same message needs to be in front of your audience at least 5 to7 times.
Let’s say you have decided to do a whitening promotion in your practice for your existing patient base. You need to first determine your message. Then decide how you plan to get out your message letting patients know that you are having a whitening promotion. This plan should include 5 to7 points of contact with your patients. Sending one email to your patients one time will not result in a sale. That doesn’t mean that it wasn’t a good idea or didn’t work. It meant that your patients didn’t hear about it enough. Think of how many times you are presented with advertising in the course of your day-to-day life. Seeing a promotion one time will not resonate and break through the clutter. You have to see it numerous times to do anything with it.
What points of contact should be in your plan for internal marketing? Any combination of these will work:
- Social media posts
- Letter to patients
- Postcard to patients
- E-newsletter
- On-hold message system
- Internal office signage
- Verbal skills (This is a must. Train your team to talk about the promotion with your patients.)
- Reference on your website
- Any other unique way you want to add to the mix
Next, determine how long you want the promotion to take place. We recommend most internal marketing programs to last between 3 and 6 months. So determine your time frame. Be committed to the program for the amount of time. Talk about the promotion every day to your patients. Get the message out 5 to 7 different ways. And then finally track the results and celebrate the success with your team!
Happy New Year! Resolve to make 2012 a great year to increase your new patient numbers!