Are your direct mail marketing strategies costing you a fortune, yet yielding disappointing results? Learn how you can avoid wasting thousands of dollars on your dental postcard marketing campaigns. Discover the 3 most common direct mail marketing pitfalls that can derail the profitability of your postcard marketing efforts.

Did you know that most family dental practices use postcards to advertise? Perhaps you’re among the over 89% of American family dentists that have used direct mail marketing dental postcards to help grow their businesses.

Whether your practice uses dental postcards for recall, appointment reminders, to get new patients, or for marketing cosmetic dentistry services to existing patients — understanding how to effectively use this direct mail marketing tool is key.

Although postcards are less expensive than many other direct mail marketing pieces, many family dentists waste tens of thousands of dollars, by not understanding how to use them correctly. I don’t want you to be one of them! Let’s take a look at some of the most costly dental postcard marketing mistakes.

Mistake #1: Failing to Craft a “Get Response” Offer

If I were to send you a direct mail marketing postcard that read something like the offer below, would you feel compelled to respond — or trash my efforts?

Offer Headline: “Get a healthy smile and a dentist you can count on year after year”

Okay, let’s be honest. This dental postcard headline makes you want to rush right to the phone and give this dentist a call, right? I’m afraid not. It doesn’t matter much (or have any impact on response rates) that this dentist’s postcard marketing company included some absolutely awesome high resolution, brightly colored graphics of gleaming white smiles. It also doesn’t matter that he upgraded his postcards to include a quality paper stock, with extra high gloss for that added “dazzle”. Okay, you and your entire staff think that your postcards look amazing — but are they doing the job of attracting more quality new patients?

Successful direct mail marketing dental postcards precisely convey a strong offer and call to action.

Mistake #2: Failing to Target Your “Ideal Patient”

Every postcard marketing campaign that you engage in should be precisely aimed at your ideal patient. If your family practice has more than one ideal patient target profiled, you should be sure to use “offer-specific targeting” to ensure that:

your direct mail response offer is developed using the precise, hot button triggers that speak to the urgent and compelling needs and/or desires of each target profiled. all headlines, body copy and graphics work together to compliment each of your response offers and target audience.I am mentioning these two points, because the majority of the dental postcard marketing campaigns that I’ve evaluated, are missing these two absolutely vital elements.

Mistake #3: Failing to Create a Sales Progression Cycle with Lead Capture

No matter what business you’re in, direct mail marketing works best when you have a sales progression system in place that focuses primarily on generating qualified leads. These warm leads are then converted into long term patients, through a well planned buying cycle. If your dental postcard marketing efforts don’t focus on lead generation, I am quite certain that you are wasting money on your advertising and losing profitability through missed opportunities.

Why? Because not everyone who receives your offer will be ready to act. Many prospective patients receiving your dental postcards may be interested in your offer, but not quite ready to make the decision to buy. So, why should you waste thousands of dollars sending these same prospects the same or similar messages if they’re actually interested?

Instead, create a sign up form on your website — or a phone number they can call to get a free information pack, etc.

Fix Your Troubled Marketing!

Don’t waste another penny of your hard earned marketing dollars. Avoid making these costly direct mail postcard marketing mistakes, by learning how to squeeze out the maximum profitability you deserve. Get better response rates from your dental postcards! Be an informed dental practice marketer — download a free copy of my eye-opening marketing guide at www.DentalMarketing911.info.Image Source: http://images.google.com