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Is your marketing painful?

Written by: Mark Oborn

Article Overview: Marketing a business (or in my case a health care practice) needs some pain. We need to remind our prospects of why they need to use our services, and give them the option of chosing us. Pretty, pretty marketing just won't do!

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Is your marketing painful?

Is your marketing painful?
We live in such a Politically Correct (PC) world now don't we?

We live in an age where competitiveness at school is often discouraged and non-competitive games are the norm...'it's the taking part that counts you know!'

But you know what....I believe this fear of upsetting someone filters through to our marketing, diluting it and making it so unappealing that it becomes ineffective.

Let me explain. With our marketing we are often trying to attract new customers (prospects) to our business...agreed? Well when a prospect decides they want to use the services of a dentist, chiropractor, optometrist etc they have a problem that needs solving...it could be an ugly smile, or a tooth missing, or a bad lower back..agreed? Good we are all agreeing so far then!

Now we know our prospects have a problem that needs solving, let's define a problem.

A problem exists when there is a gap between 'what is' and 'what ought to be'

This gap may not be well defined for the prospective patient, for a dentist they may just be unhappy with their smile but not know what the exact problem is. For a Podiatrist they may not be able to walk long distances but not know exactly what the problem is. So the 'what is' is the patients current situation and it is their 'pain' that needs solving by your professional services.

Now, the role of marketing in my opinion is to work on that gap. To highlight the 'pain' (not physical pain, but emotionlal pain) and to highlight your unique solution to that pain. In other words you are making the gap between the 'what is' i.e. their 'pain' and the 'what ought to be' i.e. your unique solution to be as big as possible.

The bigger the gap, the more compelling the need to solve the problem. The more compelling the need to solve the problem, the more likley the prospect is to contact your surgery/clinic/business.

So, is your marketing painful? You need to be prepared to highlight to the prospects their pain, it kind of goes against political correctness slightly, but it IS necessary. When highlighting the pain concerntrate on the emotional attachment to the consequences of that pain.

Some examples are:

You wish to attract patients to a dental surgery for tooth whitening.

Highlight the pain = dark teeth

Highlight the emotional consequence = embarassed to go out

Now this is what you need to highlight in you marketing...

'Embarassed to go out?'
'Embarrased about the colour of your teeth?"

Next give your unique solution to this pain.

Did you answer yes to the questions above? Then come down to XYZ surgery and experience the amazing results of the 'XYZ surgery super tooth whitening system' so you can go out at night and smile with confidence

So in your maketing you have highlighted the pain, given your unique solution (the XYZ surgery super tooth whitenign system) AND made the 'what ought to be' as obvious as possible with some emotional attachement.

Now clearly the marketing needs FAR more that this, we need a compelling reason for them to contact you, it needs to be more focused, there need to be many more mechanisms for conversions etc etc

But you get my point huh? Don' be afraid of reminding your prospects of their pain, and remember to give them your unique solutions to their pain.

Speak soon,

Mark

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Article Tags: bad lower back, chiropractor, competitiveness, current situation, dentist, exact problem, fear, games, gap, long distances, norm, pc world, podiatrist, professional services, prospective patient, prospects, role of marketing, smile, surgery clinic, unique solution

About the Author: Mark Oborn
RSS for Mark's articles - Visit Mark's website

I currently run a dental laboratory and a marketing consultancy and am a registered Health Care Professional. I specialise in dental marketing, particularly internet domination and viral marketing for dental surgeries ; bringing my masters level skills in marketing and creativity and combining them with my practical day to day experience of running a small business. I run the Health Care Business guide blog as a free resource to health care professionals.

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