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| Eight Tips for
Marketing Continuity
Xana Winans
President, Golden Proportions Marketing
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As a society, we are in communication overload. Email, mobile marketing, Twitter and Facebook are now competing with traditional print, tv and radio advertising. Much of this “new media” is free or quite inexpensive (aside from your time), so more and more doctors are dabbling in these mediums. To your patients, there’s a LOT screaming for their attention! One of the smartest things you can do to build brand awareness and recognition is to provide a consistent image and message in everything you do.
So what is marketing continuity? It's really about making sure that everything you do has a coordinated look and feel about it. Graphically, that means creating an attractive logo, establishing your corporate colors, selecting a font, and even a photo style. Content-wise, it means determining key points for your marketing message that clearly, concisely, and compellingly illustrate your unique selling proposition.
Here’s a quick exercise. Gather all of your current marketing materials (from your stationery to your print ads to your website and more) and spread them all out on the conference table. Do they look the same? Are you talking to the same target audience with each medium? Is the message the same? If not, you’re going to have a much harder time getting your message to stick. Here are eight simple tips to make sure your message is consistent in everything you do.
- Define your message and target before you start. I know, we’ve beat this one to death. But if you decide in advance exactly what your message is and who you’re trying to target, you won’t be tempted to throw out a new idea all the time.
- It’s more than a logo – it’s a brand identity. Your brand is actually the sum total of your practice name, logo, tag line, colors, design style and the expectations that brand conveys. Don’t design your e-newsletter in red and gold if your brand colors are blue and green. If your logo is soft and curvy, don’t use hard geometric lines in a print ad. You have a fraction of a second to grab your prospect’s attention and pull them in. If they don’t recognize you on the most instinctive level, odds are you’ll get skipped.
- Use your photo. A picture says a thousand words. Using your head shot in all of your communications makes it immediately identifiable that the Twitter post, newspaper ad, and direct mailer are all from YOU.
- Brand consistency extends to your office environment too. Years ago, we redecorated my husband’s office from greens and blues to warm reds and grays. Just to illustrate the point, here’s his old logo next to a photo of the new office design. Would this feel consistent to a new patient? Or does it say, “Oops, I’m in the wrong office!”
 
- Use just one company for the development of your internal and external communications. If one company designs your website, another does your brochure and a third creates your e-newsletters, you can bet they’ll all want to put their own stamp on the work they produce. Pick one communications group who can do it all and make sure you have access to a dedicated designer and writer who actually “get” you.
- Consistency means being consistent. When you pick a strategy to communicate your message, be consistent! That means running your print ad in every issue of the magazine, not just March and October. It means you shouldn’t buy WMIX’s “can’t resist” radio sale for a month and then bounce to WQKX for their “can’t resist” deal the next month. Set your plan, follow it for 4-6 months, measure its success and then make an informed decision if you want to make a change.
- Your team needs to exemplify your brand flawlessly. From coordinating uniforms (It makes me crazy when I walk into my MD’s office and see 20 different patterns and colors of scrubs on everyone!) to pre-scripted answers for common questions, every action and statement from your team should reflect your brand.
- Create systems. Again, marketing continuity is about internal just as much as external communications. Establish a system for new patient appointments, another for checkout, and another for post-care follow up. Train the entire team on these systems to ensure consistency. If your front desk manager has to act as your assistant for a day, or your hygienist needs to grab the phone, your patient won’t know that anything’s different.
So let’s assume that you spread out all of your marketing materials on the conference room table and went “Uh-Oh”. What should you do? Don’t panic – you don’t necessarily need to scrap it all and start over. Either pick the look that best represents you and apply it to everything else, or start by developing “the plan”.
It takes time and discipline to be this consistent, but you’ll be building a spot for your brand in the mind of your prospective patients. And when they need a new dentist, your brand will come to mind much more readily than before. That means more patients, and ultimately a stronger ROI for all of your marketing.
Xaña Winans is the owner and president of Golden Proportions Marketing (GPM), a thriving company that specializes in comprehensive, custom marketing and advertising strategies for the dental and medical fields. The GPM website can be found at www.goldenproportions.com and Xaña can be reached at 866-590-4476 or xana@goldenproportions.com. |
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