New Patient Welcome Kit for Dental Practices

New patients are the life and blood of a modern dental practice. With lots of new patients coming in the door, your dental practice grows and flourishes. How you indoctrinate and orientate a new patient when they first visit will determine to a large degree your patient retention.

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New Patient Welcome Kit

One very important tool for creating a good impression of your dental practice is a New Patient Welcome Kits. Patient Welcome Kits serve a very important purpose in modern dentistry. They help you to create a good first impression, make new patients feel wanted and like they are part of a family or a community rather than just a customer.

New Patient Welcome Kits are a great way to make your practice come across as personal yet professional.

The purpose of your New Patient Welcome Kit is to inform patients about your practice, but also to endear them to it. A good New Patient Welcome Kit walks the balance between being useful without being too dry, while also making sure the new patient goes away with a good image of your practice.

To help you out, here are a few of the things you need to bear in mind when designing welcome packs for your dental practice:

Starting Point: How Do You Want To Come Across?

How do you want to present your practice? Do you want to create a feeling of fun? Professional? Casual? Business-like? The contents of your welcome kit can go a long way towards improving the image patients have of your practice if you do it right. A good graphic designer can help you build your New Patient Welcome Kit so it will come across how you want.

What Information Do You Want To Include?

  1. Include all of the information they need to be treated at your practice with no issues. There are a few things you will need to include:
    • Your opening times.
    • Your contact information is a must; your patients need to know how and when they can make an appointment.
    • Financing options.
    • Payment terms.

Welcome Kit Sample

Beyond the above, the contents of your welcome packs are up to you. Some idea starters are:

  • You might find that you want to give your patients a bit of background information on your practice, or describe its ethos and values. If you feel that a certain piece of information would be interesting to your patients then include it.
  • Use a lot of photos of staff helping patients. Nothing helps build a feeling of warmth than a good photo.
  • Patient testimonials. Use liberally in your New Patient Welcome Kit. Try to use the words of your existing patients to create a feeling of community. Photos of patients with the testimonials will go a long way. If possible show before and after photos.
  • A New Patient Welcome Kit is an ideal way to promote specialties and profit centers of your practice. If your practice is an expert in specific procedure or has special equipment you do not want to go overboard with technical detail. If you do, your patient’s eyes will gloss over and they will lose interest, FAST. A good way to break up technical information is by using a patient testimonial. Let your patients tell how you can help them.
  • Present practice specialties in a problem and solution format. Present a problem and demonstrate how your practice provides a solution to that problem.

Click Here For Pricing On Welcome Kits

How To Make It Attractive

A New Patient Welcome Kit is an important part of your dental practice’s branding and as such it should tie in with and support every other part of your practice.

A New Patient Welcome Kit should contain a multi-page brochure, Care to Share Referral Cards, assorted novelty items like note pads, tooth brush, stickers, etc. It is up to you as to what to include. You can invest as little or as much as you feel you need to. The important part is the brochure you need it to sell your practice.

You might want to make your welcome kits brightly colored, or keep them subtle. Wilson Printing USA can help you create a custom New Patient Welcome Kit for your practice.

©2005-2020 Mark Hale, All Rights Reserved

How Sexy is Your Marketing?

What is “Sexy” Marketing?

The term sex appeal has been used in marketing since the mid 1960’s. Typically it means using a scantily dressed model to sell some product. Marketers found out that using these models attracted attention. Early on, it worked. Then over the years the art of using sex appeal has degraded to the point that most of the ads you see today are only selling sex and fall far short of getting a product sold.

The 3 things all advertising has to accomplish are: 1) attract attention, 2) impinge a message on the viewer and 3) get someone to buy something. (You can do that without using a half naked body.)

How can you use sex appeal to create more business? It is probably not how you think!

To understand exactly what your ad needs to do to have “sex appeal” and be effective, we need to start by defining some terms:

  • Attention – The concentration of the mental powers upon an object; a close or careful observing or listening. 2. Observant consideration; notice.
  • Impinge – to have an effect; make an impression.
  • Sex appeal – n. desirability, attractiveness, allure, glamour, sensuality, magnetism, sexiness, oomph.

How Sexy is Your MarketingYou will notice in the definition of “Sex Appeal” that only two of the descriptive definitions are about sex or bodies. Most of the descriptions have to do with appeal and creating an attraction to something. For marketing purposes any advertising that creates interest and desire for a product could be considered to have “Sex Appeal.”

How you use sex appeal depends on who the target audience is for the advertising. The target audience would also determine what type of medium you would use; postcard, direct mailer, full color self mailing brochure, billboard, TV or radio advertising. Even your business cards, stationery and pocket folders should be designed so they appeal and impinge on your target audience.

Look at your company’s marketing materials, do they attract and demand attention?

Lets talk about impingement. Have you ever seen a billboard with a compelling message that made you look twice? Or how about an intriguing direct mail piece that you just had to open? Do you remember what the ad said? If not, the ad did a good job of getting attention but fell short of impinging a message to you.

There are ways to build a message so that it attracts attention. The use of color, a bold headline and a photo are important elements. The use of eye trail is also very important. Eye trail is the design technique of catching the attention of the viewer with some element in the ad and then directing their eye (and attention) through the ad and ending up at the call-to-action section of ad. But impingement comes from how you put these things together.

Need Help Designing a Sexy Postcard? Click Here.

The overall ad has to communicate to your target audience. A large part of the reason a piece of advertising impinges is that it contains information on what your prospects and customers need and want. To get that information you need to survey your customers and prospects to find out what they need and what problem they are trying to solve by buying your product. With this information you have the basic building materials to create effective marketing and advertising.

After the advertising is created the next step is to do a flash test survey of the completed ad. Simply take the ad and show it to a customer for about 10 seconds and then ask them what they got from the ad. NOTE: It is best to show the ad to a customer not an employee. Showing your advertising to your employees or sales people is usually a bad idea because you will get invalid feedback on the ad. Your employees are definitely more educated about your product or service than your customers and they will have a different viewpoint about your product or service than your customers. Your customers and prospects, the people whom you are trying to influence and sell something to, are generally uneducated about your company and your products and services. Since you are trying to sell to the uneducated only their viewpoint matters. You want to find out if the ad gets the attention of your customers and if the message impinges on them.

You want to find out:

1. What did the ad communicate to them?

2. What did they remember from the ad?

We have put together a 10-point checklist to help you build an effective ad whether you decide to use our company or not. Our graphic artists can help you design effective postcards and direct mail pieces. We design and print other materials as well. At some point, if you don’t already have it, you need a total image package to tie together all of your marketing so that everything is going in one direction.

Do you want effective marketing that creates customers for you business? As you can see marketing your company is a full time job. Our company acts as a marketing arm for many of our clients saving them time and money.

I hope this information helped you. If we can do anything to help your company to be more successful please give us a call.

©2005-2014 Mark Hale, All Rights Reserved

10 Tips for Writing Sales Letters That Sell

Writing Sales Letters That Sell

Do you want an effective, low cost means of generating leads for your business? You have several tools available to you in your small business marketing tool chest. One of these tools is a sales letter.

Sales letters can be a very powerful tool for creating leads and sales for your business. Sales letters are a simple and direct way to generate interest in your services.

Writing a sales letter is a different animal than designing a postcard, but the two do share some common traits. A sales letter is more dependent on language and the written word to tell and sell a story, so copywriting skills become vital.

Some common questions you may have about sales letters are: How do I start a letter? What should I say in the letter? How long should the letter be? And, will sales letters be effective for my business?

I’ve been creating successful direct mail programs for small and medium size businesses, including sales letters, for many years. And I’ve learned that writing a letter is like building a house. You start with a good solid foundation.

The sales letter foundation is built around an understanding of the recipient and the product you are selling.

  • What problems are they having that your product or service solves?
  • Why would they (the reader) want to do business with you? Not your reasons, but the customer’s reasons.
  • What are the benefits of owning your product or using your service?

The following are 10 keys to writing an effective sales letter:

1. Use a Fitting Salutation

If your budget allows, go for personalization. Any letter I receive that starts with “Dear Mark Hale,” is far more likely to get read than one with a generic salutation, “Hello loyal customer,”

Adding a salutation will add cost because you have to mail merge the letter and then print address on envelope, unless you use a window envelope.

A form letter mailed to a business audience would read “Dear Family Doctor” or “Dear Marketing Manager.” If nothing else, “Dear Friend” is usually a safe bet. Keep in mind nothing says “junk mail” like an impersonal form letter that starts out “Hello friend.”

When it comes to personalization, do not step over a dollar to save a penny. What I mean is, the increase in response gained by personalization of your sales letter over saving a few pennies on the cost of mail merge and addressing and sending out a form letter cannot be underestimated.

2. Headline

In this case, a headline is the first line of the letter, usually presented as a question that presents a problem.

You have to create interest in the first 3 lines of your sales letter. There are infinite ways to begin, but you want to create something that is short, attention grabbing, and maybe even a little startling.

For example: “Did you know that if your child had crooked ugly teeth they are 70% more likely to experience difficulty in life? I found this from personal experience with our first child seeing we did not have the money for braces. Our son Joe’s teeth pointed in all directions of the compass at once, he was very self-conscious about his smile as a result. He always looked unapproachable and unhappy. Later we found this amazing orthodontic program that I wanted to share with you. With this affordable program we were able to afford to fix our son’s teeth. Now our son is very outgoing, successful and happy.”

Notice how punchy and intriguing the first line is, and how the copy plunges right into the meat of the sales pitch with a story chockfull of specifics.

3. Use Stories

When writing a sales letter, one very effective technique is to communicate by telling stories. Your story must present a problem and demonstrate a solution. Use a story to build a mystery that pulls the reader along. As in the example above, I did not tell them what the solution was but hinted at it. The solution would come a little later in the sales letter.

Of course, your letter opening doesn’t have to be this involved. Sometimes it’s best to get right to the point, as I did in this business-to-business lead generation letter:

Dear John Doe,
I have a FREE Demo CD you should see. May I send it to you? 
This five minute CD demonstrates how our software will free up time and how you can increase your sales 5X in three short months.

4. Introduce Your Offer on the First Page

I’ve seen wonderfully persuasive letters in which the offer appears at the end of the letter. The rule is to always present the offer, in some form, on the first page.

5. If Writing a Multipage Sales Letter, Break Your First Page Mid-Sentence

Curiosity and the urge for closure will encouraged your readers to flip the page and continue reading when a sentence does not end at the bottom of the first page and continues on the next page.

For multipage letters, printed on one side only, you might consider doing this on every page. Though doing so could become annoying in letters longer than four pages.

Anywhere the reader must physically turn a page, consider adding a typed or a handwritten nudge (lower-right of the page), such as, “More” or “Flip over, please.”

6. Remember the Purpose of Your Sales Letter

The purpose of your sales letter is to get interest and generate a reach for your service in the form of a phone call, website visit or personal visit to your business. The body of a sales letter should include benefits, facts, testimonials, and specifics of whatever kind required. Be careful not to dump every detail of your product or service in your letter. Too much information will kill the reach. You want your sales letter to make a personal connection with the reader and present your sales pitch.

If you have a great deal of supporting information you wish to include, then put it in a brochure. Letters and brochures should not duplicate one another. Ideally you would use a brochure to help close the prospect on the service. Some of our clients include the brochure with the letter, while others prefer to send the brochure out as a follow-up piece to prospect that inquired. My recommendation is to send the brochure as a follow-up to inquiries that you did not close. The reason is that people generally will not read a lot of material that is sent to them unsolicited, and too much information will kill the reach. You want to have a live communication with the prospect and most products or services do in fact require a live communication to close the business.

7. How Long Does a Sales Letter Need to Be?

A sales letter should be just as long as it needs to be. No more. No less.

Most true sales letters run 4-8 pages. Longer letters can work for information-intensive products. Shorter letters can work for lead generation and very simple offers.

An experienced writer will have a sense for what is needed to do the job. This is where knowing your prospect comes in play.

8. Don’t Forget the Call to Action

Many sales letters do not know when to quit—they go on and on. You should state your full offer, guarantee, and a clear call to action. Then stop writing. We have other marketing articles on creating a call to action so I won’t go into long detail on that.

9. Have the Right Person Sign the Letter

Often, the signature is that of a person of high authority, such as the president of the company. But it could also be a vice-president, editor, publisher, inventor, marketing director, or spokesperson.

This decision shouldn’t be “political.” Ask yourself, “Who would make this offer? Who would people expect to make this offer? Who would people be most inclined to listen to and believe?”

When possible, print the signature in blue to make it appear more personal. Also, pay attention to how the signature looks. It should look clean and readable.

10. Don’t Forget the Postscript

People like to know whom a letter is from, so they’ll often glance at the signature at the end of the letter before they read anything. Therefore, because of its proximity, the postscript is in a visual hot spot on your sales letter.

A postscript should be relatively short and should present an important message. This is a prime location to add a buy now offer. If the reader acts now, something else of benefit is offered. To really bring it home, write the postscript in a handwritten font and in blue ink.

We offer many different types of sales letters from Handwritten Note Cards, to Check Mailers with a Sales Letters to Holiday Cards. All can be a very effective means to generate leads for your business.

Want to See Free Sample of Sales Letters?

If we can help you please let us know.

©2005-2014 Mark Hale, All Rights Reserved

Bulk Mail Tips – How to Save on Direct Mail Marketing

Saving Money on Direct Mail Marketing

You want to get the word out about your business. What is the best way to promote a small business? Or, for that matter to promote a large business?

Direct mail, isn’t that old fashion? Besides, postage costs seems high, is there a way to save money on direct mail postage?

Combine Google & Social Media With Your Postcard Mailer, Learn More!

In today’s fast paced electronic age, direct mail is still one of the most effective ways for you to acquire new customers for your small business. Your message goes directly to your target market, and they will see it. There are still no spam filters or remote controls on your mailbox and the United States Post Office delivers regularly and reliably. This makes direct mail one of the most effective ways a small business can promote. There are only three things that can affect the response of a direct mail campaign. Other forms of advertising have many different factors that can affect response. Direct mail is by far the easiest form of advertising for success and results.

Postage cost is easily your biggest cost of direct mail marketing. Having a understanding of how the post office sets postal rates will help you to get the lowest postal rates.

Bulk mail, as defined by the United States Postal Service, is “quantities of mail prepared for mailing at reduced postage rates.” The key word here is “prepared” because essentially we do the work for the USPS, and in return they give you a break on postage. Bulk mail provides the lowest postal rates for you, but still the mail has to be prepared to get these rates. There are two ways you can prepare direct mail:

  1.      Use a Direct Mail House

A direct mail house is a business that has the equipment and expertise to sort and process your mailing list and mail piece to get the lowest possible postage. There are many guidelines to follow and requirements to meet before your mailing qualifies for discounts. A direct mail house knows the guidelines and how to get you the best deals on postage. Wilson Printing USA has a division or our company that is a direct mail house.

  1.      Go Your Own Way

This means you are going to do the sorting, labeling and paper work the post office needs. Going your own way will save you the money the direct mail house will charge for this service.

If you are really going to do this, understand it will take several hours to get the work done depending on how many pieces you intend to mail. You may need an employee specifically to handle the direct mail for your company. Or you can get your whole crew to stay late and have a bulk mail preparation party! You will also need a mailing permit from the post office.

Usually if you are going to mail 1,000 or more pieces it is worth the investment to hire a direct mail house like Wilson Printing USA to sort and process your direct mail for you. If you go it on your own you will need to get a mailing permit, buy mailing labels and stick the labels on your piece.

Need Help with a Direct Mail Program? Click Here.

Understanding the basic types of bulk mail postal discounts:

Standard Presort

Standard presort letter rate will average between .26 – .30 cents per letter or postcard. Your postal rate mostly depends on the number of zip codes you are mailing and the number of zip codes you mail to. The piece will need to have a standard mailing indicia and be bar coded. The standard delivery time is 7 to 12 business days. You will also get no returns of undeliverable postcards. The minimum number of pieces the post office requires is 200.

First Class Presort

First Class Presort postage will average between 33 to 40 cents per piece. The delivery time is 5 to 7 business days. Once again the amount of postage depends on the number of zip codes mailed to and the number of pieces mailed to each zip code. With first class presort you will get returns of the undeliverables.

Every Door Direct Mail (EDDM)

EDDM, as it is called, will give you the cheapest postage rates. Postage will run 17 to 20 cents per card. You also do not need a mailing list with EDDM. Read the related article on EDDM for the pros and cons of this type of mailing

There are other types of discounts, but the above three are the most common for most small business marketing. The types of direct mail pieces you can use to promote your business are very large and will be the subject of a future article.

I hope this article helped you to promote your business.

Mark Hale

CEO

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