Free Offers vs. Free Services
Hey Colin Receveur here. Today is Thursday January 10th. My wife is 40 weeks, due today. So, it’s kind of an exciting day. No baby yet and no we don’t know what the sex is either. But I had a couple quick thoughts I wanted to shoot this quick video on my cell phone and talk about. I want to talk about today: promoting your practice with free offers vs free services. Let me explain a little bit about what I’m talking about. We see a lot of dentists that are using promotional offers on their marketing. Great way to bring in patients. Great way to get new blood into your practice, new patients. You know, make money. The different kinds of offers we see, we see some dentists that are maybe offering a free consult or a free consult and x-ray and we see other dentists that are offering a $49 cleaning and exam or $99 whitening or $79 cleaning, exam, and x-rays, whatever it is. I often get asked, “What do you think is the best kind of offer to pull in patients that appreciate you and appreciate the value that you as a dentist has to offer?” My response is that, you know, think about the mentality of patients you are trying to attract. If you are offering an in-service such as a cleaning or a whitening or a service that patients are coming in thinking that they need you are going to attract people that are just looking for cheap. If you put a Groupon out there and you offer a $49 cleaning you are going to attract people that have a dentist they like, possibly, maybe they don’t like their dentist, but you are going to attract people that are only coming to you cause they want a $49 cleaning vs if you put an offer out there for a free consult or $1 exam and x-ray, now you’re putting an offer out there that somebody that is just looking for cheap is not going to come to you. Now, yeah, they see $1 exam and x-ray, maybe they know they have a problem that they need to get fixed, but the exam and x-ray is not what the patient wants, the patient wants the pain to go away or they want their teeth to be cleaned and they are either teetering on the fence with making a decision to find a new dentist or making a decision to call their existing dentist, maybe they’re just looking for a reason to call somebody new or to call you. They see the $1 exam and x-ray and they pick up the phone and call you because it’s an offer they can’t refuse. They get to come in. There’s no risk, there’s, you know, they’re not going to walk in the door and walk out with $300 bill because they know it’s only $1, I can get checked out, get my x-rays, and then I know what I need and then I can go from there vs you know, what I said before is if you offer the service at a discounted price, now you’re discounting what you do, you’re discounting your services you’re going to attract people that are only looking for cheap services and you’re devaluing what you do. You know, if you do a cleaning for somebody for $49 and then they come back 6 months later or 3 months later if they have “3:43?” issues and now you tell them it’s $119 for a cleaning, exam, x-rays and oral cancer screening, how do you justify the price increase? Now you are arguing with them that oh well they got the special offer before because they only came to you looking for cheap. So, that’s all my thoughts for Thurstday, so keep moving forward.