The Art of Failure: The Top 10 Reasons Your Dental Marketing Flopped

Episode #323 with Xaña Winans

Every failure is an opportunity to learn. But if you don't know where and how to improve, you can end up making the same mistakes! To help you avoid another flop, Kirk Behrendt brings in Xaña Winans of Golden Proportions Marketing to explain why your dental marketing failed, and where to focus your improvement. If you’re ready to learn from your mistakes, listen to Episode 323 of The Best Practices Show!

Main Takeaways:

“Fail forward” by using failure as an opportunity to get better.

10) Choose the best marketing medium for your target audience.

9) Understand the difference between strategy and tactic.

8) Think about your target market and the problem you're trying to solve.

7) Go where your competition is not.

6) Inspire action with your call to action. Be intentional with your language.

5) Is your product or service great? Be self-aware — know your online reputation.

4) Have an adequate budget. Marketing costs money!

3) Measure every piece of marketing you're doing.

2) Be more patient. ROIs don't happen overnight.

1) Make it easy for people to buy from you.

Quotes:

“Failure is always an opportunity to learn . . . Fail forward. Everything that you do that didn't work out exactly the way that you wanted is an opportunity to get better.” (05:37—05:50)

“The number-one reason why your marketing failed is you're choosing entirely the wrong medium for the audience that you are trying to reach. So, let's say, for example, you are trying to reach families and you decide you want to do a lot of Facebook advertising. I'll tell you what, the young families, they're over on Instagram right now. So, if you are not on the right medium where your audience actually lives and is engaging with your message, it’s going to be a flop. You're going to be wasting a ton of reach with people that just aren't your right target.” (07:23—07:57)

“People aren't putting the strategy before the tactic. They're just picking the shiny object, the, ‘I want to do social media marketing funnels,’ or, ‘I want to do an infomercial that comes out,’ because they're excited by the tactic. So, if they are not actually thinking strategy . . . You've got to have a long-term goal. You've got to have a plan; the tactic fulfils the strategy. The strategy is the goal and the plan of what you're trying to accomplish. So, if you don't know what that stuff is, you're throwing darts at the wall.” (09:51—10:25)

“Do you know their age? Do you know the income of the person you're going after? You're going to have a very different target for income if you're going after families than if you're trying to target people who need implants. You've got to think about what problem it is you are trying to solve for the person. That is also part of your target marketing. So, am I trying to solve a problem of dark teeth, or missing teeth, or the fact that somebody just has a really tight schedule and can only be seen in the mornings or late evenings? Figure out what that problem is. And then, the last part of defining that target market is really thinking about what is the want of the person you are trying to reach.” (11:41—12:20)

“The best place to start is by looking at your own practice demographic. Just dig into your practice management software. Pull up, by zip code, how many patients are coming from a particular zip code. And you should also be able to see the total revenue that is coming from that zip code. So, you can see, are these people that are high dollars that have money to spend and are willing to spend it with you. It’s easy to want to say, ‘Okay, my target audience is the super-wealthy community that's 20 miles away from me.’ That's a target, sure. But that's a...