When it comes to advertising your practice, as you get into the process, you notice a lot of noise surrounding you. Competitive advertising not only for the same service, but other services that might cause a potential patient to redirect his or her dollars to that service and delay the start of treatment.
Historically, we have seen markets where attracting patients was relatively easy. We’d go in with aggressive pricing, spread the message via various media outlets (some TV, some radio, some social media). Because we faced a fragmented set of competitors who were either averse or unable to fund electronic media marketing, our message sat front and center for the potential patients in the market. Strong results followed. In fact, some were so strong that the doctor requested that we turn off the advertising shortly after opening to give him a chance to get caught up. Some smaller markets like Montgomery, AL and Macon, GA fell into that category. Other large markets with an underserved population seeking affordable treatment also proved to be fertile. Miami, FL and Seattle, WA fell into that category.
Some markets did not lend themselves to such a neat solution. Group practices with greater resources than an individual practice regularly advertised very low fees to attract new patients. Like us, they had multiple locations to offer convenience to patients throughout the market. Being heard in those markets was much more difficult. What do you do? For more on that, let’s take you to our Marketing Monday case study.
Dateline – Houston, TX
The situation: A 2-office practice had just opened up with no existing patients. The level of competition was high with group practices like Castle Dental and, at the time a freshly funded Apple Orthodontix with a notable presence there and moving aggressively to find new patients. At the time, Castle was advertising fees for orthodontic treatment under $2,000 (our practices averaged fees around $3,000 at the time). On top of that, Houston is a top-10 media market so advertising on TV and radio was, and is, expensive. Where $5,000 might have purchased all the advertising we could think of in Macon, that wouldn’t get us anywhere near the penetration we needed in Houston. Spending $15,000 - $20,000 per month on an advertising campaign for this practice would bankrupt it in short order. Creative thinking was required. The offices were located in strip shopping malls where the traffic was decent, but growing.
The solution: Like almost any other situation, a multi-pronged approach was required. Here’s what we did:
- Find a new way to talk about pricing – As we stressed last Monday, our take on marketing has always been that the vital message in pricing is the monthly payment. In other words, patients want some kind of assurance that they can fit payments within their monthly budget. Instead of stressing a low total fee, we stressed no down payment and monthly payments of $79 per month. The price point was very aggressive, but we had to get patients in the door and with the systems with which we were able to surround the doctor and the fixed cost nature of a practice, orthodontic profits could still be achieved.
- Get hyperlocal – In a fragmented, smaller city like Tallahassee, FL, we were able to get enough patients to come in from Tifton, GA (about a 90 mile trip one way) that we eventually built an office there. In Houston, given the traffic and the other options around there, we knew people weren’t going to travel significant distances for treatment. So, we focused on the businesses in the strip mall and nearby. We visited them and offered to allow any customers with a receipt from that store to get treatment for as low as $69 per month -- for a limited time. We printed up brochures to put in the other stores preaching our pricing message and the convenience of being near that store. We also offered to let businesses include their promotion material in our office (as long as it met certain standards of taste). As such, a cross marketing arrangement was birthed.
Let me also make a note here about the “for a limited time” line in the previous paragraph. One possible way to spur a patient to action is to give that patient a deadline to act. If a sweet offer expires, some practices will see a bump in activity right before the deadline. People don’t want to miss out on the latest deal.
There was nothing exotic about this arrangement. The office manager might be driving in and notice a business or potential referring general dentist she had not visited. She would swing in to the nearest doughnut, pizza or coffee shop and bring that business some gifts along with brochures and the marketing message from the practice. 20 minutes in all, but effective marketing nevertheless.
For some at this point, the reaction will be “All you guys talk about is price, price, price.” Well, it is very important to potential patients and an area in which we felt very comfortable operating. But an orthodontic practice should feel free to push its own strengths and call to action. Just make sure you have your strength figured out, make sure it is something people would be interested in and let people know about it. Obviously, you aren’t the only orthodontic practice trying to make deals with other businesses so make sure your call-to-action is compelling.
- Engage large employers – We contacted the human resources departments of large employers in the Houston area to offer a special arrangement for their employees. We provided posters and inserts for employee pay/check stub envelopes to spread the message. Here, we really couldn’t do any advertising for the local Toyota office so this was more about what we could do for them. But if the offer was good enough, the large employer would be compelled to notify employees about our deal and we would get some patient flow from that.
-Up the referral ante – No matter what the size or market for a practice, we all know how important patient referrals are to the long term success of a practice. I don’t know of a doctor that doesn’t dream of being able to cut off the external advertising and simply ride a wave of patient referrals to success. In a competitive market, this was even more vital because patients had so many options. We had our standard referral benefit: if a patient referred another patient that started treatment, the referring patient would get one monthly payment credited. If that patient were paid in full, we would give that patient a $75 gift certificate to a large retailer like Wal-Mart or Target. If the patient were done with treatment, that person was still eligible for the gift card. We increased the benefit to add $50 to that gift certificate and the monthly benefit to 2 monthly payments off. Any referral benefit is essentially a cost of advertising. So, if we credited 10 monthly payments of $79, that $790 was essentially expended instead of spending that on TV ads
- Say yes – To get started, we accepted any insurance plan, regardless of how poor the orthodontic benefit was. We made a number of financial arrangements with patients who were eligible for treatment to enable them to receive orthodontic care. Let me point out that if a patient did not need orthodontic treatment, we did not try to start them in treatment. Everyone wants to attract patients, but not at the expense of decent human normalcy.
We supported these efforts with a direct mailer to local households and a little radio, but most effort was directed toward this localized marketing strategy.
What may appear on the surface to be a strategy of heavy discounting is, at its core, a strategy of having a message and exploring different outlets to express that message.
The result: With these strategies in place, the practice went from 3 new patient case starts per office per month to 18. The goal was somewhat higher, but at least the practice had achieved a relatively strong cash flow. When the patient load and orthodontic profit in the practice reached a level satisfactory to the doctor, we began to reassess the low fees offered. In some cases, a deadline was placed on the advertised fees with notifications of a slightly higher fee to come into effect. With a good reputation, solid patient referrals and a supporting base of paying patients, we were able to have this discussion.
Obviously, every market and practice has a unique situation. Here at MyPracticeEngine, I hope you’ve noticed we’re not big into giving overviews and generalized strategies. We like to give concrete solutions to widely seen issues. If you have a question related to your practice, let us know.
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