Your Practice Is Like A Record Store

Posted April 19th, 2008

What do you do when you’re not the only game in town?”

By Chuck McKay

One of the most annoying clichés in marketing is the advice to “get your name out there.” Like most clichéd advice, this one keeps being repeated because there is, at its core, a grain of value.

Until people know to ask for you by name, you’ll be limited by the law of averages as you play “Yellow Pages roulette.”

Are you old enough to remember record stores? Big rooms with belt-high shelves displaying record album after album after album. Close your eyes and remember your favorite store. Go ahead. I’ll wait.

Remember your favorite section. It may have been Rock, or Blues, or Show Tunes. First you’d find the section, then you’d browse through your favorite artists looking for new music. Occasionally you’d pick up something that caught your attention from an artist with whom you weren’t familiar, but it was in your favorite section, and probably worth at least a cursory glance.

Our minds are set up much like the old record stores.

Each new bit of information is routed into the right section, then gets filed under the names we recognize.

Getting your name out there is the first step in successful word-of-mouth. And, in the absence of other information, when people are offered alternatives they’ll nearly always choose the more familiar. Prove it to yourself. If you were shopping in the Blues section, would you be more likely to select a new B.B. King album or one by Low Lead Ethel and the Painless Extractions?

This tendency to lean toward the familiar is why the incumbent is so often re-elected. Its why the established chiropractors, dentists, physical therapists, or pediatricians have a major advantage over the new practitioners. People have heard of those established practices. Their names have “gotten out.”

Just as the first category sort in the record store sent shoppers to Classical, Jazz, or Reggae, the first category sort in health care directs patients to gynecology, orthodontia, or midwifery. The problem comes when there’s more than one gynecologist, orthodontist, or midwife. When it comes time to choose between two equally well known (or not so well known) practitioners, patients need additional information.

And that’s the problem with “get your name out there.” It leaves your name, temporarily suspended in short-term memory, without any categorization to assign it a permanent place in your mental filing cabinet.

You need a mental hook.

You need to give people – not just patients, but all of the people who may hear your name when you get it out there – a better way to remember you.

What makes you different, and special? Why would patients choose your practice over someone else’s?

• Do you have office hours that are more convenient for your patients?
• Do you offer treatments or technology that others don’t?
• Do you treat conditions that others avoid?
• Does your practice answer the phones 24/7?
• Does your practice offer supervised child care while Mom is in consultation with the doctor?
• Is yours the practice that never rushes a patient?
• Is yours the practice that never forgets a birthday?
• Can you specialize and become an expert in the health care problems of children, the elderly, or new immigrants?
• Do you have personal characteristics or habits that people know you for (the Singing Dentist)?

If you can’t say “yes” to any of these, then perhaps it’s time you change your practice to become more competitive. That’s one of the advantages of being in practice for yourself.

“Getting your name out there” is only half of the first step to becoming well known.

The second half is to give people an image to associate with your name – something that “sticks” in their minds. Otherwise, yours becomes just another name clamoring for attention; momentarily cluttering up someone’s consciousness before being dismissed as having no immediate value. If people can’t see themselves using your services, they will never pay enough attention to your marketing to even remember having seen / heard / read it.

CRITICAL POINT: Until you offer some competitive difference, no one has any incentive to remember you at all. If you do succeed in catching someone’s attention with your advertising, for goodness sake give them words with which to remember how they feel about your practice.

Those words, and their resultant memory associations, are the first step to creating a brand identity.

So, yes… get your name out there. But get the associations with your name out there, too. Without either one, the other has no value to your prospective patient.

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“Your Practice Is Like A Record Store” Copyright © 2008 Chuck McKay and AdvanceMyPractice.com. All rights reserved.

Chuck McKay is a business consultant in the practice of health care. Questions about telephone procedures and competitive pricing for your health care practice may be directed to ChuckMcKay@ChuckMcKayOnLine.com.