BAC Medical Marketing
  • Home
  • Who we are ▷
    • Mission statement
    • Meet the team
    • We attract new patients
    • More for less
  • What we do ▷
    • Services offered
    • IdentityFind
    • MEDShield
    • Project samples
  • How we work ▷
    • Workflow process
    • BACMM affiliate program
    • Clients
    • Glossary
  • Why we're different ▷
    • Search engine optimization
    • Case studies
    • Letter from the President
    • Spotlighted products
  • When we're needed ▷
    • Consultancy compensation
    • Marketing tips
    • BACMM Blog
    • FAQs
  • Contact ▷
    • News you can use
    • Testimonials
    • Online resources
    • Jobs at BACMM
Call Today: 800.240.9473

Advertising Your Practices With Lessons From The Personals

7/31/2009

1 Comment

 
Is anyone more emotionally invested in the outcome of his advertising than the writer of a “personals” ad? Personals can be vivid examples of some of the best techniques in advertising.

Odd as it may seem, studying the “personals” can illustrate some highly effective advertising techniques. Shall we look at five rules from the personals that can be used to boost your practice?

1. You don’t want an ad to try to reach everyone.

Personals ads immediately eliminate non-prospects.

If you’re a single woman posting in the personals you don’t want responses from everyone. Its not likely that you’re interested in other women or married men. When your objective is dating, it’s pointless to attempt to reach people that aren’t potential dates.

Trying to reach everyone is a fool’s strategy for your practice, too. You probably don’t have any interest in people who can’t afford your services. You also aren’t likely to want to reach the idly curious. To advance your practice, you need to reach people who are likely to become patients.

Make your ads speak directly to those people.

2. Your headline is critical.

Get your prospect’s attention. Get it immediately. If you don’t, she won’t even notice the rest of your ad.

“Relationship wanted” will never get as much attention as “North Texas filly looking for stable mate“

To draw the parallel for your practice, your headline shouldn’t say “Family Dentistry.” Instead, consider “Don’t be self-conscious about your teeth. You deserve a beautiful smile. “

3. Make me want to learn more.


“Single woman desires long term relationship” is less likely to get the attention of gentlemen reading the ads than is “Witty, flirtatious, and outgoing. I smile easily and enjoy laughing, am open-minded, honest, and like to talk about ideas. I would like to get to know a man who is confident of who he is and what he wants out of life. I’m single, have never been married, but like the idea of finding my soul mate. “

By the same token, “Chiropractic services” is weak when compared to “The primary course of your treatment is spinal manipulation or “adjustments” to return individual vertebrae to their proper position and motion. Additional procedures to relieve your pain and enhance healing may include superficial heat, electro-muscle stimulation, cryotherapy (ice), diathermy, massage therapy and ultrasound. “

4. Tell potential customers what you give them that your competitors can’t.

Nobody spends advertising dollars in hopes of being ignored, and yet every day professional practices fade into obscurity when their ads look and sound exactly like other ads.

Consider an all-too-typical personals listing: “I love sunsets, long romantic walks by the ocean, and candlelight dinners. “

No kidding? Is there a woman alive who doesn’t like sunsets, long romantic walks by the ocean and candlelight dinners?

Similarly, is there a healthcare practice that doesn’t offer courteous service? Courteous service doesn’t make your practice special. It’s the minimum entry-level behavior that patients expect.

When your ads sound like everyone else’s, you’re not likely to be noticed, let alone be remembered.

5. Tell me what’s in it for me.

If you met a stranger who opened the conversation with “I want to tell you all about myself,” how much interest would you have in talking to that stranger?

Here’s the personals ad which takes that posture: “I’m looking for a long term relationship. Honest men only. I’m tired of fakes and game players. And if you are looking for someone to hang on your every word, keep on looking. No mama’s boys need apply. “

Think she gets many replies?

The business equivalent is: “We’re the #1 eye care center serving the tri-state area since 1967. Our prices and service are the best. Talk to us to arrange a payment plan or lay away. We have the best frame selection in the tri-state area.”

“We, our, we” again. Aren’t we something? Just ask us.

Stop talking about you, and what you want from your patients. Start telling them why it’s in their best interest to choose you as their provider.

Here’s a better example from the personals: “Would you like to spend some time with someone who’s optimistic and fun to be around? I hope you’re comfortable in jeans, you know what you want, and aren’t afraid to show it. You’ll find me open-minded, non-judgmental, and loyal. “

Much more effective, isn’t it? Likewise, you’ll get substantially better results when you drop the “we / us / our” verbiage, and replace it with “you.”

“When your eyeglasses become another accessory, you know they’ll complement your face and make you look stunning. You won’t just look good; you’ll look good in glasses.”

Whether their purpose is personal or business, good ads don’t scream for attention, they seduce.

Use these five rules as a starting point. Study the personals, and take note of those that get your attention. The basic principles will make good ads for your practice, too. 
1 Comment

Are You Working IN Your Practice, Or ON Your Practice?

7/28/2009

0 Comments

 
Everything we do at BAC Medical Marketing is based upon the real-world experience we have gained by working with medical practitioners.

Our advice is never based upon personal bias or whim, and we aren't interested in creating marketing campaigns that are merely clever, pretty or creative.  Rather, our major concern and effort will always be 100% focused upon delivering ethical and sustainable results for you and your practice.

Our clients are successful because they follow the proven strategies we have tested, tracked and developed over the years. They see no reason to reinvent the wheel, and neither should you. 


In healthcare, your marketing doesn’t say just anything about you.  It says everything.  To truly stand out in this highly competitive marketplace, your marketing must be something extraordinary.  Something that people identify with, and seek out in a crowd.  Something that inspires innovation and transformation.  Something that people can believe in.

At BAC Medical Marketing, we believe in the power of great marketing - its ability to alter perception and to redefine a marketplace.


Your marketing is a living thing that you must invest in, nurture and grow.  With the right attention, your marketing can motivate, inspire and unite your audiences - internal and external alike.  At BAC Medical Marketing, we are experts in marketing cultivation, design and integrated communications.  We'll take you from where you are, to where you want to go.

Are you working IN your practice, or ON your practice?

The number of doctors who continue unworkable business models is astounding.  They keep working harder, working longer hours and making less money, all the time insisting, "This is the way it's done."

Most schools don’t teach marketing and practice development.  Most schools teach the profession.  Few have the time to teach business, and there’s a major difference between understanding the technical work of any profession and understanding how to conduct the business that performs that work. 

That's why BAC Medical Marketing exists - to help you with the business part of your medical practice. 

BAC Medical Marketing is an independently operated consortium made up of the best and brightest minds with the flexibility to explore and create the original ideas that build extraordinary marketing campaigns within the healthcare marketplace.  At our core, we are marketing architects, marketing cultivators and marketing ambassadors.  We are a unique group of creative and individual thinkers driven to reinvent and revitalize medical and dental practices of all sizes nationwide.
0 Comments

Consult With Me Now On LivePerson And Ingenio

7/23/2009

0 Comments

 

As I’m always ready to embrace the latest and greatest technologies around to expand my reach and assist as many physicians in need of marketing help as possible, I’m now available to consult with you on LivePerson and Ingenio. I recently registered and was accepted as an Expert Advisor in Marketing, with special emphasis on Medical Marketing, by both LivePerson and Ingenio. Please feel free to anonymously contact me with your medical marketing questions on either LivePerson at http://www.LivePerson.com/Medical-Marketing-Maven or on Ingenio at http://www.Ingenio.com/MarketingMaven or 1.888.INGENIO x 03715691. I look forward to sharing and imparting my marketing experience and expertise with you very soon. To learn more about LivePerson and Ingenio, please review the following information listed below.

About LivePerson:

Founded in 1995, LivePerson is headquartered in New York City and is a leading provider of online communication platforms that facilitate real-time engagement and live expert advice. Intelligently connecting businesses and individual experts with consumers seeking help on the web, LivePerson's platform creates more relevant, compelling and personalized online experiences. Every month, millions of people across the world turn to LivePerson to get the information and advice they need to succeed online. More than 7,000 companies, including EarthLink, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, Qwest, and Verizon, and 30,000 individual experts rely on LivePerson to maximize the impact of the online channel.

LivePerson's online expert marketplace connects people seeking personalized, one-on-one information and advice with knowledgeable experts in real time. People from around the world can chat live with registered experts who sell their knowledge and advice in more than 600 categories including business, finance, personal coaching & counseling, education, health, and technology. For more information please visit www.LivePerson.com. 

About Ingenio:

Launched in November 1999, Ingenio has helped 10 million members get advice easily through a web site, www.Ingenio.com, or by telephone, 1-888-INGENIO. Once connected to Ingenio, members select the advisor who's right for them by browsing a directory of listings -- from business and finance advice to computing and Internet help. Listings include the type of advice the advisor wishes to provide, his or her per-minute fee, and how Ingenio members have rated their calls with this advisor in the past.

Once they've chosen an advisor, members can simply click the advisor's "Call Now" icon and Ingenio will automatically connect the two parties for a live, anonymous phone call. People accessing Ingenio through 1-888-INGENIO simply follow spoken prompts to choose an appropriate advisor. Advisors can also provide recorded or email advice to members; these other options also protect both the advisor's and the customer's anonymity. Ingenio offers a full money-back guarantee if callers aren't completely satisfied with their experience. 

0 Comments

Placebo Effect Improves Marketing Results

7/21/2009

0 Comments

 

If word-of-mouth is the best advertising, how can you make sure the word about your practice is positive?

Word-of-mouth works effectively for three reasons, all of which come back to credibility.

1. Friends give recommendations from their personal experience.
2. They do it naturally and sincerely without a sales pitch.
3. They get nothing from the recommendation other than the appreciation of their friends. (In fact, they run the risk of losing credibility with a bad recommendation).


For all three reasons, word-of-mouth has always been a highly credible source of information.

No one will argue that the best way to insure strong, positive word-of-mouth is to provide excellent customer service.

But critical information about managing word-of-mouth, and how it affects your practice, has come from a study of placebos conducted at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Neuroscientist (and radiologist) Jon-Kar Zubieta and colleagues monitored the nucleus accumbens as volunteers were subjected to what appeared to be two, non-related tests.


Subjects were given a placebo “painkiller” before being stuck by a needle.

On a different day, so as to appear to be a different test, they played a game in which they could win money.

Zubieta and his colleagues were surprised to find a strong link between reward processing, evidenced by the placebo response, and simultaneous changes in the brain’s reward center (the nucleus accumbens). Those who most enjoyed the game were also those most affected by the placebo. Zubieta says “If you have the capacity to respond to reward, then you have the placebo effect.”

Because placebos have no therapeutic effect, it’s long been assumed that they work only through the power of suggestion. As long as the individual being treated expects the treatment to provide aid in healing, it frequently does. But Zubieta’s research indicates that placebos aren’t simply the result of “faith.” They appear to work by triggering a specific pleasure response.

The ability to predict which people will react well to placebos is exciting to medical researchers, who see possibilities for new treatments.

Marketers also see possibilities.

As already pointed out, excellent customer service is the best way to trigger strong, positive word-of-mouth. Notice how many ads show people in the act of enjoying their purchase. This sets the expectation of positive purchase experience high in the nucleus accumbens potential customers who see / hear / read that ad.

And both medical researchers and marketing professionals understand the importance of doing nothing to contradict the expectations they’ve created in the minds of prospective patients or customers. When the actual purchase experience disappoints the customer, the mental dissonance is comparable to a patient being told the placebo treatment has no value.

Violated expectations lead to negative word-of-mouth. Enough difference between the experience the customer expected, and the one she experienced, can actually increase the perception of bad service. Conversely, the placebo effect predicts that average service, as long as it doesn’t contradict her expectations, may be judged as superior.

How do you apply the placebo effect to the marketing of your practice?

In your ads, tell your patients what to expect. Tell them to call. Tell them when to call (for instance, today during business hours). Tell them why to call (to schedule an appointment for a consultation). Tell them of the benefits of consulting with you. Tell them how they’ll feel.

Then don’t disappoint them.

The good news? You don’t have to be perfect; just better than average!
 

0 Comments

“Most Influential Physicians” List Published In USA Today

7/17/2009

0 Comments

 

USA Today recently published its “Most Influential Physicians” list, aiming to give consumers a source of doctors who are most influential to their peers. 

This list, which features 6,000 specialists in the treatment areas of high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes and asthma from more than 300 communities across the U.S., was compiled for USA Today by the Santa Fe medical information firm Qforma. Additional specialists are expected to be added to the list in coming months.

USA Today’s “Most Influential Physicians” list is a unique best-doctor list because it is not opinion-based; it aims to identify the subtle differences in doctors' practice patterns that conclude which doctors most influence their peers. Typical consumer research reveals little or no information about doctors’ quality and performance. Basic research may locate academic background and hospital affiliation, but the “Most Influential Physicians” allows patients to choose from a list of physicians who come recommended by their peers, not Google. Which recommendation would you trust? 

To view USA Today’s “Most Influential Physicians” list, go to http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/qforma-most-influential-doctors.htm.  

0 Comments

New Marketing Opportunities In Online Social Networking

7/14/2009

2 Comments

 

The meteoric rise of social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube has created new opportunities for web-savvy marketers. But seriously, what can any of these social networking sites do for you and your healthcare practice? In order to answer that question, we must first understand how social networking sites work for the end-user. You, for example…

Since Twitter has the greatest “buzz” right now, I’ll use it as an example. Unless you have been locked in a cave for the past several months, you have, no doubt, heard the terms twitter, tweet, tweeting and tweeple bandied about everywhere. TV news, sports and entertainment programs, radio and print media have all been telling us not only who’s tweeting whom, but what they’re saying and why it’s important for us to know about it.

How can Twitter work for you?

Twitter is basically an online community that incorporated itself in March of 2007 in San Francisco, CA. It’s a virtual “place” where people can connect, gather, stay in touch and share their thoughts and ideas about virtually anything. Though it’s called a social network, it’s already being used rather effectively as a business/professional network. Think of it as a virtual water cooler where you have 24/7 access to 15 million (and growing rapidly) potential new patients and professional referral sources – around the corner or around the world. And best of all: so far, it’s free.

Twitter, paired with special electronic sensors (which are already in final development) could be used to alert doctors when a patient’s blood sugar or heart rate climbs too high. Such real-time data streams could also aid medical researchers. Doctors are already using Twitter to ask for help and share information about the latest techniques and procedures.

Twitter makes it easy for people to connect with other people. The site asks one question, “What are you doing?” Answers must be 140 characters long or less and can be sent via mobile texting, instant messaging or on the web. To begin on Twitter, you open an account as you would on any other site. Set up your username and password and once your account is open, spend some time exploring the site to see what opportunities there are for you.

Twitter, like other networking sites, works most effectively as a marketing tool when you link it back to your practice web site. Think of your web site as the hub of your online marketing wheel, and Twitter as one of the spokes leading to it. Your posts on Twitter, called “tweets”, can include your web URL (address), your latest new patient offers, health tips and new service offerings. You can even tweet about openings in your daily schedule, as one med-spa I know did recently. They filled their entire schedule within a few hours of tweeting. On a long-term basis, using Twitter consistently and effectively can help drive your web site up the rankings on Google.

2 Comments
<<Previous

    Author

    Bruce A. Cadkin, MBA President                          BAC Medical Marketing

    Archives

    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011
    February 2011
    January 2011
    December 2010
    November 2010
    October 2010
    September 2010
    August 2010
    July 2010
    June 2010
    May 2010
    April 2010
    March 2010
    February 2010
    January 2010
    December 2009
    November 2009
    October 2009
    September 2009
    August 2009
    July 2009
    June 2009
    May 2009

    Categories

    All
    Advertising
    Affiliate Marketing
    Affiliate Program
    Anna Deavere Smith
    Avoiding Malpractice Suits
    Best Practices
    Blogs
    Branding
    Cash Only Medical Practice
    Concierge Medical Practice
    Crisalix Estetix
    Customer Service
    Defensive Medicine
    Dental Practice Marketing
    Developing Physician Leaders
    Electronic Medical Records
    Emwave Products
    Expert Panels
    Facts And Figures
    Gene Smart Wellness
    Going Dutch
    Gum Disease
    Healthcare Reform
    Heartmath
    Holiday Poems
    Ingenio Expert Advice
    Internet Marketing
    In The News
    Let Me Down Easy
    Liveperson Expert Advice
    Managing By The Numbers
    Marketing Momentum
    Marketing Strategies
    Martin Luther King
    Medical Marketing
    Medical Tourism
    Meta Tags
    Mobile Marketing
    Money Driven Medicine
    Most Influential Physicians
    Omega 3 Index
    Online Reviews
    Patient Advocate
    Patrick Soon-Shiong
    Physicians At Funerals
    Practice Advertising
    Prayer Over Treatment
    Pro Football Head Trauma
    Psychographics
    Public Relations
    Referral Marketing
    Search Engine Optimization
    Social Media Marketing
    Solution To Medicare
    Staff Training Programs
    Steve Jobs
    The Art Of Apology
    Top Medical
    Web Site Design
    Web Site Marketing

    Bookmark and Share

    RSS Feed

    Picture

    I'm an expert on Maven!

    Consult with me on Maven



    Zintro Expert
    zintro.com/expert/Marketing-Maven

    Ingenio Expert

    Picture
    Liveperson Expert

    Reuters Insight Expert

    Which of the following changes in your practice most accurately reflect your goal? (Check all that apply) I would like to...
     
    pollcode.com free polls
    YouTube
    Twitter
    Code Of Ethics
    Medical Blog Award
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Dosie Award
    Weblog Award
    AlleyDog Award
    Best Blog Contest Award
    Blogtrepreneur Award
    Top 100 Blog Award
    Blogger's Choice Award
    Blogger's Choice Award
    Blog Advertising - Advertise on blogs with SponsoredReviews.com
Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.