Compelling messages are unique in a number of ways. There is no universal one. Each compelling message addresses a specific audience. This is called message to market match.
Each compelling message has a proposition tied to it. What is the proposition? It is the message that describes what is being offered. Often the proposition will be up front in the headline. Sometimes it can be in the subhead following the headline. Often the proposition will be the device used to get the attention of the prospective patient.
Some marketers make the major error of never offering one or hiding it somewhere deep within the bowels of the piece. And you know what can of results that happen when you hide one of the most important things deep in the bowels – you get deep in the bowels results!
Any marketing piece that needs to describe an offering whose value is not commonly well understood will need to educate the prospect on the value of the offering. This often requires larger pieces and/or longer copy.
A point about copy: as long as the copy is interesting to your targeted market, they will read it. Copy that is dull or tedious or plain boring will repel the prospect. For those without interest in the offering, any copy is too long! Yes, copy should be edited to ensure its punch. At the same time, copy should be long enough to do the job required to sell the offering. You wouldn’t put yourself or a team member on a word budget when speaking to a patient or prospective one! Your copy needs to be long enough to persuade and no more.
Your prospect will want to know who you are and why she should buy from you versus every other option. When an offering can be provided by many different dentists, your prospects need reasons why to choose you. If you are the only one offering a service or product, that alone can be reason enough to choose you. That is seldom the case anymore.
So you should tell what makes you and your offering unique and the best choice for your prospect. This is part of the “reasons why” marketing first written about over fifty years ago.
Another component of who you are and why you are the best choice is:
What is your practice promise? This is often described as the unique selling proposition. Rosser Reaves introduced the concept of the Unique Selling Proposition in his book, “Reality in Advertising” way back in 1961.
It is what helps to set you apart from your competition. Most practices have no idea that they need one. And this can be difficult for the few practices that do recognize its power to articulate well. As always, one of the rules of success once again makes it presence known: the successful do what the unsuccessful know to do, but choose not to. Strangely, those that don’t do complain and find all manners of excuses or “reasons” not to do; while the successful merely take it all in stride and DO what needs to be done to be successful.
A brief summary of the questions you need to answer as described here:
Who are you?
Why should I choose you versus every other option?
What is your proposition?
What is your practice promise?
You will be well served by taking these four questions up with yourself and then your team as a discussion. You are likely to uncover very useful truths you can use not only in making compelling offers, but also in everyday conversation with patients. Be careful to not get hung up in the natural overlap of the answers. One other thing: get specific as possible and avoid platitudes.
Best,
Charley
Copyright 2010 Charles W Martin