How to identify your ideal clients
Continuing our series on how to get your practice to stand out in 2018 on Marketing Monday, Angus Pryor, the founder of Dental Profit System, will be talking about how to identify your ideal clients.
Transcript: How to get your dental practice to stand out in 2018
Well, hello entredentists. Angus Pryor here, the creator of the Dental Profit System and the co-author of the Amazon crushing book, The Better Business Book, bringing you this week’s Marketing Monday, the weekly show designed to boost the marketing in your dental practice. Today I’m coming to you from Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia.
Today, we’re going to talk about continuing a series about how to get your practice to stand out in 2018. Last week, we talked about the fact that you really do need to stand out. We talked about the fact that you really do need to stand out in 2018 as a reminder, just growing number of dental practices, dentists in Australia.
I heard an interview last week with Jerry Jones from the U.S. He’s a very well known marketer there. He talked about the fact that in the U.S., which is usually a few years ahead of Australia, that they are expecting in two years’ time that 80% of the dentists are going to be employed by corporates or by groups. 80% of all dentists in the U.S. in two years’ time.
That’s their prediction. They’re going to be employed by corporates or by groups. If ever you needed a reason to stand out, that’s it. Look, that’s not happening in Australia yet, but if that trend were to continue in Australia, you could see that happening in five years’ time. It’s a staggering figure. That’s why we talk why.
Today, we’re going to talk about identifying your ideal client. This is the first step in actually getting yourself to stand out. Now the reason I’m going to tell you about why you need to and then how you need to. The how is not that hard. The why is the part I often struggle with with dentists.
The fact of the matter is, the more effectively you can appeal to your ideal clients, the better it will be for your business, the more your business will grow, the more clients you get, the more money they’ll spend with you. Some of you are thinking, “Well, why would I want to appeal to one type of client? I want all clients to come in.” The reality is, if you look at your own data, you are already appealing to one type of client not everyone, to one type in particular.
Secondly, obviously, if you can construct who that ideal client is, that makes life more enjoyable. Thirdly, there is a whole stack of research that shows that the more effectively you can identify your ideal client, your so-called avatar, that your business will grow. I mean think about it from a consumer’s point of view.
Would you rather deal with a business that says, “We’re great at serving everyone,” or one that says, “In my case, we specialize in servicing men that are in their 40s that are empty nesters.” I mean it’s a no-brainer. I’m like, “Oh my goodness, those people are talking about me. I want to deal with them.” Maybe you just need to trust me, but believe me, servicing your ideal client is much more profitable and much more effective at helping you to actually stand out.
How do you do it? Step one, you want to run a report from your system, for Windows, Oasis, whatever. Do it where you sought over the last 12 months from high to low what your clients have spent with you. I don’t want you to have to go and add them up individually. There’s a definitely a report in both those systems and probably any system you use. We can sort them where at the top, you have the highest spender and the bottom, you have the lowest spender in the last 12 months.
Then what you need to do is have a look at the common characteristics of the top 20 or 30 clients. Think about what suburb are they in. Are they male or female? What’s their approximate age? What’s their occupation or occupation group? What are their interests?
From that, and I’ve done this a whole bunch of times with a bunch of different clients, you can then bring it all together and say, “This is the ideal client for our practice,” sometimes known as an avatar. I can tell you I did this with a client last week and their avatar was women who were about 55 years old as sort of an admin background. They certainly had a hubby and kids and they lived in one or two suburbs and that was the avatar for that practice. Good catch.
Once you’ve identified that, the next thing to do is go to what’s called AvatarMaker.com, it’s a free website, and actually, create a picture of your avatar. I’ve just done that for my own business. So, that you get that ideal client, you’ve got a picture, you’ve got them in mind as to what they look like because we want that avatar … And you should give them a name as well.
We want that avatar to be the silent person at every team meeting you have, when you’re talking about your strategy, the services you provide, and you’ll be literally giving them a name. The practice that I was at it was Mary. We’re literally going, “Well, we’re thinking about introducing a new service. What would Mary think about that?” “We’re redesigning our website. How would Mary interact with this design,” and so on and so on.
That’s it for today. Step one was really you do need to stand out. Step two is identify your ideal client, run the report, figure out who they are, and then actually make a picture of them, AvatarMaker.com. It’s a very simple to do and it’ll really revolutionize how you stand out in your practice. All right, well that’s it for this week.
Next week, we’ve got step three on how to stand out in your practice in 2018. Otherwise, if you’ve got any queries, if you need any more information, it’s DentalProfitSystem.com. Otherwise, for me, Angus Pryor, signing off until next week on Marketing Monday. See you later.