In the Dallas area papers, a famous and long-time sportswriter named Blackie Sherrod opened his column with this line. After the ellipse, he always through in a bittersweet, obscure or humorous name. So, today, I’m just scattershooting, wondering whatever happened to... Bud Grant.
A little bit for everyone today. Here is a marketing newsflash for all of you. The results are in and I believe that we have some pretty strong evidence that we need to redefine our expectations of direct mail.
Most people know that direct mail (when used for commercial products with established brands) can yield up to 2% return. Most small businesses misinterpret that into thinking if I mail 100 I will get two patients. No. A return is measured in someone showing interest, not necessarily buying when it comes to professional services.
Anyway, the direct mailers we have been doing for our clients have had strong web calls to action and many have tracking numbers where available. We also place tracking phone numbers on their web sites (in many cases). In the cases where all metrics are in place, we have seen a jump in calls that correspond with the direct mailers. Only, it is from the web site tracking numbers. Retainer clients, you may recognize this from your monthly meetings with me. In essence, the direct calls, plus the web hits and the jump in web calls shows that direct mail and web are a strong combination. The return ( in terms of interested parties) is high compared to an isolated direct mailer on its own.
So file that away for your next marketing meeting. Or ask me about our retainer program that includes managing a direct mail campaign for you.
On a sports note, Amy’s bracket blew out late when Memphis lost but I am coming up from the back of the pack.... I have all four teams in the Final Four and could end with some high value wins. I have Florida beating Ohio State in the final.... just for the irony of both major championship games turning out the same.
On a movie note, it is back to Blockbuster and Netflix for all you basketball fans. Why not treat yourself and get one of my favorite Woody Allen movies: Manhattan Murder Mystery. Or if you are so into basketball during the tournament that you can’t get enough... check out the recently released Glory Road for one of the best stories in sports history. It’s all true and the extras on the DVD are great. Enjoy.
Friday, March 30, 2007
Monday, March 26, 2007
Evaluating your web site
We have many clients who are designing new web sites with us because the standards for cosmetic dental and medical web sites are going up. We have produced a brief overview video on evaluating your web site options and I will post it in my blog sometime next week. For now, though, here are a few quick tips for self-evaluation of your web site.
First, the web is moving more toward what you can see and hear. If your web site is more about reading than it is about viewing.... you are headed for a redesign in the near future if you want to stay competitive.
Also, what grabs users visually about your web site? Just like a magazine ad or a big billboard, your site should be graphic in nature. Even the Wall Street Journal has color these days. Surely your web site can take advantage of all the colors on the web.
Finally for now, is your site presented the way you want to explain the content or have you designed it in a way a user would want to get the information. Your copy should focus on features and benefits.... mostly benefits. Otherwise, you are boring your readers. And, you don’t have to take my word for it. You can ask them.
First, the web is moving more toward what you can see and hear. If your web site is more about reading than it is about viewing.... you are headed for a redesign in the near future if you want to stay competitive.
Also, what grabs users visually about your web site? Just like a magazine ad or a big billboard, your site should be graphic in nature. Even the Wall Street Journal has color these days. Surely your web site can take advantage of all the colors on the web.
Finally for now, is your site presented the way you want to explain the content or have you designed it in a way a user would want to get the information. Your copy should focus on features and benefits.... mostly benefits. Otherwise, you are boring your readers. And, you don’t have to take my word for it. You can ask them.
Monday, March 19, 2007
Back from vacation... why did I bother?
San Antonio is four hours from Dallas. So, a three-day trip to go to SeaWorld didn’t sound that bad. Right? Pardon the cliche... it turned into a Griswold Family Vacation. I will spare you the details.... except this one... the four hour drive turned into eight hours and I had to listen to Blues Clues the whole way down. Thanks, two-year old Ava!
Since I was out a week, here is a week‘s worth of blog-thoughts in a condensed form. I spent the rest of the week with the family hanging around our new home town Frisco. I began to notice how many medi-spas and cosmetic dentists there are here. Literally one or two for every shopping strip center or mid-rise building. I bet I saw about 50 of them in a week.... way too many for the population density. I told Amy... I wonder how many of these will be here in a year. Then, I realized what would proceed those failures. The failing businesses would begin running percentage-off specials (20% or 25% off Botox, etc). Just be warned, it is this sort of behavior that starts to make your service a commodity.... a service that you buy strictly on price because you can get it in so many places.
I advise our clients to stay out of the price wars if they break out and, under no circumstances, do not start a price war. Stay away from a % off sale. If you want to run a special, advertise it as a “Special Price.” If you are in a price war, stop the downhill slide and turn your campaign toward quality.
Two other quick things: sports and movies. Amy got 30 out of 32 on her NCAA bracket and is sitting at 43-4 for the first weekend. At one point, she was #220 in the ESPN Pizza Hut Challenge online. There are about 7 million entries. She goes into the Sweet 16 at about 7500.
And, your movie pick from last week is Inherit The Wind. This 1960 classic will remind you how great Spencer Tracy really was. This week, that title has some special meaning for me, so I recommend that movie to you.
Since I was out a week, here is a week‘s worth of blog-thoughts in a condensed form. I spent the rest of the week with the family hanging around our new home town Frisco. I began to notice how many medi-spas and cosmetic dentists there are here. Literally one or two for every shopping strip center or mid-rise building. I bet I saw about 50 of them in a week.... way too many for the population density. I told Amy... I wonder how many of these will be here in a year. Then, I realized what would proceed those failures. The failing businesses would begin running percentage-off specials (20% or 25% off Botox, etc). Just be warned, it is this sort of behavior that starts to make your service a commodity.... a service that you buy strictly on price because you can get it in so many places.
I advise our clients to stay out of the price wars if they break out and, under no circumstances, do not start a price war. Stay away from a % off sale. If you want to run a special, advertise it as a “Special Price.” If you are in a price war, stop the downhill slide and turn your campaign toward quality.
Two other quick things: sports and movies. Amy got 30 out of 32 on her NCAA bracket and is sitting at 43-4 for the first weekend. At one point, she was #220 in the ESPN Pizza Hut Challenge online. There are about 7 million entries. She goes into the Sweet 16 at about 7500.
And, your movie pick from last week is Inherit The Wind. This 1960 classic will remind you how great Spencer Tracy really was. This week, that title has some special meaning for me, so I recommend that movie to you.
Friday, March 9, 2007
Another Great DSM Flash Web Site
Check out the latest custom DSM web site to hit the web.
Congratulations go to Samir Pancholi, MD in Las Vegas on launching his Internet strategy with this web site. Check it out in about two weeks to see this site with its audio enhancement.
Congratulations go to Samir Pancholi, MD in Las Vegas on launching his Internet strategy with this web site. Check it out in about two weeks to see this site with its audio enhancement.
http://www.cosmeticsurgeryoflasvegas.com
In case you need a movie...
Now that Spring is almost here, Spring Cleaning is right around the corner. Luckily, in Texas, we don’t have winter debris to clean up. Much different from that last few years in Spokane.
The ultimate Spring Cleaning movie is Cold Comfort Farm. This little British movie from the 90s has a little bit for everyone in it. A comedy about a post-WWI city girl who moves to the country to live with long lost relatives is a real surprise. Watch it on a night when you feel like you need to give yourself a break.
The ultimate Spring Cleaning movie is Cold Comfort Farm. This little British movie from the 90s has a little bit for everyone in it. A comedy about a post-WWI city girl who moves to the country to live with long lost relatives is a real surprise. Watch it on a night when you feel like you need to give yourself a break.
Monday, March 5, 2007
A final word on ROI
About once a month, someone asks me about ROI. It happened last week… right on schedule. Like so many other elements of marketing, it is misunderstood. Maybe this will clear things up a little.
Everyone… including me… would love to be able to measure the value of any single marketing investment. And, that would be possible if converting a sale in a small, professional service business was as easy as ordering a pizza.
Think about ordering a pizza for a minute. Pretty much, you know what your options are, regardless of the brand. You have an expectation of the price, lots of brands from which to choose and an idea of when it will be ready. In these and many other ways, you are a highly educated consumer when it comes to pizza. And, when you are hungry, you will even compromise when it comes to your pizza.
Since the vast majority of the public is this way, formula marketing on a massive scale works predictably. Under these conditions, the marketing industry has established response rates that are true… but can be confusing in the hands of small business owners.
Direct mail is a great example. Pretty much everyone knows or has heard that direct mail yields a 1-2% response. If you do a little homework, you can even raise that same-list response rate as high as 10% with mailings over a 5-6 month period.
So, in the case of a cosmetic surgeon or a cosmetic dentist, should you expect the same direct mail response rate of 1-2%? Well, is your sales process anything like buying a pizza? And, is the market for your cosmetic services as educated as the pizza buying market? Not by a long shot. Where, then, does that leave you in deciding what is good marketing for your practice if you cannot evaluate given elements of the plan in terms of return.
In the case of a service business, especially high-end professional services like our clients, the process of converting new business is more complicated. This is why we have our clients focus on the three distinctively different principles of marketing, media and sales. Each is part of the process of getting a new client. And, this sort of complexity keeps you from the fine sort of ROI measurement that all of us want so badly.
For example, let’s use another direct mail example; this one is from a professional small business, a cosmetic dentist. Two thousand mailers go out to a targeted list and the dentist is expecting a 1-2% return or 20-40 calls. Is this realistic? Will 20-40 cosmetic dentistry cases show up as a result of the mailer? Will the phone ring 20-40 times?
Likely the answer is no. But, the response is probably there. Our clients normally see a spike in web visitors following a direct mailer. Normally, we see some calls from mailers but the web response is almost always stronger. So, if someone responds to the mailer by checking out the practice online and the web site does not engage and sell the lead properly, it lowers the perceived ROI from the mailer.
Let’s take it once step further. Say the same mailer generates a phone call from a patient who is already interested in finding a new dentist. If the person answering the phone fumbles the lead and loses it because of poor sales training and customer service skills, it diminishes the perceived ROI from the mailer.
Most of our strategies help clients understand what responses they get from the individual steps. Ask me about tracking phone numbers and detailed web stats if you are not one of the clients who use these tools. And, hopefully, with this example, you will see why we cannot use single-activity ROI for small businesses.
Instead, this is how we recommend you measure your ROI. You measure it in terms of your total investment and your total gross growth. So, if you invest a total of $25,000 in marketing, media and sales improvements and you bill an additional $75,000 in a year, your ROI is 3:1. This simple formula will allow you to measure over longer periods that you maintain commitments to developing your marketing, media and sales. If you follow our advice and address the three main principles of marketing on a big-picture level, figuring your ROI will not drive you crazy and you will be doing it right.
Everyone… including me… would love to be able to measure the value of any single marketing investment. And, that would be possible if converting a sale in a small, professional service business was as easy as ordering a pizza.
Think about ordering a pizza for a minute. Pretty much, you know what your options are, regardless of the brand. You have an expectation of the price, lots of brands from which to choose and an idea of when it will be ready. In these and many other ways, you are a highly educated consumer when it comes to pizza. And, when you are hungry, you will even compromise when it comes to your pizza.
Since the vast majority of the public is this way, formula marketing on a massive scale works predictably. Under these conditions, the marketing industry has established response rates that are true… but can be confusing in the hands of small business owners.
Direct mail is a great example. Pretty much everyone knows or has heard that direct mail yields a 1-2% response. If you do a little homework, you can even raise that same-list response rate as high as 10% with mailings over a 5-6 month period.
So, in the case of a cosmetic surgeon or a cosmetic dentist, should you expect the same direct mail response rate of 1-2%? Well, is your sales process anything like buying a pizza? And, is the market for your cosmetic services as educated as the pizza buying market? Not by a long shot. Where, then, does that leave you in deciding what is good marketing for your practice if you cannot evaluate given elements of the plan in terms of return.
In the case of a service business, especially high-end professional services like our clients, the process of converting new business is more complicated. This is why we have our clients focus on the three distinctively different principles of marketing, media and sales. Each is part of the process of getting a new client. And, this sort of complexity keeps you from the fine sort of ROI measurement that all of us want so badly.
For example, let’s use another direct mail example; this one is from a professional small business, a cosmetic dentist. Two thousand mailers go out to a targeted list and the dentist is expecting a 1-2% return or 20-40 calls. Is this realistic? Will 20-40 cosmetic dentistry cases show up as a result of the mailer? Will the phone ring 20-40 times?
Likely the answer is no. But, the response is probably there. Our clients normally see a spike in web visitors following a direct mailer. Normally, we see some calls from mailers but the web response is almost always stronger. So, if someone responds to the mailer by checking out the practice online and the web site does not engage and sell the lead properly, it lowers the perceived ROI from the mailer.
Let’s take it once step further. Say the same mailer generates a phone call from a patient who is already interested in finding a new dentist. If the person answering the phone fumbles the lead and loses it because of poor sales training and customer service skills, it diminishes the perceived ROI from the mailer.
Most of our strategies help clients understand what responses they get from the individual steps. Ask me about tracking phone numbers and detailed web stats if you are not one of the clients who use these tools. And, hopefully, with this example, you will see why we cannot use single-activity ROI for small businesses.
Instead, this is how we recommend you measure your ROI. You measure it in terms of your total investment and your total gross growth. So, if you invest a total of $25,000 in marketing, media and sales improvements and you bill an additional $75,000 in a year, your ROI is 3:1. This simple formula will allow you to measure over longer periods that you maintain commitments to developing your marketing, media and sales. If you follow our advice and address the three main principles of marketing on a big-picture level, figuring your ROI will not drive you crazy and you will be doing it right.
Friday, March 2, 2007
Scoreboard!
I waited 23 years for this... a real reunion tour by The Police. Today, I got tickets for the Dallas show in an exclusive pre-sale. Floor seats. Expensive? Yes. Am I keeping them? No.
More later on my mission to get on the front row. The over/under on how close I will get starts with Row 3. Place your bets. The show is June 26.
More later on my mission to get on the front row. The over/under on how close I will get starts with Row 3. Place your bets. The show is June 26.
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