By: Howard Farran, DDS, MBA, MAGD
Publisher, Dentaltown Magazine

Rod Kurthy, DDS is without a doubt my favorite dentist-marketing guru, but my favorite non-dentist marketing guru is Seth Godin. Seth’s book Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable is a must read for you and your entire staff. I bought a dozen! In MBA School they taught us “The Eight Ps of Marketing”: Product, Price, Promotion, Positioning, Publicity, Packaging, Pass-along, and Permission. Seth ads a ninth “P” as he encourages you to become a “Purple Cow”!

If you were on vacation and saw a brown cow along the road, you wouldn’t tell anyone about it, but what if you saw a purple cow? Now that would be something! “Purple cow” describes something phenomenal, fantastic, fun, fresh and exciting! Every day, patients come face to face with a lot of boring dental offices, a lot of brown cows, but you can bet they won’t forget a “purple cow” dental office!

Seth says marketing is not something you do for your service, a purple cow is inherent; it’s built right in. You and your office are either remarkable or invisible. Make your choice. Take Dutch Boy for an example. Dutch Boy noticed that paint cans are heavy, hard to carry, hard to close, hard to open, hard to pour from, and no fun. Yet, they’ve been around for a long time, and most people assumed there had to be a reason.

Dutch Boy realized that there was no reason. It also discovered that the can was an integral part of the product. Dutch Boy used this insight and introduced an easier-to-carry, easier-to-pour-from, easier-to-open and close paint jug. Sales went way up! No surprise when you think about it. This is marketing done right. Marketing where the marketer changes the product or service, not the ads.

In Purple Cow, Seth Godin urges you to put a purple cow into everything you do, to create a dental office staff that is truly noticeable. It’s a manifesto for all dental offices that want to create an office environment that markets itself!

Seth Godin states, “A doctor I know makes a point of calling patients even if it’s not bad news. If your routine tests come back with nothing to worry about, he calls and tells you. This is a monumentally simple task, but it’s remarkable nonetheless. ‘It’s simple,’ he told me, ‘that’s what I want my doctor to do for me.’” Sometimes, in the middle of all the tumult of work, it’s easy to forget that we’re making something for people who care. I LOVE MY DOCTOR. Not just because I’m sick, but also because he spends so much time with me when I visit. I don’t think he does this as a marketing tool – I think he really and truly cares. And it’s remarkable. Remarkable enough that I’ve referred a dozen patients to him.

Seth tells of a store where sitting on the counter is a stack of large business cards. The card lists the name and office phone number of the owner of the store. The card says, “If you have any comments at all about the store, please call me at home.” And it lists the owner’s home phone number. People who visit, notice. People who work there realize that the customers are noticing. It’s all very remarkable. Stand in the store for 20 minutes, and you’re sure to hear one customer mention the cards to another. If every store-owner did this, it probably wouldn’t work. But because it’s so unusual, the customers take notice and the staff is on alert.

Doctor, you can have great surgical skills, fantastic chair-side manners, great prices, and accept the family’s dental insurance, but if the front office receptionist fails, everything fails. The patient doesn’t return. Plus, if the patient experience is a very bad one, she tells all her friends not to go either. Everyone in your office is responsible for marketing your practice.

In 1997, Harry Beckwith told us, in Selling the Invisible, the first rule of service marketing is, “the service itself is the marketing.” When most patients choose a dental office they are not choosing the dentists’ credentials. How often do any of your patients even ask you what dental school you attended? Patients choose dental offices that make them feel good. They tell their friends and family, “I really like them,” “I have a very good feeling about these people,” and “I feel like it is a good dental office home for me.”

The words “like,” “feel,” and “felt” do not refer to logic and reason; they refer to perceptions. Service businesses are about relationships. Relationships are about feelings—perceptions. In good ones, the feelings are good; in bad ones, they are bad. In service marketing a dental office, the logical reasons that you should win their business—your dental competences, your excellence, your talent—just pays for the initial examination. Keeping the patient for years to come is a matter of feelings, and feelings are about personalities.

Great patients are an asset which, when well managed and served, will return a handsome lifetime income stream for your office. Your dental office staff’s first order of business is to retain patient loyalty through continually satisfying their needs in a superior way. Today’s patients want good prices, many choices, top quality, fast delivery, and excellent service—all the time.