One media channel that some practices, including some of ours, have experimented with over the past few years are the daily deals services that have sprung up throughout the world. You know some of the bigger names: Groupon, Living Social, Sweet Jack. We know that they can be effective for restaurants, kids’ play areas and the like, but what about the dental and orthodontic practice?
Generally, the process is the following: you contract with one or more of the services to advertise a price or other promotion to their “fan” base. The ads are usually limited to a period of time and/or a certain number of people. Once someone utilizes your services with one of the coupons from the site, you split the proceeds with the daily deals company. Typically, you’ll split the proceeds 50/50, although Groupon has been cutting its take down to 35% in some cases to beat on the competition. So, let’s say that you offer a deal for a $20 cleaning through Groupon. When you get the $20 from that patient, $10 of it goes to Groupon and you keep the other $10.
In this post, we give you some of our thoughts and results that we’ve seen. As you might expect, when the conversation with a doctor ventures into the realm of something like Groupon, we get a response along the lines of “No way. That may work for other businesses, but not mine.” Here are the main objections we get:
You can’t make any money with these coupon sites
In our example above, a $20 cleaning (with half of that going to the daily deals company) is a certain money loser. Imagine if you limited the coupon to 100 people and lost $30 on each cleaning. So, you’d lose $3,000 ($30 loss times 100 people) on those patients. What in the hell kind of promotion is that?
Of course, you will probably lose money on those patients who come in with coupon in hand (or on smartphone), but that’s not the point. Your goal is to get them to come back for their next cleaning or sign a contract (if you offer deeply discounted initial payments) and become an ongoing patient. That’s where the money gets made on these patients. Here’s one way to look at it. Take the $3,000 loss above. You could have taken that $3,000 and spent it on 6 ads on the Ellen Degeneres show. Maybe that would have produced 100 new patients and maybe not. Obviously, that is a decision that depends on the effectiveness of your advertising in other media forms.
Also, consider this. If you run a deal and everyone ignores it, there’s no cost to you because no one redeemed the coupon. If you run a media ad and everyone ignores it, you still need to pay for that media. Now, I’m not saying that you should shift your budget away from media, but you should take this into consideration.
These coupon sites attract the wrong type of patient
When we hear wrong type of patient, that generally refers to one of two groups. The first are patients who only want to use the coupon and have absolutely no intention of coming back to your practice. They will simply wait for the next coupon from another practice to come along and jump on that one. So, that patient is an absolute money loser from the start. And yes, you will get some patients like that. Your task is to minimize that number by creating such a fun, inviting environment that people tell themselves that they’ve found their doctor. Unlike restaurants, people will commit to a dentist or orthodontist and stick with it long term. Especially if you get into the health issues and more serious procedures, people don’t want to bounce around from doctor to doctor. Here is your chance to show that you are the one they want to stick with. The hard part is getting patients in the door. Once they are in via the coupon deal, you can turn on the charm and make them your patient long term. Check out our tips for a successful consultation. To be fair, some offices pride themselves on being very professional and staid. And there’s nothing wrong with that at all. In those cases, a daily coupon site might not be for you.
The second type of patient are those who might be unhappy for any reason (how dare you not have fluorescent pink toothbrushes!!) and then take to Yelp, Angie’s List or a similar site to express their displeasure. So, not only did you lose money on this patient, but now the person has poisoned you for other potential new patients who might read that review before getting onto your site. And, as we know, those with negative opinions are more likely to post than those with positive ones.
If you are afraid of social media backlash or not comfortable with your office experience, either change your office experience or avoid this type of deal. If you are “engaged” with your patient base by having a social media presence, reading reviews and responding to reviews, you should encourage as much feedback as possible. If your office experience is a source of pride, you should be willing to trumpet it to the world and have people talk about it. If someone has a bad experience and posts about it, respond to it in a very professional, non-defensive manner. This shows that you actually care about what your patients think and want to make sure they are happy. Too few businesses care about service today. Here’s your chance to show you care about it and separate yourself from the pack.
Of course, if you have other concerns about the design of an ad or dealing with possible negative consequences, feel free to talk with us about it. Just click here. Won’t cost you anything.
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