More than one place to catch Jerry Jones

I wanted to let you know I've moved the majority of my postings to my
wordpress blog located at http://www.JerryJonesDirect.com but I will
occasionally post here, too.

Research and Development

As a small business, sometimes there comes a struggle between working in your business and working on your business.

One of these so-called struggles is research and development. How do you know what your patients want? How do you know how much they’ll pay? And of course, how do you market it?

It’s actually a simple problem to have. There are many companies that deal with Oral Health products in the real world. Companies like Crest, Colgate, etc…

These companies spend millions if not billions doing market research, focus groups, surveys, test markets, and demographic evaluations.

All you need to do is take what they do and apply it to your practice.

Take the product at right for example. Crest has done their research and taken a simple Crest Whitestrips kit and made it into the “AGE DEFYING STRIPS.” That promises to “Remove up to 20 years of stains off your smile.”

Crest has, no doubt, spent hundreds of thousands in research to make this product what it is. The focus groups, the surveys, the visual comparisons, and the simple design of the box. Most likely, even focus group testing side-by-side products where the only difference is color.

Doing this research for you is as easy as walking down the oral care aisle in any grocery/department store you may be in and taking mental notes.

In the Crest Whitestrips case, they’ve taken a teeth-whitening product and made it into an Aging reversal product. Their millions of dollars translates into a free lesson for you.
Until next week…

Your Circle Of Influence

In pursuing our yearly goals as well as our marketing goals, sometimes we try to effect things that we have no control over.

Each person has a “Circle Of Influence” that measures who and what s/he can control. The further from the center you get, the less control you have.


The Circle Of Influence Let’s take your practice for instance. I have put together a figure to the right that shows your “Circle of Influence.”

You are the center. You can sway your staff very easily because you sign their paychecks, and they work for you.

Your patients aren’t quite as easy to persuade as your staff because they do have other options when it comes to dental care. They do have a relationship with you, however, and this keeps them quite receptive. If this relationship is developed correctly (newsletter), the receptiveness grows.

On the outside of the circle you have the public. They are very difficult to convince and motivate by you. They have no relationship with you, and know of 50 other people in the community just like you, one of which they may already have a relationship with.

What does this have to do with marketing? It definitely shows us where to focus energy. If the center of the circle (you) is not solid, there can be waves throughout. If your staff is not solid it can affect your patients. If your patients don’t feel connected they can affect the public.

Also notice what’s not in your circle…other practices. You do not have hardly any influence at all over them, nor should they have any influence over you.

Make sure you focus on your circle of influence and keep it round.

Have a profitable week!

Dental Press Releases

Incredible news!!!

We distributed Dr. Busby's press release to 152 contacts in the Madison area.

This morning, he got a call from the LARGEST NEWSPAPER in his market (170,000+ distribution on Sundays.) and they are coming to his office on Tuesday to do a story on his massaging dental chairs.

What would he pay to have an ad in that paper...probably thousands.

Now he will get a thrid party endorsement as well as (most likely) a picture and a feel good story about his practice in the LARGEST paper in his market.

Making It Important

Remember those goals you set for yourself and wrote down a week or so ago...

Go to Kmart, buy a frame and hang them in your office.

This will draw attention to them, make them look important, give them additional value, and make the staff take notice. It will also make that flimsy piece of paper you wrote your goals on last for the whole year.

Out of Sight...

In the dental marketing world, goals are helpful...if communicated properly...

We are now one week into 2007, and hopefully you have already taken steps toward fulfilling your goal of having the best year ever for your practice.

What are your goals for your practice? Does everyone on your staff know them, and could they relay them to me if I asked?

As you know, one of the keys to a successful practice (just like a successful sports team) is the team aspect. The way they work together to bring the practice to realize their goal is important. You need to do everything you can to keep everyone headed in the right direction.

It amazes me how many dentists we work with that do not relay their goals for the practice to their staff members. Then, the dentist works toward a practice goal basically by his/herself while being frustrated because they feel they have no help.

Just as in football, with you being the quarterback, if the play is to run to the right side, you need to make sure the whole team knows that so they can block for you. If you are passing, you need to tell the team that so they can block and/or get open for a pass.

In your practice, as in any business, it is necessary to have specific WRITTEN goals. Your first order of business if you haven’t done so already is to write down your goals and post them where you see them daily. This is your roadmap for your practice for the next year.

The second order of business is to post the goals where everyone else in the office can see them. Then, they are reminded what the destination is, and can offer help and assistance for the journey.

If you don’t tell anyone what the destination is, how are they supposed to help you on the journey. Communicate the practice goals to everyone in your practice, and remind them of those goals often.

Have a productive and profitable week!

P.S. There are many other people you can let know about your goals. Your family, friends, and your suppliers can all be helpful when you need support and help in acheiving goals.

A Fresh Start

The first business day of the New Year. We’ve celebrated the coming and going of 2006, and now we have a fresh start, a blank canvas, an empty box that we call 2007.

Maybe you have a vision of what 2007 looks like both personally and for your practice. Maybe you even have some of those goals written down and put in a place you see them daily (if you don’t, do it now).

Once you have decided on your goals, the key is to, as NIKE would say “Just Do It!” Take swift, ferocious action toward attaining them.

There is no other way to achieve them.

2 things to remember about your goals.

#1: Don’t try to eat an elephant in one bite:
Break your large goals into some very bite-size chunks that are easy to attain. If your goal is to lose weight for example, maybe a sub-goal would be to get a gym membership. This makes it easier to see progress and will help to keep you on track toward your final goal.

#2: Every day is a new beginning:
You don’t have to wait until January 1st to start a new goal. Start one tomorrow, February 1st, August 27th…it doesn’t matter. Lay out your goals, and take swift and ferocious action to attaining them.

And, as NIKE would say, “JUST DO IT!”

What Demographics Should I Mail To?

In the case of Dental Marketing, there always seems to be a strugle over what demographics to choose for a mailing program.

If you are looking for an answer like "you should focus on 25-50 year old women who have an annual income of $40,000, live in a house valued over $200,000, and like to golf and travel," you won't get it here.

In the case of dental care, instead of demographics, you should first consider psychographics, in other words, what makes a patient decide to go to YOUR practice? For a dental practice, it has been proven that a vast majority of dental patients choose their practice mainly because of its convenient location. It's a sad but true reality that comes from a lack of public education about what constitutes great dental care.

Also, when creating a mailing list, you need to ask yourself what your practice needs. Many times that doesn't come down to 25-50 year old women who like to golf; it comes down to patients with money to afford your services.

In both of these cases, the data points to a simple geographic list. There are many things you can get in a simple geographic based list. You can eliminate "unfavorable" neighborhoods, eliminate transient apartment dwellers (not to be confused with condo owners), and not waste money mailing to those who live far out of your area.

If I were to set one demographic parameter, it would be household income. If they make above average income in the area (usually $50K and above), and live within 5-10 miles of my practice depending on population concentration, they would be on my list.

By creating a demographic selection of list by age and personal interest, you not only are limiting your target audience, but also you are going to pay more money per name and receive less targets. In turn, you will also receive fewer responses. In this case too, we are not figuring in design and copywriting costs for a targeted marketing piece. (If you specifically target your market, you need to take the same care to target your message, and your media as well.)

You also mentioned that you are in an insurance heavy market. Do you take their insurance? If not, do you offer programs as viable insurance substitutes? Many practices I deal with are in a location that does not support who the dentist wants to target. Some are fee for service practices in an insurance market like yours, and get beat to death by the "Do you take my insurance?" question.

In a case of demographics, keep it simple. If all you want in your practice is 33-year-old men who own BMW's, you can have all of them and still have a very small practice. But what you really want is patients in your chairs who have the means to afford the best care you can possibly offer for them. My suggestion would be to go with a radius around your office and an income qualifier.

Third Party Endorsements

Many times in marketing, we get caught talking about ourselves. Promoting yourself is a great way to get the message out about what you do, and whom you help. As Donald Trump says, “Brag about yourself and your accomplishments because no one else will.

I disagree with Mr. Trump. Although promoting yourself and your practice is important, there are plenty of people out there who will talk about you, your practice, and how you have helped them. In this case, I follow the Dan Kennedy creed: “What others say about you and your service is at least 1000% more convincing than what you say, even if you are 1000% more eloquent. The following are three of these 3rd parties:

Current Patients: You have hundreds, if not thousands of people you help each year. Every one of them should have something good to say about you and your services. Collect testimonials from every patient at every visit. It’s just as simple as having your front office person give them a form and ask them to fill it out regarding their experience that day. Get their ok, and use these to promote your office.

In an insurance office I recently visited, there were 2, 4” thick binders full of testimonial sheets. With some quick math, I figured there were over 2000 in all. I wouldn’t have to read all of them, but it was a great way to display these testimonials for customers to read. For a sample testimonial sheet to use in your practice, just fax a request to 503-371-1299.

Celebrities: When people think of celebrities, sometimes they get caught up in A-list names like Brad Pitt, or Jennifer Aniston. These people would be great to endorse your services, but they aren’t needed. Think of local people who have some recognition in the community. Find someone like a local news anchor, musician, or maybe the mayor or a state representative. These people are a bit easier to find than Tom Cruise, and sometimes they will be willing to promote your services on the cheap.

News Media: This is the one endorsement you can control. By creating publicity through the local news media, you create an endorsement from them. This is news from your practice produced by you, but rewritten and printed for thousands of people to read. It does not look as if you wrote it yourself, so it appears as a third party endorsement. This is a great deal because this endorsement is delivered to thousands of people daily.

Let these third parties tell your story, and they will have a big impact in your practice.

Have a profitable week!

Online Publicity

Google has become a household name over the last 5 years. If you were to say “Google it” to someone in the early 90’s, they would have looked at you like you were crazy. Now, Google.com has become THE online gateway for online information.

How do you get listed on Google? Well, you can go through their adwords program where you actually bid to have your name at the top, OR, you can take advantage of the little known free ways to be listed on Google.

First, lets see how Google works. Every day and night Google has “bots” or “spiders” that crawl around all of the code on the internet picking up on certain things that rate a website. These things can range from key words to links, to mentions in a blog article. These go into the google computer and out comes a score for a website based on how many links it has from other sites, and how many relevant key words it has on the site itself.

This is the short version of how Google gets its information.

Now that we know how it works, we can look at how to get listed without paying big for a listing.

One of the easiest ways is through Google News. In order to be the top Internet news service in the bunch, the Googlebots crawl through news websites daily in looking for relevant content.

The easy way to get listed on these searches is through your local paper. These newspaper articles, if written correctly, will not only appear on the Google news page, but can also appear as top ranked content on the main Google search page. This is an easy, FREE way to get your practice mentioned and attract new patients through the Internet.

Of course, this is not the only way to promote your practice on the internet, There are still many options out there that are very passive and can lead to great new patient acquisition strategies.

ACTION TO TAKE: Browse the Internet and especially Google. Check local bulletin boards (www.craigslist.org), Local city sites (www.citysearch.com), and especially your local media sites and see what it takes to get listed.

The more you are mentioned on the Internet, the more you are likely to be found.

Have a profitable week!