Dr. David Madow: Because It Works!

Both: Hey there, I am Dr. David Madow. And I am Dr. Richard Madow. We're the Madow Brothers. We're really excited to be speaking with you today because, by the time you finish watching this brief video, you will know ten simple steps to flooding your reception room with more new patients than ever. Let's face it, it's tougher and tougher to get new patients into your practice these days, dental practices are spending all kinds of money on marketing programs that simply don't work, these programs are really expensive, so you've got a make sure your marketing is clearly focused and actually works. Every dollar you spend on marketing has to actually bring more new patients into your practice.

Dr. David Madow: So they're actually ten simple basic steps to bring new patients in your practice, a lot of new patients. Rich and I are going to go over each one step by step and you can -- see the good thing about this is, you can actually do these from your dental practice. Once we give you these you can be on your own and to do every single thing we teach you and that they absolutely will work.

Dr. Richard Madow: Wow! Sounds intriguing, let's get rocking on this. Okay, first of all, we love direct mail. There are so many different ways to market your practice you can just start naming them: newspapers, Yellow Pages, radio, Internet all kinds of crazy schemes out there -- we still love direct mail. Well, you know why? Direct mail absolutely works. Just think about it. When you get your mail every day there is a stack of mail in there sent all by these companies who are spending millions of dollars and you know why they're spending millions of dollars?

Dr. David Madow: Because it works!

Dr. Richard Madow: Absolutely, so let’s start talking about how to use direct mail to get more new patients in your dental practice. First of all, what type of direct mail are you going to send? Are you going to send a letter or a little package that somebody has to look at it, open the envelope think it's for them or not, see if it's junk mail? No, you need to grab somebody's attention right away and the way you do that is to send a beautiful postcard, because think about it, somebody's going through the mail, they are deciding what to read, the ones to throw away or recycle, you need to get their attention instantly. So a perfectly design postcard: there is no envelope to open, they look at it, they know exactly what's going on. If it's a postcard that grabs their attention, which we’re going to teach you how to do, then you've got your audience right then and there just where you want them, your potential new patient now have something in their hands and they are about to pick their new dentist.

Dr. David Madow: By the way, before we going to number two, one thing we probably should have said at the very beginning. Y”ou may be watching this or maybe you don't even know this but Rich and I, the Madow Brothers, are both dentists. Rich and I both built practices up from scratch, from zero to very highly successful practices, so we’ve experimented with it already. We know exactly what works and we've been helping dentists get new patients into their practices for the past 25 years plus now. So we've done all this, we know what works for …it's not like we’re just coming out of the gate trying to figure something out, we've done it all and we've got the system we're going to show you exactly how to do...

Dr. Richard Madow: We've tried things that don't work. That's why we're excited to present these things that absolutely do work. Okay, so now we know postcards work fantastically well, but they've got to be done exactly correct.

Dr. David Madow: Okay, so each one of these steps… please, you can't not do it because maybe you don't like the look of it. Here's if you're deciding that postcard’s the thing that’s going to work for you. It’s very very important to have a picture on the main part of the postcard. We’re going to call it side A of the postcard. Now side A of the postcard is the one that’s opposite the side with the address and the stamp. Side A is kind of like the big side of the postcard with all the attention-grabbing stuff. It's really important to have a picture of the doctor and team. That’s our number one choice. Take a look I'm going to show you the slide right now. Let's click on that slide -- beautiful doctor., team there. They look good -- they're in scrubs or clinical jackets and the doctors in clinical jacket. This looks like just an office that has… they are together, they look good. The reason you want to have a picture of the doctor and that the team is because when your postcard goes to a resident in the area that a resident really does not know you at all yet -- this is kind of like your first introduction, your entrée into this person's house or life so it's the human to human touch. They see wow, these people look so good. I trust them, they look happy. It's extremely important. Some people we've seen in the past like to put a logo or a picture of the office building or like the reception area, you know, that stuff it doesn't work. So you've got to have a picture of human beings that looks happy and smiling, the doctor and the team look great. Now, the second choice as you can see the bottom right-hand side the Doc with his or her... We don't know which one is the Doc, could be the woman, could be the man we don't know it doesn't really matter, but the Doc with his or her family also works very well, but I think our first choice is really a nice clean smiley picture of Doc and team.

Dr. Richard Madow: Okay, step number three. Now somebody's got your postcard, they're looking at it. They met a doctor, the doctor is nice and friendly, now what's going to really grab their attention? Is it the fact that the doctor trained at the Pankey Institute? Well, that's fantastic if that happened. Is it that the hygienist went to a great dental hygiene school? No, those things are important, but the potential new patient really doesn't care. They want to know now what can you do for me? What's in it for me? Why should I go to this dental practice? How will it help me? And of course, everybody wants to have a great offer, so you've got to have an offer. This is usually some kind of special and we'll get more into that in a second -- what kind of special you should have, but let's face it, people want to save money. They want to know how much this is all going to cost. Those are the questions they are asking, so tell them right up front. Have an offer and make it huge. In this example you're seeing on the screen, a cleaning with exam x-rays or cancer screening consult is 49 dollars. There are no questions to be asked. This is it. I can afford this, I need this, this is fantastic. Again, you've got to make it huge so that there is no doubt that this potential new patient sees your offer, they understand it, they know exactly what it is. Without this, see you’re lost. This is what's going to keep the person looking at your postcard from the time they get it, look at it, call your practice on the phone. These are the steps that you need to take. So step number three -- have an offer, make it huge.

Dr. David Madow: While we're at it, while we're talking about offers it's really important to actually have fees, real fees instead of like dollars off, ten dollars off your first visit or 15% off your first visit. Look at the postcard we've got in front of you on the screen and you can clearly see there is no mistake about it that if you want to come in as a new patient, 27 dollars is going to get you a consultation and x-ray. It’s not going to be like 10 dollars off, it doesn't mean anything, so..

Dr. Richard Madow: It's a mystery.

Dr. David Madow: It's really important, actual fees not dollars off discount, 97 dollars teeth whitening free, everybody knows free but if you said like…again, it's really important to make sure you do that because it's just going to make the difference between success and failure.

Dr. Richard Madow: No questions about it. Now think about it, let's say that you're in a midsize to major size city arts town, so maybe you want to mail your postcards to 15,000 homes all around your practice. Maybe you want to do 5,000 one month, 5,000 in the next, 5000 in the third month, and then start again with month four with the first group. Well, you're going to be mailing to all different types of, all sorts of people: younger people, older people, higher income, lower income, different levels of education, different attitudes about dentistry. No matter what type of town or city you're in --rural, urban whatever it is, you're going to be dealing with all different kinds of people. So why make an offer that only appeals to one type of person? You've got room on your postcard to make a bunch of offers, maybe three of them, so have an offer that appeals to say, the young family with kids -- maybe some kind of children’s special. Then, of course, the baby boomers or the millennial's maybe are interested in cosmetics you give them a whitening or veneers or something like that, so you're appealing to that type of demographic. Then you've got the older people, the retirees, may be people who weren't in great dental health earlier in their life or whatever it is, so maybe some kind of implants special. The fact is if you only have one special you risk not appealing to everybody that look at your card you want to increase the chance by three, the power of three increase the chance that this card actually work, so have a few offers make sure it covers a wide variety of demographic.

Dr. David Madow: That's ok. So make sure on the card, again it’s all about grabbing the recipient’s attention, you've got to have a headline. You can go to the screen in front of you. You can steal this if you want -you deserve a beautiful, whiter smile- now, who does not want a whiter smile? Practically every single one does -- every single person out there wants a whiter smile, so you've got to have that attention grabbing headline steal this one, it’s been shown to work that's why we have it in front of you screen, but whatever you do make sure you have a good one.

Dr. Richard Madow: So now that you're starting to get your postcard all together, the question is, how do know that this thing is working? How do I know that people are calling me from this postcard? Well, it's a 100% essential that you utilize what's called call tracking. That means on your postcard, it's not your regular practice phone number, it's a dedicated phone number. It’s called a tracking number and it's not some kind of 800, 888 toll-free or 900 number or whatever it is. It actually looks like it's a phone number from your area. So maybe you're in Orlando, Florida and your office area code is 407 that's your regular number, well your call tracking number should have a 470 area code also so it just look like a normal phone number in your area from a dental practice, nobody knows the difference. But why do you utilize a call tracking number? Because with the call tracking number, you can know exactly who is holding your postcard up and calling from that postcard, We mailed this postcard. We got 22 calls this month. We know it because we're tracking the calls. It's so much better than saying well we mailed out the postcards we got a bunch of calls this month it's probably working. What if you mail out the postcards and you didn't get a lot of calls? It's possible you're getting a ton of calls, but maybe they're going to voicemail, maybe your front office team isn't properly trained in how to handle these calls so those are the things you can work on, things you can tweak. But at least, you know the card is working people are picking up the phone and calling your practice.

Dr. David Madow: So it really is not all about headlines and offers and what kind of patient to put on those are really really in because there are so many components to it because again the call tracking number is going to help you to determine whether this thing is working or not. Along the same line, having a system where your calls come into your office with that tracking number actually recorded and somebody whether it’s a doctor or somebody else is able to evaluate how the front desk person or how the person answering the phone is handling those calls, it's crucial because, again, you are taking the time to design this postcard the way it should be, you're sending them out, you're making sure they get to the right people. But when the calls to start coming in and somebody at the front desk’s saying, “we’ll know these people are not setting up their shoppers or list or that,” it's time to start evaluating to see really what's going on. It's really important from the onset to report calls and evaluate. And again, it's not meant to be confrontational with the front desk person at all. It's all about making this the best system, the best new patient system possible and so it's going to take some tweaking with the front desk person. But great, just make sure we get it right, record the calls, make sure that every single caller is offered an appointment the right way and gets into the appointment book and into the office, it is crucial.