Dentists, Dennis Rodman, & North Korea
Human beings are social animals, and generally speaking we’re also a fairly needy bunch; we’re constantly on the lookout for attention from and approval of others. Now whether that statement applies to us individually only sometimes or all the time, it’s usually the emotional elixir of getting attention and receiving approval from others that drives the behavior.
It’s not the approval and attention we’re after; it’s the way the attentive approval makes us feel that reinforces our triggers to go seek more of it.
We all have emotions that sometimes drive our actions a little more so than they should.
That’s all well and good, but what in the H E double hockey sticks does this psychobabble BS have to do with North Korea, Dennis Rodman, or digital dental marketing new patient acquisition?
You’re all seeking attention.
Dennis Rodman no longer plies his trade cleaning the glass backboards of the NBA, you need new patients to keep your practice running, and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un wants a place at the adults table.
Don’t get us wrong, we’re totally seeking attention from more of you…hence the futile attempt of this here blog post to draw any slim correlations between new patient acquisition for dentists and geopolitics.
Dentists Seeking the Attention of New Patients
You won’t catch us diving into the political deep end of foreign relations in this digital dental marketing diatribe. This is about dentists and their need for attention from their local communities – and beyond.
While The Worm and the precocious fearlessly mystified North Korean leader that looks like the Boy Scout character Russell from the movie “Up,” certainly know how to draw attention, they might not be going about it in the best way.
Just like one of our newly minted member dentists was doing when she was donating upwards of $1500 a month to the local yellow pages publisher for her quarter page dental practice ad.
The attention seeking isn’t the problem, the way in which the attention is trying to be captured is what ultimately limits effectiveness and quickly turns counterproductive to the original goal of new patient acquisition.
Never mind that this publisher wasn’t even listing this dentist to remain nameless in the actual town that her practice was located, or how the promise of a professionally designed, seo-optimized, super-terrific dental practice website & online advertising bundle was really just a hodgepodge grade school kids can do better cookie cutter template derived ruse designed to keep a fleeing customer base (that’s you) satiated with sub par attention grabbing techniques.
Dentists Seeking Attention in the Worst Ways
1. The Dental Red Herring
Funny, I see you for a whole 1:30, and neither you nor your staff actually talks with me when I’m in the office. Then when I come home from my appointment, I see a friendly email asking for a review, testimonial, or referral. Yeah, maybe if you were really that friendly in person and didn’t charge exorbitantly high fees…see how quickly a poorly timed misaligned email can fly your referral and digital word of mouth generation efforts right off the tracks.
Don’t lead patients toward false conclusions by trying to act as if you care when you never show it, actions speak louder than words.
(Actually right after an appointment is one of the best times…but keep in mind what treatment that patient just underwent, if they’re historically the type of patients you want to work with, if they have they ever been a challenge…etc.)
Lesson: If you’re gonna talk the talk, walk the walk for best results.
2. The Outdated Dentist
You dump hundreds sometimes thousands into yellow pages advertising each month. While maybe some months you could manage to squeak out a break even response rate, the entire medium is a losing proposition.
How many attention giving eyeballs see your yellow pages ad each month?
How many of those same eyeballs search Google, or hang out on Facebook, or twiddle away time on Twitter?
Lesson: There’s this thing called the internet, and push button dialing has finally arrived!
3. Look at Me! Look at Me! Look at Me!
While we may be entrenched in a culture of desperate me first look at me attitudes, there still exists a fundamental understanding within our collective ilk that the most attention seeking validation needing individuals among us sometimes come off as pathetically misdirected.
Case in point, the dentist that is everywhere in your community; bus benches, mailers, taxi cabs, billboards, public restroom urinal cakes…you know; the one that so graciously updates your Facebook news feed every 5 minutes with everything that revolves around them and their office.
And you’re asking yourself, doesn’t this dentist have any self-respect?
Being the omnipresent orthodontist may certainly produce new patient numbers, but at what cost?
Aside from the cheesiness factor, that kind of visibility doesn’t come cheap no matter where your practice is located – and it doesn’t adjust for seasonal downturns, holidays, closures, power outages…etc.
You pay to play no matter what. Make sure every chip you play is paying you back in new patient ROI.
Lesson: It’s not about you, it’s about your patients, nobody cares what you had for lunch.
Conclusions?
And there we have it, exactly what dentists have in common with Dennis Rodman and North Korea – the need for attention. Some practices dive in to dental social media head first before quickly exiting claiming little action, others cling to outdated avenues of practice promotion; while the attention seeking effort should be commended, the tactical deployment of new dental patient acquisition resources need to be vetted, audited, and aligned with practice culture.
Attention seeking isn’t the problem, the way in which some dentists go about it is.
Don’t be that dentist.
Got any more ways in which dentists go off the deep end when it comes to attention grabbing new patient acquisition techniques?