Getting attention

In the ratings war for the attention of your potential new patients/clients, your marketing collateral is human interest.

It matters not how amazing your premises look, how well qualified your team are or how innovative your technical solutions (I don’t mean that you don’t need those things – I mean that they aren’t as important as you think in getting people IN the door, they become important after they have arrived).

What matters is the difference you have made to other peoples’ lives, how they have become happier as a result of working with you.

Marketing collateral can now be defined as:

1. the selfie

2. the friend request, like, comment or, most importantly, share

3. the testimonial (written, audio or, most importantly, video)

4. the patient who attends an open evening to tell their story

The advocacy and ambassadorship of your existing patients/clients is the most valuable asset in your business.

If your marketing consists of product advertising, price offers and promotional information about your own achievements – at best you will attract time-wasting strangers, at worst you are an unnoticed voice in the noise.

Here’s what we all have to get used to:

1. this blog is an attempt to capture my pearls of business wisdom – I average 250 readers a day

2. my email newsletters (back in October by the way) achieve a 25% open- rate on a good day

3. when I post a 35-second video of my dog eating an ice-cream, it is viewed 2,000 times

Getting peoples’ attention in a world in which our TV/radio/desktop/laptop/tablet/telephone and (now) watch are interrupting us is the challenge that we all face, whether it’s Simon Cowell on a Saturday evening or you and I today.

How we do that determines our success at marketing.

Here’s something to think about:

Digital/Analogue Advertising – high cost, low return, low labour.

(all of my clients are telling me that the quality of “paid for” leads is poor).

Digital/Analogue Social Media Connection, Storytelling and Testimonial – low cost, high return, high labour (it takes an effort by your team to ask for, collect and collate information).

Do you want to throw money at poor quality leads – or enrol your team in the challenge of gathering human interest stories and, with consent, publishing them across multiple broadcast channels?

That decision is the single most important one you will make in your marketing plan.

I’m spending a lot of my time with clients showing their teams how to deploy low-cost marketing – it takes time but costs very little – the return on that investment is astronomic, once you get it right.

Stop paying to get attention.

Earn attention.