The Language Your Patients Speak
I want to talk a little bit about the ancient city of Babylon, you’ve probably heard about the city from the Bible, the ancient city that is talked about Babylon and the languages there everybody spoke different languages. If you really go back to the core if you say the Hebrew Bible and you look up the root of what Babylon means, the definition of babyl means confusion, if you look at the verb form of babyl which I’m not sure I’m going to pronounce this correctly but it’s bibyl it means to confuse. Why am I talking about Babylon on a dental marketing video? In many dental practices the language that you’re speaking is not being heard by your prospects, your patients, your prospective patients are speaking a completely different language than what you’re speaking when you’re trying to market to them about how you can help them. Many dentists out there, dentistry is not just a job to them it’s a profession, it’s a hobby, it’s their passion and when you’re very passionate about something it’s hard to remove yourself and think about how the other side feels. It’s been said many times that the smartest people in their given field are horrible educators because they assume that the other side knows things that they don’t and when you’re trying to educate your patients, when you’re trying to market to your patients and speak to them they don’t hear the same things you’re talking about. I did an interview with Dr. Woody Oaks last year and Woody made the comment that a lot of dentists spend more time selecting their new handpiece than they did selecting their spouse that they spend all kinds of time trying to get the right tools, the right equipment and the next greatest thing that’s going to help out their patients but they don’t relay it to their patients in a way that their patients can understand the benefits and that is what your patients are looking for. You have to speak the language of benefits, translate that new handpiece into something in emotional terms and how that’s going to effect that patients life. That new handpiece, it’s not just the latest thing and it does x and x rpms and it can prep a crown with these new diamond drill bits and x this and all this so much faster . Here’s what it means to the patient: 80% less noise, don’t like the buzzing sound and the noises that you’re custom to hearing at the dentist, this new handpiece that we have you won’t have any of that, less time in the chair, you don’t like to have dentists’ fingers in your mouth, that’s ok, with this new equipment this high-tech stuff and equipment we have you’re now going to spend 60% less time in the chair, there’s all kinds of different pain free tools out there these days. There’s topical creams you can put on, there’s different types of syringes and all kinds of stuff out there that is coming out these days that is doing painless injections. Don’t talk buzz words talk in plain simple terms: we can give you an injection we can numb you up and you’re never even going to feel it. Fear of the dentist: did you have a previous bad dental experience? We can fix that. That is the language that your patients are hearing, make sure you’re speaking that language. Things patients are going to look for in a dentist: they want to know the dentist is experienced and skilled and has the latest equipment. What they don’t particularly care about or they don’t necessarily understand is it’s your job to educate them so that they understand is what the alphabet soup of accreditations and continuing education actually means. Don’t just list all of your credentials on your website or on a brochure tell them what that means to them, what does it mean the you went to the Las Vegas institute, what does it mean that you went to Portugal to study under Dr. Mallow and you have all this all on four training, what does that mean to the patient? When you can speak the language of the benefits you’ll attract more of the patients that you want.