The reason you should keep your junk mail

Before I get started, we need to establish a couple of key points:

1. You advertise or market your practice primarily to increase the number of new patients.
2. Your telephone number is on every piece of marketing you publish.

If neither of those is true for your practice, you can stop reading now -- I can't help you.

Jay Geier is the president and founder of the Scheduling Institute.

But if we're on the same page, let's continue. We'll start with the actual marketing campaigns -- your means to a new patient end. After working with dentists for close to 30 years, I know that marketing can be a huge, uncomfortable, and expensive thorn in your side. I get it. You studied dentistry, not marketing. It's not easy, especially if you don't have a marketing guru on your team, but it doesn't have to be rocket science either.

Here is one simple tip for creating highly effective marketing campaigns: Don't reinvent the wheel.

Every day, fliers, coupons, and postcards pour into your mailbox. They're screaming their messages at you -- "Eat our food!" "Shop here!" "Buy me!" "Lose weight!"

If you're like most people, you label most of this mail as "junk" and chuck it in the trash. But what if I told you that all of junk you're throwing away is a valuable -- and might I add free -- marketing resource?

Think about it this way. Every large company that sends ads to your mailbox -- McDonalds, Macys, Wells Fargo, etc. -- has a full-time marketing team. They are highly skilled, highly trained, creative individuals who have years of experience and access to a plethora of resources. They know all the best marketing strategies, psychological pushes, principles of influence, and design techniques to persuade consumers to consume. So, what exactly does that mean for you?

It means that you could learn from them, and by tossing out their junk, you are tossing out a gold mine. These large companies have invested a lot of money testing and tweaking their ads to find out what works and what doesn't. In other words, they've already done a lot of the work for you.

So instead of trashing your junk mail, start a collection of your favorite pieces to use as inspiration. Maybe it's an image that captures your attention, a clever headline, or a compelling call to action. You can store this collection in a folder, a binder, a drawer, or on a giant bulletin board.

I call this collection a "swipe file," because you "swipe" whatever pieces and ideas you like! Even the most successful marketers look to other marketing pieces for inspiration, and it's often a great place to start when you're stuck staring at a blank page. Of course, your swipe file should be constantly growing and evolving -- just like your market.

Focus on the result you want

So now that you have a resource to create the means, let's focus on the end: getting new patients on the schedule. This area is neglected by almost every single practice I've ever encountered. Let me explain.

Say, for instance, that you are creating strong marketing pieces, tracking, tweaking, and everything is working like a well-oiled machine. In fact, your ads are generating tons of calls every week. But these calls aren't translating to new patients. The callers aren't making it onto your schedule. Why?

You've never trained your team on how to effectively handle these new patient calls. They don't know how to identify buying cues, strategically answer questions, and schedule the new patient. That's a huge flaw in your marketing plan, and no matter how excellent your ads, your marketing results will seem incredibly mediocre. This oversight alone could significantly stifle your practice's growth potential.

New patients are the lifeblood of your practice, so it makes sense that you research and pay good money for quality marketing and marketing practices. Heck, with the internet and social media outlets, the world is your marketing oyster. And there are no shortage of experts telling you how to spend (lots) of money on tapping into these avenues for potential new patients. But the bottom line is, unless you have a team trained to turn all of your hard-earned marketing dollars into scheduled new patients, you are essentially throwing them away.

Jay Geier is the founder and owner of the Scheduling Institute, a dental training and practice consulting company. Go to www.5starchallenge.com to find out how to change the way your front desk manages new patient opportunities.

The comments and observations expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the opinions of DrBicuspid.com, nor should they be construed as an endorsement or admonishment of any particular idea, vendor, or organization.