With all due respect Mr. Joyal, stick to TV.
I just read a post from Fred Joyal, CEO of 1-800-DENTIST.
I respectfully disagree and think Fred should stick to TV advertising.
Here’s Fred’s words (Sorry Fred, I couldnt’ link to your site for some reason, but I am including the video link!)
A good direct mail piece is one that people respond to. Generally, I would go with something that’s larger, that’s 4×9 or something like that, some size that’s not a very standard size, that jumps out when people sort through their junk mail every day. It would always be full-color, would have good photograph on it. It would be simple. It wouldn’t list everything that you do, because one of the confusing things for people is if they have to read all those lists, they tend to not read anything. Too much information is no information at all. Be clear. Be simple. Have a good offer in there, whether it’s an exam that’s free or low-cost, an exam and cleaning, exam, cleaning, and X-rays.
Whitening sometimes is a good pitch, but it’s been used a lot, and it’ll also attract who bounce in the office for a whitening and never come back. So you want to attract them to your practice with the features that are most attractive. If you have a good piece of technology, like a CEREC machine or a laser, that’s what you want to tell them about. That’s what’s gonna make them respond. But you want an inviting bit of photography on it, which means generally this piece has to be professionally created. You’re not gonna be able to knock out some piece of direct mail that really looks good on your own. You need to go to somebody who’s gonna create this and get it printed, get it printed well so that it doesn’t look cheap.
Cheap is not gonna fly in direct mail. It never does. And you’re gonna be expecting a half a percent response or 1 percent response, and hopefully that will justify all the money that you’re spending to put this out. And you’re gonna have to do it over and over again. Don’t expect it to work miracles in the first try. People don’t even notice it a lot of times the first try. You’re trying to get people at that moment when they’re thinking, “Hey, I need a new dentist.” That’s not many people in any given moment. So you have to repeat yourself. You have to do this mailing every other month for a year and catch people’s attention and hope that 1 percent of them are gonna respond.
You’re never gonna get 4 or 5 percent response from a direct mail piece, so don’t expect that. Every patient is gonna cost you $100.00 to $200.00 probably, or more, to get in. That’s true generally of advertising. Direct mail is no different. But if a piece is doing that and you’re tracking the results, you see that that’s what’s happening, stick with it until the results start to diminish. Then it’s really time to stop for several months.
First, Fred wants Larger. Wrong. Might make sense on the surface, but would you believe many clients we’ve worked with had immeasurable success with powerful little, 4.25×6 postcards. Strike ONE.
“Always full color.” Wrong. We’ve been enormously successful with simple black ink on colored paper. Strike TWO.
“Too much information is no information.” Woops, must’ve taught that in a class somewhere. Again, completely false. Why? If someone is interested, they want all they can get. Having them call for more info when you can GIVE them more info on a postcard, website, etc., is a death wish and will actually surpress response. If someone IS NOT interested, they won’t read what you have to say no matter what. Simple, short or just a photo!
OK, I just don’t have the energy to keep going. This is just my two cents.
You can see his video though, there:
http://www.goaskfred.com/QALibrary.mvc