15 Tips To Profitable Dental Flyer Marketing

Here’s how to leverage your flyer as part of a successful marketing campaign for your dental business.

Quite simply, flyer marketing is just one of the many prospecting tools you have available to you as a clinic owner. Designed properly it should prove to be one of the most consistent channels to reach more people in your target audience.

The following tips will assist you in designing your next flyer.

1. Write A Compelling Headline

A great headline will make people take notice of your flyer. Sadly too many medical clinics fail to craft a headline that stops the reader in their tracks.

I should stress this isn’t the time for clever puns. The headline is the most important element on your flyer and it can take considerable time to craft the right headline.

One approach to writing a compelling headline is to include a serious benefit. Thus the reader can immediately learn how they can benefit from your services.

How many times have you personally torn up a flyer that has landed on your doormat? Many times I guess! If this is the case, you can appreciate the fact that you only have a few seconds to grab the reader’s attention.

Using questions to create headlines is another proven winning formula. A question will always make the reader stop and think. You can’t help but be stimulated by an engaging question and thus compelled to read on.

Too many dentists use headlines that are far too short. I would politely ask you to continue brainstorming if your headline is considerably less than 10 words. Generally, if it’s short, it means the headline does not include a benefit.

Equally don’t make the headline excessively long in an attempt to communicate the complete offer in one go. The purpose of the headline is to grab the reader’s attention and pull them into your copy - not tell the whole story!

Finally avoid the cardinal sin I see all too often. Do not use your clinic logo as the headline!

2. Always Stress The Benefits First In Your Dental Flyer

Remember when someone picks up your flyer they will be thinking what’s in it for me. Thus it’s important to immediately stress how they will benefit from reading your flyer.

The last thing you want is for your reader to pick up your flyer and say so what! This won’t happen if you always lead with the benefits of your treatments over the features.

Some examples of a benefit would be, enjoying life without pain, being more confident, and feeling young again.

There is no need to exaggerate the benefits. It’s best to avoid hype and communicate your offer in a professional manner.

3. Feature Social Proof

A clinic should be continually collecting testimonials in written and video formats. Nothing works better than having your patients talk positively about your treatments, in front of brand new prospects.

I recommend you use subheadings like the following ones to help increase the reader's trust in you.

"What Others Are saying"

"We Could Not Have Said It Better Ourselves"

"Tim’s Story Starts Here …"

4. Write In The Reader’s Language

You need to write in your reader’s language.

I would advise against using industry jargon and long clinical names. You can easily confuse people with long words. Keep your words short and simple.

The words on your flyer represent a conversation you are having with the reader and thus you don’t want to lose them due to your grandiose terminology.

5. Write in the Second Person

Avoid writing in the first person.

For example, too many dental clinic owners write statements like “I treat 5 patients a day with dental issues” and “We have been St Andrew’s best dental clinic since 2002”.

I recommend you write as much as possible in the second person using “you” and “your”. Thus you should write copy like this, “you will benefit from your dental treatment” and “your toothache will ease after treatment”.

Using the second person pulls your reader into your flyer copy and makes them believe you have their interest at heart.

6. Make An Irresistible Offer

Can you make your offer so attractive, one can’t resist it! If not I urge you to find a way to make this happen.

Marketing an offer the reader could get at any time is lame marketing.

Your goal is to ensure your irresistible offer presents great value in the buyer’s mind. It's so much easier to achieve this if you make the offer clear to understand. There should be no ambiguity or confusion.

Further, improve your offer by giving a reason for running the offer.

You could offer an incentive in the way of a bonus for taking the offer? Offering a free downloadable report, packed with value, is a great way bonus and way to build the trust and confidence.

7. Include A Strong Call To Action

Consider what is the single most wanted action you want your readers to take upon reading your flyer. This should match the paths defined when you first set up your clinic marketing channels. Imagine you are leading your reader through a funnel and the spout represents the reader becoming your patient.

Often dentists present a confusing picture, where one is baffled as to what to do next. Often in this scenario, you hear the immortal words "call us for more information"! This gets my goat because let's face it, it is lazy marketing. With a little more thought they could create a compelling, benefit-packed, call to action.

People like to be led by the hand and it should be no different with your flyer.

Use “powers” words to enhance your call to action. Power words such as Right Now, Don’t Miss Out, Improve, Immediately, Discover, Learn, Know, More, You, New, Proven, Now, Today, Latest, and Save will help create your call to action.

8. Set A Deadline

Does your flyer have a sense of urgency?

You need to make people act before a specific date. By setting a deadline you force your reader to take action.

They have to decide whether to take you up on your offer or not. The worst case is where the reader feels they don’t even have to make a decision.

Using a deadline means the reader can’t forget about your offer.

9. Avoid A Cluttered Design

Make sure the flyer design isn’t cluttered. Keep the formatting and layout clean. Don’t overdo the design as the words are the most important thing. It should not look like a dog's dinner!

Design it so as people don’t mind having it lying around their home. Ask yourself would they stick it to the fridge!

Get creative using doodles to highlight areas you want to draw attention to.

I recommend A4 over A5 because you simply have more space to write copy and to put it bluntly the more you tell, the more you sell.

A great design will help make it absolutely clear what steps you would like the reader to take.

10. Use A Landing Page

If your call to action is to send the reader to your website, it's important you set up a landing page. This way they don't get lost landing on your homepage from your flyer. Once they are on the landing page you have the opportunity to tell your message in written, audio or video format.

11. Always Track Results

Peter Drucker is famous for once saying:

“You can’t manage what you can’t measure”

Thus it's critical to track every inbound enquiry you receive from the flyer. By utilising tracking codes the prospect simply has to quote the tracking code when they first call your clinic, for you to be in control of your metrics.

Equally, you can use special tracking phone numbers to record every call generated by the flyer.

12. Determine Your Customer Avatar Before Writing Your Copy

The better you can understand what makes your audience tick, the easier it will become to write compelling copy.

This way you can picture in your mind exactly who you are writing your copy for. Furthermore, you can qualify the prospect in the flyer copy by for example using lines like, "Dear Tooth Pain Sufferer".

13. Don’t Randomly Drop Your Flyers

Determine a strategy for dropping your flyers. This should largely be determined by your customer avatar and the copy you create as a result.

The more specific your dental copy, the easier it will be to target your flyer drop. The copy for a young mother will be different to a middle-aged male office worker and different again to a senior.

14. Get The Timing Right

The famous copywriter Robert Collier once said:

“Always enter the conversation already taking place in the customer’s mind".

Thus make sure you consider the timing of your flyer drop before you make your first draft. Taking the time to study the actual conversations going on in your target market will aid you in the success of your campaign.

15. Test, Test And Test Again

A well designed dental flyer is much like your other integrated offline and online strategies, in so much you need to be continually testing and reviewing the results.

It's important to only test one thing at a time. For example, this could either be the timing, the headline, the offer or the price.

If you change more than one thing you won’t be able to determine what element made the difference.

Always record the data and the changes you made.

Finally remember you always learn from testing, even from failure.