Episode Transcript
Key Takeaways
- Your business is the foundation of your brand, not the other way around.
- Branding is often a costly endeavor that small practices can’t afford.
- A brand is built through consistent good business and customer interactions.
- Direct response marketing is more effective than brand marketing for small practices.
- Focus on improving business practices and customer experiences to naturally build a brand.
Introduction to Branding
Your brand isn’t the foundation of your business. Your business is the foundation of your brand.
Welcome to Practice Perfect, episode number two. On this episode, we’re going to talk about a subject that is probably going to piss off your marketing company. It may anger your advertising firm, but it’s a subject that is crucially important to your practice, and your understanding of this and rejecting common beliefs and misconceptions is what’s going to take you to the next level.
The Reality of Branding Costs
I’m talking about branding, and I’m going to talk to you about how to create a brand when you can’t afford branding. The reality is that most cosmetic practices, most medical practices, most medispas can’t truly afford the cost of branding. It’s a buzzword. It’s something that is pushed by all of the big advertising firms because they’re dealing with corporations with enormous budgets, and those corporations can afford to spend that money, waste that money, use that money to create something out of nothing.
Corporate Identity vs. Brand
The biggest lie you’ve been told about branding is this, that you need branding. The fact of the matter is that you don’t, and I’m going to tell you about that a little later on in the program. Before we get to that, I want to talk a little bit about what a brand is. Don’t confuse a brand with corporate identity, and by that I mean that your practice needs a logo.
Your practice needs to look professional. Your practice needs to have a beautiful presence online and in print when you give your materials out. That’s not a brand. That is just your identity.
The Essence of a Brand
A brand is the connection. It’s the interaction. It’s everything that puts your patient in touch with your practice and the experience that they have.
It’s, if we go back to the analogy of the person, it’s what happens when you walk up to them and you say hello. Do they say hello back? Are they friendly? Do they smile at you?
Building a Brand Through Good Business
What it boils down to is that the brand is really nothing more than doing good business consistently, period. If you want to build your brand, you start to do good business. And that emotional connection, the connection between your customer and your practice and the business that you do together, that will foster a brand in the marketplace.
The Pitfalls of Forced Branding
The other thing I want you to get is that doing forced branding, the way that the large corporations do, takes a significant amount of money. And I’m talking millions and millions and tens of millions of dollars.
The hard truth is that 90% of products, product launches in general, fail.
Focus on Business, Not Branding
The other reality I want you to understand is that for the most part, if you’re a surgeon, what you have is a transactional relationship with your patients.
They come in for their surgery and then they probably don’t want to hear from you for the next 10 years, right? They’ve gotten their breasts or their tummy tuck or their facelift and they really don’t want to talk to you further. They’re not branded to your practice.
Direct Response Marketing
You can further fund your brand evolution by investing in your social media interaction, the quality of your videos, right? Content for your website, creating an authority around your practice and convincing people to come in and do business with you. And the way to do that is not with brand marketing. It’s with what’s called direct response marketing.
Conclusion
If you want a brand, don’t worry about the brand. Do good business, truly serve your patients, and do it over and over and over, and you won’t ever have to worry about your brand. Your brand will dominate the market without any help from the outside.
Thanks for listening to Practice Perfect. I hope this episode’s given you a lot to think about. I hope you’ve got actionable ideas that you can take back to your practice and go back and make changes, make improvements, and take it to the next level. If you want show notes and additional help and advice and articles on how to grow your practice, visit us at thinkbasis.com, where we hold the podcast.