Branding Strategies in Today’s Market
As we discussed in Part 1, it’s fun to compare things now to things back in the day. In the event you couldn’t tell, I particularly enjoy those comparisons as they relate to practice marketing, and as Dane here at THRIVE (young marketing guy) and I (old marketing guy) compare notes on marketing then and now, I’m glad to share some of that dialogue specifically as it relates to your practice branding strategy.
Let’s review some things we’ve established in the conversation to date:
• My working definition of Marketing is anything you do to cause and sustain value. Two verbs, one noun.
• Much of the foundational thinking/strategy in marketing has not changed in my nearly four decades. What has changed big time is where and how we deliver it.
• We talked about consumer behavior (which is a fancy marketing term for preferences). Bottom line: If consumers (patients and potential patients) know what you know, they behave. So marketing is about teaching consumers to know what you know. When it comes to healthcare, including yours, the vast majority of consumers value thoroughness and quality over price and distribution. No contest.
You think about eyes and eye care more in a week (perhaps a day) than most patients do in their lifetimes. They do NOT know what you know. Marketing is about teaching them what you know, and by doing so, we can achieve that Amazing Patronage.
• In my experience, marketing is about four simple elements of patronage in exactly this chronological order of desired impact:
1. Perception of value (ALL patronage stems from here)
2. Customer (patient) retention
3. Revenue-Per-Customer (patient)
4. New customers (patients)
• Regardless of the old industry thinking, marketing, as a subject, is not an ethics issue. The ethics issue, whether a TV ad then or a website now, is the message marketed.
• We can save you a bunch of tuition and reduce marketing school into six fundamental rules. We’ve talked about these rules now for decades, and in Part 1, we featured Marketing Rule #5 – Name everything to market it.
• Branding strategy is a critical core component of marketing, then and now. The purpose of branding is simply to teach people who don’t know what you know, to know what you know with a few very deliberately chosen words (definitely not hearing that definition in marketing school). Whether that’s the practice, a specialty within it, a service, a product, or better yet, a program composed of several services and products (everyone has your services and products, no one has your PROGRAMS).
• Think of branding like current in a river. The right brand (for practice, specialty, service, product, program), and you’re rowing with the current. The wrong brand, and you’re rowing against it. You can move the boat either way, but which is easier?
So moving on, here’s how I’ve experienced many a branding conversation.
Tom: With the new (associate, location, buy-in, buy-out, remodel, whatever), this seems a strategic time for us to consider a branding change …
Colleague: But Tom, we’ve been (The Wrongly Branded Vision Center) for three generations …
Tom: Understood, but we’re rowing against the current with that brand. Seems like a great time to get the current working with us and not against us.
Colleague: But we don’t want to confuse our current patients and make them think something changed or someone took over the practice. (I completely get that concern, Colleagues, particularly these days with all the acquisitions happening in the eye care industry right now).
Tom: Right. And they won’t. We can easily manage that message, but for starters, how many times have you been asked by an established patient to whom they should make out the check? Doesn’t that tell us something? As your patient, they know YOUR name (Doctor), and they want to know YOU AND YOUR TEAM are in the picture (patrons can get just as excited about the new (and vastly better) brand as we can!
The point is this – if it’s time to row with the current, let’s do it. It’s not hard, and the sooner we start rowing with the current, the sooner we see results of that (growth).
OK, if we’re going to rebrand, or brand a new practice, let’s talk strategy.
I always chuckle when I drive by a place called “Gentle Dentistry.” I think to myself, “Hmm… I wonder what would happen if they changed their brand to “Painful Dentistry?” … think anyone would be in a hurry to go in that place?
But I have to hand it to them. They followed what I call Marketing Rule #5 to a T. And as a marketing guy, that has me wondering about their strategies for branding within the brand. Did they think branding all the way through? Do they have a program called something like the Smile VIP Preferred Patient Program for us private pay patients? Or the Starting Smiles Program (with the brochure and the whole bit) as a specific branding strategy for building the pediatric practice within the practice? Or better yet, did they brand the pediatric specialty separately (sort of like Disney World and EPCOT or Walmart and Sam’s Club – same “practice,” different targeting). So, we brand our specialties to appeal in a specialized way to a specialized consumer. We don’t have to be a Fortune 500 company to leverage the exact same strategy. It could be as simple as something like The Sports Vision Training Center inside of Lifetime Vision.
Another great Branding Strategy that works well in private practice is what I call The Kenmore Approach. Granted, Sears (once arguably the strongest brand in the world) got majorly outmaneuvered by today’s versions, but by sheer strength of brand (and brand loyalty), somehow Kenmore (a brand within that brand) has stayed in the game. And it’s not just the dish washer. It’s also the fridge, water cooler, washing machine, oven and the rest.
So, let’s bring that home. Perhaps we develop in the practice our Complete Care Line (our Kenmore) of services. For example, we could have our Complete Care Contact Lens Program (oven) and our Complete Care Children’s Vision Program (fridge). Then there are the other “appliances” under that line, built around specialties like dry eye, vision therapy or nutrition.
Remember our conversation about consumer behavior – when they know what you know, they behave. Right? And branding is about teaching people who don’t know what you know, to know what you know with a few deliberate words. What do you think would happen tomorrow if you threw these new brands up on an external sign with good visibility in the same location you’ve always been? My guess is you’d soon have your proof of the effectiveness of a great branding (or rebranding) strategy.
So is all this branding and rebranding expensive? It doesn’t have to be. With digital marketing platforms driving the message to our patrons (and potential patrons), we have much greater control over what promoting the brand costs than when we had to fork over to ad agencies or market-owning media to get the word out for us. One of the great things about marketing now vs marketing then is that with social media, website and even signage opportunities, we can spool the market up on our brand (or rebrand) strategies faster and vastly less expensively than back in the day. Again, marketing (like branding) hasn’t changed all that much, but distributing it certainly has.
Like all the Blog Posts and the Podlectures, Colleagues, the purpose of this conversation is to keep us thinking about and driving toward IMPACT. As we put the wraps on our Marketing/Branding Strategies Then and Now conversation, I have a question for you. Remember BankAmericard? (I asked Siri to spell that for me to know if it was one word or two –’she’ couldn’t even come up with it!) You know, the credit card that paved the way back in the day for the way we pay for stuff now. Many colleagues this day and age have never even heard of it. But they’ve certainly heard of VISA, right?
And so I ask us, Colleagues … does branding (and rebranding) strategy work? I think we know the answer to that!
As always, if it would be helpful to talk more about these and other strategies, shoot me a line (tbowen@mythrivecoaches.com). That’s exactly why we’re here, and we love the dialogue!