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Small Business Marketing

Dr. Tom, as I now affectionately call him, was already extremely successful in his cosmetic dentistry practice.

Yet, he was frustrated with the inability to break through and create a business that would generate cash flow whether he was at the office, or skiing in Aspen for a month.

The Doctor´s Pain:

As we worked on the foundational systems in his business, Dr. Tom began to make the successful transition from a "practice," to a self-sustaining business, until a serious challenge crept up for him.

This brave soul was already pushing well outside his comfort zone and was pretty nervous with all the changes he was making. So I decided to introduce Dr. Tom to leveraged marketing with a simple modification of something he was already using. There were going to be much bigger improvements made to his marketing approach down the road, but for now to build his confidence, we started with this easy-to-pick "low hanging fruit."

Dr. Tom had been running an ad in the local newspaper for the last three months. It was a simple ad that offered prospects a Dental Wellness Screening, for just . He was running this small display ad every Thursday in the Living Section at the cost of for each ad run. After three months, the ad had pulled a dismal return of five prospects into the clinic.

As successful as Dr. Tom had been in running his "practice", he recognized that he was entering an entirely new world. Dr. Tom recognized that he needed to make the successful shift from working IN his business, to working ON his business - and he wanted to make that shift as quickly as possible. (One of the first books we recommend to all our clients in a similar situation is "The E-Myth Revisited" by Michael Gerber. Reading the book accelerated Dr. Tom´s understanding of this concept and allowed me to put him on a fast-track).

At the very beginning of our coaching relationship, we already determined that Dr. Tom had some beneficial, natural abilities and a driving passion when it came to marketing. We knew from the start, that this would be one the ways for him to make working on his business enjoyable, fulfilling and profitable. And now the time had come to put that to use.

The Solution

Since the original ad was pretty small there was no room for pictures, logos or even the business name (which currently devoured one-third of the ad space). I wanted to keep the ad the same size so that Dr. Tom could really grasp the concept of low cost and eliminate all doubt in his mind as to what really made the difference in high impact marketing. Being a graduate of our "Small Business, BIG Profit TeleCourse, Dr. Tom wrote the rough drafts himself.

After a little coaching and a number of revisions later, we had a new ad to run.

The new ad

It was with some serious trepidation that Dr. Tom agreed to run the final draft that said:

" Dental Wellness Screening. Same One Used By Top Cosmetic Dentistry Experts Nationwide. FREE To The First 50 Callers As Part Of A Daring Community Outreach."

We scheduled a 3-way conference call with the sales representative from the newspaper to review the changes. After a 45-minute "heated discussion" with this man, who was beginning to sway an already nervous Dr. Tom, I finally laid down the gauntlet.

His ad wasn´t working, but with no justification that he could verbalize, he didn´t think our new ad would work either. So I simply said that I was guaranteeing that the new add would out-pull the old ad by at least 2-to-1 or I would pay for the ad out of my own pocket. Would he be willing to guarantee the same?

The conversation ended and the new ad ran.

The Results

Dr. Tom called me Friday morning after the new ad ran. His clinic opened at 9 a.m. that Friday. By noon, the clinic had received 63 phone calls. Everyone who worked in the clinic (an office manager, receptionist, three dental assistants and three dentists including Dr. Tom himself) spent the entire morning answering the telephone. They could barely work with any patients because they were so busy answering the phone!

Dr. Tom ran the ad for four consecutive weeks as we had originally planned. In that one month the office received over 450 responses. He felt the business needed an additional twenty-five clients per week to put his mind at ease. In just four weeks, they were doing exactly that, and they had a six-week waiting list of new prospect appointments.

Those four weeks of ads were enough to put Dr.Tom´s mind at ease. He was able to refocus with renewed vigor on completing the systems side of his business.

You see there was a double benefit from the new marketing approach. The added stress of a huge influx of prospects, revealed some critical areas of the business that still needed improvement. With the ability to step back at will, we addressed those challenges and Dr. Tom was able to avoid those same problems in the future when the business really started hopping.

A few months later, after streamlining the rest of the systems for the business, we instituted a formal referral system. Tracking that system for 12-months revealed that every patient referred an average of nine people. That translated into 2,250 referrals just from the new clients a four-week ad generated.

Now that´s Low Cost, High-Impact Marketing at work!