The Best Internal Dental Marketing Advice - Take Care of Your Best Patients

Last week I went into the local Salem post office. It's right down the street from our World Headquarters here on Shipping Street.I had sold an item on eBay over the weekend and I wanted to get it shipped off to Australia pronto.Anyway, I get there, box up the camera and buy some packing material at about twice what it should cost (nothing wrong with this I guess, I am a captive audience member, right').I address the box. Fill out my customs form. No tape. I didn't have the box taped up.Gal behind the counter, Amanda, says, "It's right over there on the wall."Over on the wall is a display rack with $4.00 rolls of tape (a whopping 20' at that - which will barely contain the box).I say to her, "You know, I'll just go back to my office and seal this up."She could tell I wasn't happy. But, I thought I'd save it for when I got back, that way, a little steam will have escaped.Arriving about 10 minutes later, box in hand, taped up, with proper postage affixed, I end up in her line again. She smiles, takes care of my box securing all the necessary labels and I pipe up, "Amanda, I'm the third largest mailer here in Salem. My company spends tens of thousands of dollars each and every month on postage. Why is it you have no idea who your good clients are - your top 10% or 5% or even 1% so you can be sure to take care of them - you know 'great' customer service - with something as simple as tape' I wasted 30 minutes of my day on a 2 cent item. Amanda, there ARE other choices for shipping boxes. I guess in the future I will just use them instead since being a top spending customer of the postal service really doesn't matter or count."Her response, "Well, if we gave you tape we'd have to give everyone tape."Come on... What kind of ridiculous mentality is that'Does your team know who your best patients/clients are' Do they get deferential treatment' Are they handled with kid gloves' Or, lead-lined gloves' Do you know' To me, something as important as your best clients ought to involve a system of how to treat them.If I ever caught or catch one of my team giving anything less than top-notch service to any of my clients, top spender or not, they're on the way out the door. They can find a job better suited for themselves at the post office. Don't you think'Action-To-Take Tip: Put together a list of your top patients; the ones that you would consider to be the most loyal and who spend the most time and money at your practice. Share the list with your staff and stress to them the importance of treating these people extraordinarily well. The retention of these patients (and their great referrals), should be a good enough reason to put a little more focus on them.

5 Multi Functional Promotional Items



Every organisation that is in business uses them for some purpose or the other. The vast plethora of promotional items offers numerous options to choose from.  Most promotional items have a single function to offer to the recipient. But there are some multi functional promotional items that serve many purposes. Here are five multi functional promotional items that will suit best to your promotional requirement.

 

 

• Promotional mouse mats that are integrated with additional features such as calculators, clocks or wrist rests are great multi functional promotional items. You can add one or more interesting features to the simple promotional mouse mat and enhance its utility quotient manifold.

 

• Promotional mugs are yet another item that can be used in more than one ways. Apart from performing their basic purpose of serving your favorite beverage promotional mugs make for great penholders too. You can use them the way you want. Pour you favourite beverage into these mugs or stack in all your stationary items to make it a wonderful penholder. The same promotional mug can be used in more than one ways; all you need is a bit of innovation and creativity.

 

• The simple promotional pen can also be moulded to make it a multi functional promotional pen. Pens of more than single colours can be integrated into a single pen offering much more utility. Apart from multi coloured pens, adding other additional features to promotional pens can also be quite a good option. Promotional pens with integrated features such as a measuring tape or a caribner clip also make for a multi functional promotional item.

 

• Business card holders are a simple item that is meant to stack in all your business cards. Although business card holders are meant to serve a single purpose but a little creativity can turn them into a multi functional promotional item. The same business card holders can be used to stuff in some stationary items or other important pieces of paper. You could alternatively use a business card jacket as a wallet. Thus the same business card holder can serve more than one purpose.

 

• Promotional keyrings with additional features such as a light, bottle opener, pen or anything else can also make for multi function promotional items. Promotional keyrings are extremely cheap so adding some more features won’t have any major effects on your budget.

 

For all these multi functional promotional mouse mats and much more visit online stores.

Article Tags: Multi Functional Promotional, Functional Promotional Items, Multi Functional, Functional Promotional, Promotional Items, Features Such, Business Card, Card Holders

A single email is never enough



A single email is never enough
By JD Burson - 02/17/03

“Repetition is the key to advertising (marketing)”. Those words were said by a friend of mine, Jason Olson, back in his days of selling radio and direct mail ads.

Jason, now the owner of Ultimate Web Designing (ultimatewebdesigning), said that a particular business owner was willing to buy a single month of advertising to see if it would be cost effective to do a full ad campaign. Jason told him that the consumer needs to be “hit” with the marketing message repeatedly in order for them to take in the message, understand it, and take action.

This also applies to email marketing. A very small percentage of people will respond immediately while others need to see your message a number of times before they even think about responding to your offer.

It has been said that nearly 70% of the market is made up of those people who take their time, shop around, and need to see offers more than a few times before giving them any consideration.

Therefore, your goal is to effectively reach, persuade, and motivate this large segment…which is nearly impossible to do with a single mailing. Repeating your marketing message is essential to attract this all important group.

Statistics have shown that the majority of sales occur in the follow-up process. However, you’ll need to do so in a timely, consistent, and convincing manner.

Repetition helps the consumer comprehend your offer, emphasizes how it would benefit them, and reinforces the urgency. Try revamping your next email marketing campaign into a string of messages and you will likely see a major improvement over individual mailings.

By creating a sense of “NOW” with your email recipients, and reinforcing that urgency in subsequent mailings, you influence and guide your unresponsive prospects into action. Also, try adding an extra incentive with each mailing and your offer will become more valuable and more difficult to pass-up.

Email marketing campaigns can be entirely automated with autoresponders. Your series of pre-written follow-up email messages can be automatically delivered to someone who responds to your offer or requests more information.

Keep in mind that your email marketing campaign is only for your opt-in subscribers. Just as repeating your offer can increase the response rate, unsolicited email (spam) can increase your chances of earning a bad reputation.

Conclusion…In order for any marketing campaign to work, the majority of your market needs to see your offer more than once. When an offer is seen over and over, people will start to remember it and realize the importance of it.

Article Tags: Single Email, Email Marketing, Marketing Campaign

Three Ways To Keep Customers Loving Your Business



Your relationship with your customers is like a muscle, when worked on it grows big and strong, but when ignored it will dwindle to almost nothing at all. Your relationship with your customers is of the utmost importance to the survival of your business. Customers who feel comfortable and have good a good relationship with the business or person will continue patronize that business.

Many business owners think that building a relationship with a client consist of greeting them warmly, and not being rude during a transaction. The fact is there are three main factors involved in maintaining a strong relationship with your clients.

First and foremost, taking care of your customers is vital. If a person attempts to do business with you and is met with irritated sales people who give attitude and that is all, then that person will most likely not be giving you return business. People want to know that the salesperson cares about their satisfaction and happiness. Find the tactics that work best for your place of business and make sure that you and your employees, if you have them, put the tactics to good use. A satisfied customer will be you most loyal ally in return business. An important thing to remember is that a disgruntled customer will tell every person they know about the bad service they received from your business, while a satisfied person may only tell two or three people of the good service. So make sure every client has a pleasant experience at your place of business and you will see positive results follow.

The second thing to remember is to price fairly. Everyone needs to make a profit to stay in business, and most consumers understand that, but no one likes to feel like they got ripped off. So price reasonably and you will find customers will buy when they feel they have received a good deal, and you will find that you have made a profit. A content customer will always return to the place they had a pleasant shopping experience.

Your third tip for keeping consumers in love with your business, and giving you return business, is to remind them about your company. No matter what good intentions a customer may have, they cannot give you return business if they forget you exist. People are busy these days and many will get swept up in everyday errands and life in general, so take time to remind your customers that your business is still up and running, waiting for their return. Advertising helps remind them about what you have for them, and what is new in your store.

By following theses simple tips you will work your customer service ‘muscle’ and find it growing strong. With strong customer service you will be building a solid foundation for your business in the years to come.

Article Tags: Return Business

Digital Marketing and iPhone 4



The week of June 13 2009 saw the introduction of official pre-orders for Apple’s newest device, the iPhone 4. Within minutes of going live, Apple’s iPhone store was brought to its knees by the millions of users scrambling to secure their new iPhone. This incredible demand seems to cement smartphones as the current must have piece of technical hardware, as many users feel the iPhone 4 finally justifies them making a leap into the smartphone space. New features such as a LED flash, a front facing camera, FaceTime technology - which finally allows for easy face to face video phone calls - a 3 axis gyro for more precision tilting and the long awaited introduction of multi-tasking promise new functionality and the ability for even more advanced applications. In addition, the new iPhone holds a battery that promises 40% longer life, allowing users to stay connected and remain in touch with their networks and friends. In this article we will examine a few ways in which Internet Marketing experts can leverage the capabilities of Apple’s iPhone 4 to reach and communicate with their audiences.

 

FaceTime – One of the surprises of Apple’s iPhone 4 announcement was the reveal of FaceTime. This software utilizes the new front facing camera to allow for out of the box video phone calls among any iPhone 4 users. However, this new FaceTime technology not only offers users the ability to finally conduct video calls, it also offers some interesting opportunities for marketers.

 

Let’s say an iPhone user has downloaded a free, ad supported application for listening to music online. As they are listening to some music one day, they see an ad come up on their screen showing a new pair of wireless headphones made specifically for their iPhone. The ad shows images of the headphones and touts their quality, but also invites the user to click the ad for a live demo. Intrigued, the user clicks the ad and is immediately connected with a customer service representative. The rep is able to show off the headphones, explain the details of how they work, the quality of sound they deliver and elaborate on the procedure for setting them up. If the user has any specific questions, they can be answered at that time, and the service rep can even make the sale at that point if the user is sufficiently impressed with the product.

 

 

This type of immediate interactive communication with a brand can extend into any product type or service imaginable. The only limitation is the imagination of the marketer and the resources of the company. However, when possible to implement, this sort of customer experience is certainly going to be a major component of the future of mobile and Online Marketing.

 

Domenic Carlson writes on behalf of inSegment, Boston’s leader in Internet Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, and the home of Online Marketing.

Article Tags: Apple’s Iphone

pens are budget but quality gifts

Other promotional items are not so renowned since pens are so flexible in style and in price.

Printed pens are not only popular for their versatility but for their effective advertising ability. They are very often carried around by many because they are always needed. A pen is usable by any person, anywhere.

Most of the time the marketing pen includes the company name and logo printed on the pen. Businesses normally gift promotional items because they want to say thank you to their valued clients or because they want to increase their sales. Promotional pens are very popular during conference season and are always on offer at every stall.

A specific variety of pens have the versatility to be connected with a strap so that people can have them around the necks for easy access and better visibility. They can also be used as part of promotional packages that may include notepads, erasers, mouse mats and other desktop items.

Promotional pens are often the first kind of promotional item to be considered by businesses and they are used by big and small companies alike. Different companies have different budgets for promotional merchandise and thus the printed pen varies from company to company.

The personalized pens’ success does not change according to the amount of money the business spends on the item

How to Advertise a Home Based Business



1. Advertise Your Business in the Media.

You might have already ruled out advertising your home based business in the media as too expensive. The chances are your audience doesn't live in any specific geographic area. That mostly rules regional newspapers, radio and TV. You should start looking at the specialist media for your type of business and stop looking at the general media placements. For example, if you run an online business website, you could advertise it in specialist online home business magazines, and even on cable channels that show programs about home businesses or making money online opportunities.

2. Write Your Business Website Address on Things.

Whether it's a carrier bag, a product, or just on the front door of your office, make sure to write your business website address on there. Even if your potential customers don't remember or keep your exact business website address, it at least lets them know that your online business presence exists.

3. Go to Special Business Industry Events.

If there's a trade fair for the industry your business is promoting, turn up to it and market your business. Even if there aren't that many people there, the ones who are could be influential, and can get your business talked about, creating free publicity.