Having trouble watching this video? Click here.

Patient Attraction Episode 1112

Who likes to be thought of as being inconsistent? Nobody, that’s who. Dr. Robert Cialdini, a pioneer in the area of interpersonal influence, has done extensive research into how people are influenced to make decisions. His principle of Consistency is used widely in advertising to influence prospects to make buying decisions. Dentists can go to school on his work and on the experiences of many, many marketers. I’ll be back after the break to tell you how to use Cialdini’s work to attract more patients to your practice.

- I’m Colin Receveur.

- Thanks for watching the Patient Attraction Podcast™.

- It’s been my experience that once people have committed to something, they’re unlikely to change their minds.

- That’s particularly true if that commitment was made and witnessed by someone else.

- That’s one of the psychological traits Dr. Cialdini was curious about and began investigating.

- From his research emerged his principle of Consistency.

- Consistency is sometimes called Commitment, but the basics are the same.

- Once a public commitment to something has been made, people tend to act consistently with that commitment.

- That’s something dentists can take advantage of in their marketing.

- Let’s assume your website is showing up in local search results.

- You’ve had the search engine optimization work done.

- And you’ve got helpful information on your site written for your prospects’ level of understanding.

- Now, will your prospects decide to book an appointment based on their first visit to your site?

- Probably not, because there’s a lot of dental competition out there.

- Once your prospect looks around your site, they’ll likely click away to one of your competitor’s sites.

- That is, unless you give them a reason to learn more about you and your practice.

- That’s where dental advertising lures come in.

- You can offer something of value in exchange for their email address.

- That something could be a free e-book written by you or a ghostwritten book.

- It could be a white paper on a particular dental problem and solution, or a research article that laypeople will understand.

- By agreeing to give up their email address for something of value, they’ve made a commitment.

- And that commitment is to receive further information from you about their dental wants and needs.

- The process of staying in front of your prospects via email is known as drip marketing.

- You’ll need a series of emails about each particular dental problem or desire.

- Typically, that series might run to between 7 and 10 separate emails.

- Given the number of dental conditions you treat, writing all those emails is quite a large time commitment.

- So that’s something you might want to outsource.

- But once you have those emails in hand, you’ll need to send them out at carefully timed intervals.

- Send emails too often, and you’re pushy.

- Send them too seldom, and your prospects could be lost to a competitor.

- This is an area where using an automated response system can keep you from making mistakes and save a huge amount of staff time.

- With the right emails to the right patients at the right times, you’re continuing to influence them.

- Since they’ve already committed to receive those emails, you can be reasonably sure they’ll read at least some of them.

- And they’ll be more likely to choose you to solve their dental problems.