“What’s in a name?”, said William Shakespeare. It’s an important question, because it emphasizes how each name carries with it a number of intangibles. Some of those intangibles are benefits, some of them are detriments. What makes a name represent excellence, prestige, and integrity? How do you make your name, or your company’s name, immediately bring to mind these values?
This is the essence of branding: associating a name with the values you want it to evoke in the minds of your customers. There are two ways to go about branding. The first is caveman-style and the second is more like an avalanche.
If you want to build your brand like a caveman, all you have to do is have a message, preferably a catchy one with a jingle, and then spend as much money as you can to put it in front of as many people as you can. If those people are the type of people who can or would buy your product, even better. Here’s an example: “Just do it.” Or another example is: “What’s in your wallet?” Just do what? Why are you asking about my wallet? What’s wrong with it?
This method is called the caveman method because it works only to the degree you beat the association into the heads of your prospective customers. In other words, it works by you throwing money at the problem until it goes away. Undoubtedly, this method works, because most of the largest companies use it and they’re doing just fine. The problem is it’s expensive and it usually lacks two things that will become more and more necessary as our world gets ever noisier: authenticity and clarity. It lacks authenticity, because the association is forced upon us as if it’s self-evident that the company has the traits they say they do, and it lacks clarity because with few exceptions, it doesn’t convey a message that makes you want to have the product. It’s just something the company puts out into the ether hoping it’ll form into the sales they want.
It’s so expensive and requires a herculean effort because people don’t naturally work that way. Branding like a caveman is a bit dumb.
A better, more natural, and more organic approach is to focus on the deliverables, and not just the deliverables, but what advantages the deliverables deliver to your customers, and how that will make their lives better. If the caveman approach is a top-down power play, the avalanche approach is a bottom-up service play. It isn’t as sexy, but it works far better and naturally stays focused.
What’s Amazon’s slogan? When I looked, I couldn’t find one that I’d ever heard of. I have never heard any particular words associated with Amazon, but I’ve felt Amazon’s care for me for as long as I’ve been a customer. That’s because Amazon has a relentless focus on customer satisfaction, to the point that everything else is a distant second for them, and that focus has propelled them to become the largest retailer in the world. If there’s one thing that permeates the entire Amazon organization, it’s customer obsession. Amazon “gets” business, because they understand that the purpose of a business is to have happy customers. Nothing else in business matters as much as delivering maximal value to your customers.
How can this all help you, as a myofunctional orthodontist?
As an orthodontist, you’re not in the business of straightening teeth. Straightening teeth and even widening jaws and opening airways are all merely means to different ends. What your patients really want are more attractiveness, more confidence and charisma, or better sleep, among other things. When your patients know that you’re not just looking to get a job done but are instead looking to help them achieve their own goals, everything changes. Your practice operations and service delivery become more focused on what your patients want, and more importantly, your customers feel you understand them and their desires and you’re working to give them what they want from their lives. This naturally builds trust and since this kind of business is so rare to find, your patients will spread the word on your behalf.
This is how the avalanche builds.
First, you get an effective client acquisition system, second you fine-tune your operations, and third you recycle profits back into the first step, all while using the actual desires of your patients as your north star. When you do this, not only does your business grow very quickly, but you also set yourself and your business apart from all the competition. You’re no longer in the business they are, because you’re selling an experience instead of a commodity.
The power of this approach can’t be overstated.
This is because your practice grows from both the bottom and the top. It grows top-down because of your efforts to advertise and market to new patients, while it also grows from the bottom-up through all your previous patients becoming your advocates because they’ve experienced the exceptional service and customer-oriented focus your practice offers.
Don’t be a caveman. Brand like an avalanche. If you want our help to supercharge your practice’s growth, apply to see if we’re a fit to work together.