Issue 1 - January 2005

Advertising and marketing Getting what you pay for
By Tom Deters, DC

When it comes down to the bottom line, the business of running a practice is all about achieving goals and meeting expectations — measured in terms of patient visits, patient satisfaction and/or revenue numbers. You make business decisions on the expectation that particular results will be achieved.

If outcomes meet or exceed your expectations, you’re happy. If not, you are disappointed.

So — what expectations do you have for your advertising and marketing plan? Are you getting what you think you paid for?

Before you can answer that question, you have to understand the differences between advertising and marketing. Although the two are related and do some of the same things, they are separate entities and must be treated as such. If not, you will be disappointed, because your expectations will not be met.

MARKETING

Marketing’s goal is to raise awareness, to educate, to inform, to create an identity or to develop an emotional connection between a business and its potential customers (patients).

Public relations programs (press releases, seminars, newspaper articles, interviews, community involvement) are a part of marketing, as are brochures and Web sites. Some forms of advertising, too, are marketing.

Marketing is often used to create and support a brand, which is a unique recognized entity (trademark, logo or product) that has a concept, a perception and an identity. (As an aside: Chiropractic can be considered a “brand” of healthcare.).

Marketing serves a definite purpose. But its effectiveness is often difficult to measure.

For example: One type of marketing that creates brand awareness is image advertising, such as the Nike ad that shows an athlete and the Nike logo but no mention of shoes. The objective of this ad is to increase brand identity and awareness without mentioning the specifics of the product.

Effective? Yes. Easy to measure? No. Companies like Nike have the resources to measure this type of ad’s effectiveness through sophisticated polls and indexes. But for small companies, this type of marketing is difficult to assess because it has a less direct, immediate and measurable impact on growing revenues.

ADVERTISING

Advertising is a specific type of marketing. Whereas marketing’s goal is to create awareness, advertising’s goal is to drive sales directly.

Advertising accomplishes its goal by incorporating the following components:

• An “attention getter” (a strong statement or graphic);

• The establishment of relevant need for the product or service;

• Information about specific qualities, advantages and competitive distinction; and

• A “call to action.” The call to action works to close a sale.

An effective ad uses a style and voice that are direct or commanding, persuasive and audience specific.

Advertising is all about “what buyers get out of it (the product or service)” — how it helps them and how it fulfills their immediate and specific needs.

TAKE AIM

To be effective, both marketing and advertising must aim to reach a specific audience, with specific needs in a specific way to drive a specific category of your business. This targeting is done through content, design, tone, voice and delivery.

Some examples: A marketing or advertising plan to reach a personal injury patient should be different from an ad trying to reach a sports medicine patient.

Ads and marketing programs (direct mail and office brochures, for instance) directed at existing patients for additional treatments or new products and services should be different from outside ads.

In reality, no ad is 100 percent precise and some shotgun effects occur — spillover into various patient categories. Some ads (a yellow pages ad, for instance) is general by design. Spinal screenings (which may fulfill both advertising and marketing objectives) may attract any of a variety of patient categories.

WHAT DO YOU EXPECT?

Without knowing exactly what you want, it’s difficult to be satisfied. If you are going to run an advertising campaign:

• Make sure you are advertising, not just marketing;

• Identify exactly how many new patients you expect to get. If you spend $5,000 on an ad program in the newspaper for example, exactly how many new patients will you expect to get?

• Decide what constitutes a poor, good or great response. Over what period of time? In other words, what is your expected return on your advertising investment? 10 percent? 20 percent?

Assuming you monitor the ad response carefully, if the ad isn’t meeting its projected response, you have the option of changing the creative content, frequency or even the type of media before you find yourself disappointed a year later.

Smart advertising and marketing, along with a great product (a given in the case of chiropractic!) make a business grow. The bottom line is the bottom line: It’s not about what you spend — it’s about what you get for it!