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What You Need To Understand About The "Attention
Age Economy"...And How You Can Use It To Market Your
Practice
By:
Dr. Chris
Donofri
First things first. This is not my own
concept...it comes directly from one of my mentors, Rich
Scheffren. However, I will do my best to transfer the concept to
Chiropractic so you can use this critically important concept to keep ahead of
the changing times and market your practice with
certainty.
Here's
the challenge: To get
your marketing opened, read and then ultimately responded to, you have to first
convince your prospects to give you their attention. As a society, we are
busier than ever with more information coming at us faster than ever. It's
overwhelming. Questions your prospects are asking are things like...What
should I pay attention to?...Who should I listen to?...Is this important enough
for me to look at?
According to Rich, "there is more choices
than ever before to help people solve their problems...a lack of focus leading
to continuous partial attention...advertising pollution leading to prospects
being defensive...continually advancing and accelerating technology draining
our attention...information overload...and finally continuous interruptions
throughout the day." All of this leading to less than complete
attention to any one thing...especially marketing messages (yours
included).
That information alone should give you a stark
awakening about how you are marketing your practice right now and why so many
doctors are failing to consistently and reliably bring in
lots of new patients every month. Without their attention, the message
doesn't even get to your prospective patients. To them, your marketing is
an interruption that they block...unless it's valuable information to
them. And that's the key. I'll explain in a
minute.
Think about this for a minute. Doctors are
using the same outdated forms of marketing, using the same marketing channels
they've always used in the past...but their prospects won't pay attention to
anything that looks like advertising or the old marketing channels that they
used to pay attention to in the past. Response rates continue to drop,
while doctors are left scratching their heads and emptying their bank
accounts.
According to research, "television,
newspapers, magazines, radio, even direct mail" are all being given less
and less attention by your prospective patients and YET they are still media
channels that they highly trust. It's a catch 22. They trust the
source for information, but don't have the time to give it their full
attention.
What does this mean to you as a
marketer? Pay attention...the lesson here is crucial if you want to
succeed in today's "Attention Age". You need to create marketing that is
"perceived" as a valuable source of information for them to help solve their
unique problems. If it doesn't appear valuable to them, it doesn't get
their attention. It's that simple.
So, format is important...what you say is
important...and finally, the media you chose to put your message in is
important. You have to be more intelligent these days, spend more time
researching your market and what media they read and trust, and then spend time
crafting messages that your prospective patients will want to
read.
Finally, social media...things like blogging,
social media sites, book marking etc... are all good ways to keep people
talking about you and talking to each other about you. It's the equivalent
of getting a testimonial from one patient given to another one...just
online. You may want to spend some time on U Tube, Face Book and other
social media sites to stay ahead of the curve and find out how you can harness
social media to market your practice.
That's a good head start for now. Start
learning what your prospects are paying attention to and take your message
(your marketing) directly to these media channels to meet them where they spend
time.
Good luck!
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