Do You Need A Brand Or A Dental Logo?

Your Dental Practice has two goals: serve patients and make money. If you are not making money, you will not be serving patients. Simple math. No logo by itself can enhance that equation.  However, branding can turn things around.

I have heard this question at least one hundred times: Do I really need a logo? For the last few years my answer has been basically, no. No dental practice needs a logo. Yet every business needs a brand.

A brand helps the consumer answer many questions:

• Are you serving me and why?
• How should I think about you and your services?
• Why should I purchase your services for the fees you charge?

Obviously some businesses are able to create a brand with traditional heavy lifting, sweat equity and elbow grease. Others walk into an area with the perfect combination of cosmic occurrences and karma (growing, upscale, many families) that propel them into success. Finally, you also have the dentist as selling machine.

But what about the dental practice that lacks time, karma and/or sales prowess?

• They have built their practice with referrals, but referrals are dwindling. 
• The dentist has changed his/her approach to care and patients are not accepting this treatment strategy. 
• Sales have started to ebb over the last year and now the practice realizes this is a long-term trend, not a fluke.
• Perhaps the community has changed around them and patients have different expectations and other choices they did not have in the past.
• They have just opened a practice and many things have to go right to be successful.
• Finally, the area seems to have a lot of karma but consumers still do not know about you.

What can be done here to change the tide and move it in your direction?

• Send some dental mailers?
• Do some ads?
• Be nicer to your patients?
• Add a spa?
• Move or remodel your practice?
• Lower your fees? Offer half off whitening?
• Get a dental logo?

The simple answer is yes and maybe no.

DO SOMETHING

You need to do something, but which ones and why do them? The only way to figure this out is to determine what your brand is. Bluntly, branding sounds like pure marketing hokum to many people. Sadly, it often is. Not because there is no value in branding, but because few develop their brand adequately, using legitimate rationale and doing an appropriate amount of examination.

Think of how many companies disappear before most of us know who they are because of a weak idea. Then there are the great ideas that have a short lifespan: the pet rock for example. On the other side of the coin are companies like Proctor & Gamble and Wells Fargo, which started so long ago that their brands were built over time rather than through a "thought process".

Most dental practices fall somewhere in the middle of the previous brand building examples. They can't wait 5 years let alone 150.  Their services are needed, but people have to know where they are and/or if they are "available" for new patients.

Dental practices often start up much like an independent new restaurant. Most likely they will have great food (clinical skills) and nice new interior and excited people ready to serve. They "might" thrive for a while on this excitement and with a healthy referral base. "You should come to my dentist - she just opened a practice and is looking for new patients. She is very nice and gentle."

A few years down the road the schedule is full and new patients are less of an issue. Maybe the practice is coasting and it doesn't even know it. Then the community changes - newer suburbs pull people away. Perhaps dental techniques and strategies evolve and these complex concepts are a harder sell. Or dental insurance becomes problematic.

Now, new patients from referrals start to diminish. And referrals have never provided the education to move people up the value ladder. They still think you are very nice, but $5,000 for a restorative or cosmetic case requires more than nice. Patients and other local consumers begin to see other dentists marketing and start to think your competitor has something you do not have.

As you wait to determine how you will garner your portion of these patients, others are stumbling onto to these consumers by just doing something. These dentists slap together logos, ads, DVDs, mailers and websites and with shear force of doing something (and often being the first to do it) find some success.

While you could jump into this fray with your own meandering dental marketing campaign (or possibly you already have) you stop short and say to yourself: "I do not like what I see. Is there something else I could do that would look more like me?" This is where branding is required!

You don't want to "advertise" and hawk your wares. You want to communicate a different level of value. It could be an upscale image or just an upgrade in expectations and results. It is not something you can pull off the shelf.

How does branding change this dynamic?

• It goes deeper than artwork (a logo)
• It determines who you should be (moving beyond the generic dentist concept)
• It refines your image so you speak directly and efficiently to your target patients
• It provides a background story that is effective in building memorable and genuine rapport

Bringing the salient aspects of who you are (your brand) to the fore helps consumers make quicker decisions about "what to do" as your patient. They are prompted or cued to want to buy what you emphasize. Let's test this out with an obvious consumer phenomenon.

Coffee has been around forever. Gas stations give it away with a fill up. Restaurants give free coffee refills. And often it is sold as a loss leader to get you to buy a meal there. Now I will write one word and get most of you to pay $4.75 for one cup: Starbucks! (It used to be $4.50, but now they give me 25 cents for every cup I sell for them.) Okay, what does coffee have to do with dentistry?

Right now, most consumers think of dentistry as a loss leader in the health field. If the patient gets it with a fill up (a.k.a. it's covered by their insurance) they might consider it. Successful dental branding changes this dynamic and puts dentistry higher up on the value ladder.

No, not every consumer will move up this ladder. No matter what Starbucks does with their coffee, I will not pay $4.50 (reseller price) because I do not like coffee. But Starbucks is not really worried about me - they have defined their audience and are tapping that vein. I am not their target consumer.

In addition, brands cue consumers on what to ask for. Rather than a restaurant that sells generic coffee you become a coffee shop. You want to refine who you are because it is difficult to make "your coffee" seem more special than people currently perceive it (and raise its price) if you are promoting a huge menu of other concepts.

This is not about becoming a cosmetic dentist; it's still a generic concept and misunderstood at the same time. This is about you, your passion and how you want to serve patients. Targeted consumers (your desired patients) will be presented your brand and relate to it. They will NOT see anyone else doing the same thing and will be suspicious of brands that are much less refined.

How does this brand loyalty and suspicion play out in the real world? Example: Few Starbucks' clientele are ever seen at 7-11 (or any other convenience store) getting their coffee.

While you do not have the funds of a marketing giant like Starbucks, there are many ways to create and build your brand that will make it standout. And all you need is 5 to 20 new "targeted" patients each month (above what you are getting now) to be successful. A well-positioned brand is able to "find" those consumers and draw them in.

Once again, do you NEED a logo to create a brand? No. There are businesses that have built up without one. But if I ask you, "What is Nike's logo and what do you think when you see it?" Then you probably understand how a logo can change the dynamic of marketing.

A logo makes communication visual. We are visual beings. It’s the simplest way to learn. We take in cues about our world very quickly through our eyes. Colors, patterns and the like speak to us in an emotional and illogical but very powerful way.

CONCLUSION: I DON'T WANT A LOGO

You still might say, "I don’t want a logo." Then I will note: There are always a few dentists that try to tell me a person's smile can say a lot about them. And I will say, "But no one NEEDS a 'beautiful' smile, do they?" So how do we resolve this stalemate of what's really needed?

Think of your dental logo as the "beautiful" on your marketing. Like a beautiful smile, a logo might not be "needed" but it can be very effective at speaking a language nothing else can. Plus a logo will connect all your marketing together. If your logo is designed to fit your brand, then it will also be distinctive enough to separate you from the happy teeth and toothbrush generic dentist brands and the other wannabes out there.

Your dental brand is many things. It is you. It is your team and your practice. It is your desired patients. It is your area. It is human focused, not dental focused. And, it probably should have a complementary logo.

If you want a $9.95 dental logo, be my guest and search the net. If you want a dental brand, then find someone who can dig deeper.

If you want a cup a Joe, Cappucino, Frappuccino, a latte´, green tea, Chi Tea, or any of these beverages, you've got the wrong website.

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Dental Marketing Commentary by Dental Marketing Consultant and expert in dental marketing research, Dick Chwalek - Niche Agency Director

For more on Dick Chwalek's dental marketing expertise, read his articles. The article topics include choosing the best dental logo design firm, getting better dental referrals, getting larger smile makeover cases, and standing out in the dental marketing crowd.

While not a dentist, Dick is well versed in many of the latest dental techniques and dental technologies. Recently, he wrote an advertorial for Dr. Kent White of Chattanooga on Neuromuscular Dentistry.