3 tips for no-cost advertising

In the recent past, we have gotten a number of requests from practices seeking marketing assistance with one thing in common: the practice have virtually no money available for marketing.  Generally, these practices fall into 2 categories:

1. 1. Startup practices that are trying to build things on a shoestring budget.  Once the staff and rent have been paid, there’s no money left over for much of anything, especially buying an ad or running a pay-per-click campaign.
2. 2. Struggling or failing practices.  These practices are holding on by making sure they have an office (rent), the heat stays on (utilities) and key personnel (salaries).  Marketing essentially becomes deemed a nonessential expense.

Whatever the case, marketing your practice with no money is challenging, but not impossible.  In fact, succeeding is very possible.  Just keep these things in mind:

Start The New Year Strong

At the beginning of this year, we see optimism everywhere.  Experts generally see the economy improving this year, unemployment is down (although wages are too), most pundits expect stock prices to increase this year and we still haven’t seen additional spending power unleashed as the result of falling oil prices. 

You, too, probably have similarly high expectations for your practice.  So, let’s review some of the big picture ways you can make sure that happens:

The power of incentives: a true story

Over the course of our time here at My Practice Engine, we’ve talked about using incentive programs to focus everyone in your practice on the same goals as those who have an ownership interest in the practice.  Below is a very recent, real life example of the impact of a good incentive program.  

In our offices in Spain, we set up a very simple incentive program that started in the fourth quarter of 2014.  All of the offices there are multispecialty offices so we were interested in performance on the dental and orthodontic side.  Our incentive involved a combination of orthodontic starts and dental collections.  We would take the past performance in those categories and increase that by a percentage for targeted growth in the offices and that was the goal for the office to reach.  For reaching the goals, the staff in the offices could earn a percentage of up to 10% of base pay.  This incentive is not insignificant and its significance caused the office managers to take keen notice of the program when it was introduced in early October.