A direct critique looking at marketing flyers

This week on Marketing Monday, Angus Pryor, the founder of Dental Profit System, will be sharing with you his critique over marketing flyers.

Transcript: A direct critique looking at marketing flyers
Well, hello entredentists. Angus Pryor here, the creator of the Dental Profit System and coauthor of The Better Business Book, bringing you this week’s Marketing Monday. The weekly show designed to boost the marketing at your Australian dental practice. Well in fact, practices all over the world, but particularly Australian.

This week, I’m going to give you a direct critique looking at flyers, marketing flyers, the little leaflet things. It’s one thing that I get asked to look at quite often. I thought what a great opportunity to actually show you one and give you some feedback on it.

The first thing I wanted to do today before I actually talk about the flyer, is I just want to pump up your tires a little bit because I know that being in business can be tough. And often, we’re our own worst critics. In fact, I’d say the worst year ever in my life in terms of my mental health, was the first year that I started in business. What I want you to do is hold your hand out like this and then reach over here and just go, “You’re doing okay. You’re doing okay.” Sometimes we’re too tough on each other. We just need to remind ourselves that we’re okay.

All right, let’s get into the critique now. Look, I work in the dental industry in Australia and I thought, “No, I’m not going to bring a dental flyer here.” The principles will apply but the particular flyer that I’m going to pick on is not a dental one because, who knows? I might end up working with that person sometime.

This is actually a flyer for a gym near where I live. I just wanted to look at it bit by bit. We’ve got the name of the business up at the top, there. Then, we’ve got some cool photos. Why you should come to the business and then, some reasons there and so on.

Now look, I would say the most common mistake I would see with any marketing collateral by miles is this. It’s thinking about what are you actually selling. It’s all about the result. So for these particular people, they’ve said well why should you come to that particular business, which is a good question. It’s a good question to ask. But what is the result that you’re actually offering to the client? I’d say, so far so good. These guys have asked a good question.

Why should you come to RST? Oh, gosh. I just couldn’t help this one. Family owned and operated local women’s gym. Now, if you have a look at the photos, you can see they’re all women there, so it’s worth pointing that out. But I have to tell you, one of the things about your marketing is you need to think about what the result is and from the client’s perspective.

A very well trusted marketer, a guy called Jay Abraham. I think he calls himself $6 Billion Dollar Man. He talks about the fact. What is the self-serving outcome for the client that they’re going to get from dealing with your business?

Well, I can tell you being family owned and operated is not a self-serving outcome for the client. In fact, I’d go so far as to say most clients couldn’t care less. The only thing they care about is the result, what’s that self-serving outcome. So I’d say unfortunately for this particular business, that’s a bit of a fail.

Members-only Facebook group. What do I get? What’s the result that I get for being in a members-only Facebook group? A lot of us are pretty busy and the idea of joining another Facebook group might not be attractive at all. On the other hand, if it’s a gym I guess they’re encouraging you to support each other or whatever.

Personalized community gym, as opposed to corporate, do it yourself, I suppose. The next point that I want to make here is, one of the things you’ve got to think about then is not just the result for the client and it being self-serving, but what is the fear that you’re tapping into? This family owned and operated would only be worth mentioning if in the mind of their clients, there’s this deep-seated fear that corporates are going to come and somehow, they’re going to do a bad job or whatever. But if that’s not really a strong fear, then there’s no need to address it.

I guess what I would do if I were doing this flyer, I’d probably be much more about the outcome. What’s that going to be? You want to get fit, so what? You want to look good. Look good, what else, the other benefits of that? You want to feel great. In fact, interestingly, when you look at any benefit that anyone gets from doing anything, it really boils down to only about one of four things.

Do we either save time, save money, look good, or feel good? You think about any of the reasons we do anything in life. Why does someone come to the dentist? Sometimes it’s about feeling good. For some of us like me, I’ll go every six months. So, feeling good is kind of tick the dentistry’s kind of … That box has been ticked in my life. I feel like that thing’s in control and I don’t like feeling like it’s out of control. For other people, it’s about looking good. Let’s get a new set of teeth or whatever.

Hopefully, that gives you an idea about some of the things you can do if you’re thinking about putting a flyer together. I don’t have a problem with flyers, per se but what is the result for the client? What is the self-serving outcome they’re going to get? It’s not about you. It’s about them. What do they get? What fears have they got and how can you tap into them? As I said, these people talked about family owned and operated. I’ve got to say, that’s all about the business. Most clients, I don’t think they’d care less. Then, what’s this outcome? Fit, look good, feel good, whatever.

Now interestingly, I can’t show you because I took the screenshot on the phone that I’m speaking to at the moment, but I’ve got an ad on my Facebook feed this morning. I thought they did this really well. They had a picture of the outcome. It was an ad for whitening. They had a pretty girl with a nice smile and beautiful looking teeth. That’s the outcome that they’re targeting. They had, I’m just going to read it from down here, “Smile brightened.” That’s very clear what the outcome was. “Confidence boosted.” That’s really interesting, isn’t it? Look good, feel great. And, “Result delivered.” I thought that was really interesting. That’s three things, tangible things, that’s an outcome.

The fear that they might be tapping into there might be that people go, “Oh, but I’m going to spend the money and what if it doesn’t work?” So, there’s got a saying, “Results delivered. Confidence boosted. Smile’s brightened.”

All right, well that’s it for me, for today. At the start of 2018, I’ve already got planned, we’re going to do a series on how to get your practice to stand out. One of the things that I’ve learned from, we had a recent session with a whole bunch of dental clients, because that’s one thing that’s really nagging people. Until next week on Marketing Monday, Angus Pryor signing off. See you later!