What is the purpose of an advertisement?
Which ads work better?
How do I do good marketing?
These are questions that are often overlooked by the customer [the business marketing] and therefore the advert or “piece” presented may not be as effective as it should be and could be.
Logo.
Your logo is unimportant to your potential customer. It may be something that impresses your mum, but it takes up space and means “not much”.
A lot of dental surgeries have some form of a dancing tooth as their logo…
The public says:
“So what?”
Your Company Name.
I see a lot of poor marketing where the dental practice name is prominent in the advertisement.
This is not necessary. It is taking up valuable space and often prime space.
Your practice name does not have to dominate your advertisement.
Photos.
Photos need to be relevant. Otherwise they are copy stealers.
A picture is not worth a thousand words when it is a useless picture.
A picture of your dental chair, or of the outside of your dental office are only relevant to your mum.
Headline.
Your headline needs to arouse curiosity.
Headlines that work best ask questions, and usually alert or remind the reader of a problem that they have.
Instead of suggesting a solution.
So a headline:
“Are you embarrassed by your crooked teeth?”
“How long has it been since you smiled in a photo?”
is far more effective than:
“Do you want straight teeth?”
Your reader is more likely to take action to move away from a painful situation than they are to move toward pleasure.
Copy.
Long copy sells.
Fill all your space with as much copy as possible.
Use your piece to drive the reader to your online information.
Get your copy professionally written. You get what you pay for.
My copy writer doesn’t drill teeth.
One Offer Only.
Don’t confuse your reader about what you do. Stop trying to pile up everything that you do in one small advert.
Pick your target market and focus on that for the entire advert.
Point of Difference.
What is your Unique Selling Proposition? [USP?]
Why should the reader choose your dental practice?
Your piece should clearly enunciate why the reader would be a fool to go anywhere else for their dental work, because your practice is the only one that does X and Y so well.
A photo of the team.
If space permits, a small PROFESSIONAL photo of a well-presented team [not in scrubs] is very useful.
But not at the expense of good necessary copy.
Your practice website should have professionally taken photos on it…not ones taken with an old Blackberry.
Call to Action.
The reader of your marketing piece needs to know what they need to do next…..
Spell. It. Out.
Lead the horse to water.
Follow these thoughts when organising your next advert.
Remember, if you copy what everyone of your competitors does, you’ll end up with the same poor results they do.
Find out what everyone else is doing and do the opposite!
*****
Have you read my book , How To Build The Dental Practice of Your Dreams [Without Killing Yourself!] In Less Than Sixty Days.
You can order your copy here: Click Link To Order
*****
The Ultimate Patient Experience is a simple to build complete Customer Service system in itself that I developed that allowed me to create an extraordinary dental office in an ordinary Sydney suburb. If you’d like to know more, ask me about my free special report.
Email me at david@theupe.com
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