Today’s show is brought to you by Misty Stern, Executive VP of Marketing and Operations at Audigy Group. Do you have the focus and discipline to find your ideal customer? Don’t try to be everything to everyone!
I want to share with you a little bit of one of the thoughts from one of our key influencers, a gentleman by the name of Al Ries He’s a marketing author strategist. He’s worked with some very large companies, such as Ford, Doritos, Proactiv, the list goes on. He’s written over 20 marketing titles, and he actually came out and consulted with Audigy group a couple of years ago, which was an incredible experience for me professionally. He also wears AGX 9 hearing aids now. So does his wife, which is pretty cool. He’s a testimonial of ours. And in one of Al’s books, entitled Focus, Al talks about this concept. And Al repeats this concept throughout the book, over, and over, and over again. It is the primary premise behind his title, Focus. And that is that the attempt to appeal to everybody is the single biggest mistake a business can make. And I started by trying to get to know your feelings a little bit on marketing, and you guys really need to evaluate your target audience. And not your existing target audience, but I want you to consider, before you really go out and invest in marketing, who your ideal patient is.
The concept here that Al discusses is that, really, the Waldorf-Astoria doesn’t have rooms in the basement of their hotel to compete with the Motel 6, so why would you have price points or services within your business to try and compete with somebody, to capture the audience that you really don’t want within your practice. Now, Al also talks about the fact that there are two different spectrums within business. You’re either on the high end or the low end. Both are fine. The only place you don’t want to be is what he calls the “mushy middle.” Nobody wants to go out and buy a mediocre product or service. Nobody wants a mediocre dentist. People either want to go out and say, I have the most affordable guy in town. And you know he’s affordable? He’s affordable because he doesn’t have expensive artwork on the walls, he keeps his staff lean, I like the way he runs his business operationally. Or, they say, I go to the most elite dentist in town. It’s beautiful. You walk into the practice and you feel like you’re in a spa, and they have paraffin wax, and warm towels, and chocolates, and it’s incredible. Both of those are equally acceptable in Al’s mind. And we try and accommodate both sides of that spectrum in everything that we do.
And keep in mind, being affordable is not necessarily synonymous with being cheap. Those two things are very different. So, define who your target audience is, try and stay out of the mushy middle at all costs, and don’t be greedy, trying to say, I’m going to want to appeal to everybody with this direct mail piece, or my website, or my practice brochure. Because if you do, you’ll alienate all. You have to choose who you want to target in marketing to be successful.