How to brand your practice without spending a fortune – Part 1
In the current competitive environment, you cannot afford to be “just another dentist”. You need to stand out from the crowd or the crowd will NOT walk in your door.
In this series, founder of the Dental Profit System, Angus Pryor steps through the different methods to brand your practice without spending a fortune.
Transcript:
Hi everyone, Angus Pryor here, creator of the Dental Profit System and the author of the Kindle smashing book “The Better Business Book”, bringing you this weeks marketing Monday. The weekly show designed to boost the dental marketing at your practice. Now today we’re going to look at how to brand your practice without spending a fortune.
In terms of it, we’re going to cover two points, and the two key points for today are firstly, what is branding? And then secondly, why should you actually get involved in branding?
So the first question is what actually is branding? Look, I was at a conference recently, and a speaker, a branding expert spoke about something that I thought was really curious. He said that as much as a business owner, you can influence branding, the fact of the matter is that you actually don’t control it. And that in fact, the brand is something that is controlled in the mind. The brand is actually controlled in the minds of your patients. You actually don’t get to control the branding per se, the brand is whatever your clients perceive it is.
However, there is a lot of things you can do to influence it. So what is branding? The branding is actually the combination of a whole range of factors. That when you put them together, create kind of an aura or a vibe about your practice. Often when we think of branding, we’re thinking of your logo and maybe if you put some branding on a pen. Whatever the case may be, but the fact is it’s really everything you do is branding. The logo, the name of the practice, your building, the staff uniforms. The sort of aura that you create, the kind of business that you’ve got, all of that stuff adds up in the mind of a client to say this is the brand that I associate with that particular branding. Rest assured, branding is worth doing, and I’m going to tell you why.
Now look, I’ve brought a couple of props. I’ve spared no expense today clearly. So we’ve got, token-istically, here’s a bottle of Coke and here’s a bottle of Woolworth’s brand. I want you to imagine these two are identical. I mean, even in my example here they’re both the same size, but let’s imagine they’re both Cola drinks. 1.25L, you go down to Woolworth’s, and both bottles would have 95% the same ingredients. I mean, they’ve both got carbonated water, if you’re drinking Coke they’ve got a whole stack of sugar in there, or chemicals in the case of the unleaded variety that I tend to drink, and then they’ve got flavors. How is it? How is it that you would pay double for that in Wooly’s, what you would for this one even though they’re basically the same product? That relates to the fact to do with branding.
Coca-Cola has spent millions and millions of dollars convincing you that drinking this is way more than just having some kind of hydration for your body, and maybe I don’t know, I guess you’ve got some caffeine in there, some sugar. What they’ve convinced us over years and years of advertising is that in fact, it’s somehow fun, that it’s food tastes better with Coke, have a Coke and a smile. A lot of their imagery uses very young people, and all of that is about their brand. Now my question for you as a dentist is, well how does this apply to you?
I mean, you’re not going to be in a position to spend millions and millions of dollars on producing your branding, but I tell you what branding does do. It allows the consumer to choose that one over that one, and it’d not be about price. It allows them to say, well I want this branded product and I’m prepared to pay more for it. As a dentist, that’s really important. Do you really want to be in the race to the bottom, where the only reason people come to you is because you’re the cheapest practice around? I would think definitely not.
So with that in mind, that’s a really quick introduction to what branding is. It’s basically everything you do, and it’s something that you don’t actually control. It’s in the mind of your potential client, and the reason it’s worth doing is because frankly, you can charge more and you can create an attractive point, a reason to compare your practice with another that’s not just about price. In the coming weeks, we’re going to take more and more about how it is you use branding to boost the profile, boost the business in your practice without spending a fortune. Otherwise, if you want to find out any more, head across to Dental Profit System. Until then, until next week, it’s Angus Pryor signing off, see you then. Bye.