Postcard Users: Stop Advertising & Start Educating

Advertising versus marketing. It matters.

In today’s highly competitive business landscape, marketing and advertising play integral roles in promoting products and services. While they may seem synonymous, they have distinct characteristics and objectives.

This blog explores the differences between marketing and advertising, highlighting the advantages of Patient NEWS^® educational newsletters as a marketing tool over postcards, which primarily serve advertising purposes. This may explain why newsletters drive a 70% higher response.

The importance of local authority and brand awareness cannot be underestimated, and that’s why “marketing” versus “advertising” has a more substantial and positive impact on dental practice growth.

Marketing & Advertising: A Brief Overview

Marketing encompasses a broad spectrum of activities to identify, anticipate, and satisfy patient needs. It involves strategic planning, market research, and patient journey management. Conversely, advertising is a subset of marketing that focuses on promoting services through single channels, such as television, radio, print media, and online platforms.

Advantages Of Educational Marketing

Our educational newsletter format exemplifies the power of marketing in several ways, as it provides valuable content to readers with educational resources, tips, and insights related to dental care while highlighting services provided by the dental office. It also speaks to all consumers, including dental-avoiders, new movers, families, singles, and all generations.

The format is an authoritative source of information, fostering trust and credibility, and in fact, is the most trusted format during decision-making.

By tailoring content to address the specific needs and interests of the audience demographic and promoting practice services, our neighborhood newsletter program stands out in mailboxes. Not only because it’s 300% larger but because it’s relevant to the community. Through segmentation and targeting strategies, dental practices (and DSOs working to support their affiliates) can reach the right audience with the right message, maximizing the impact of their marketing efforts. Our proven formula drives a 6:1 ROI within 6-12 months.

Postcard Advertising

In contrast to a 4-page educational newsletter campaign, a postcard primarily serves as an advertising tool. Postcards, like newsletters, are effective in reaching a broad audience, but they lack a newsletter’s personalized touch and interactive capabilities. They are often centered around limited-time offers or promotions to grab the recipient’s attention within a brief encounter.

With a shelf life that’s much shorter than a newsletter – 72 hours compared to 17 days – the postcard may initially seem like a good stand-in, but the data proves it’s not. One of the most extensive studies of its kind, A Bias For Action, confirmed that the postcard was the ONLY type of print marketing with a lower motivation score than digital marketing.

We also consistently see that the new patient value generated from a newsletter campaign is significantly higher than both the average new patient value and the value generated from postcard campaigns. This is likely because the postcard attracts shoppers looking for the best new patient offer versus those who will trust a dental office and accept a higher level of recommended treatment.

The Power Of Relationship-Building In Marketing

Unlike advertising, which often focuses on driving immediate sales, marketing aims to build the brand, enhance awareness, improve reputation, and establish and nurture long-term patient connections. By prioritizing patient satisfaction related to your brand, mission, and vision for your practice, relationship-building marketing strategies create a foundation for sustained production growth.

By leveraging the format of an educational newsletter, dental offices can create an ongoing dialogue with their target audience, building awareness, providing value, attracting higher quality new patients, reactivating patients, and strengthening patient loyalty and referrals of family and friends.

Do You Use Postcards?

99% of our clients utilize neighborhood newsletters rather than postcards. Here are their results:

• Our clients have recovered from Covid closures at a pace that is 40% higher than the average dental practice.
• Our clients’ average production is MORE THAN DOUBLE that of the average dental practice.
• 
  
• In 2023, our clients have posted production that’s been HIGHER EVERY MONTH versus the same period over the last four years!
• 
  

My team does fantastic work helping our clients uncover their unique differentiators to tailor newsletter content; we deep dive into the demographic and practice draw area and develop a program and distribution strategy to deliver consistent practice growth.

In summary, marketing and advertising differ in their scope and objectives. Marketing encompasses a broader range of activities that includes advertising and focuses on building relationships, trust, and long-term patient loyalty.

I welcome your call personally any time, or you can schedule a free consultation and find out how you can get better results from a neighborhood newsletter program.

And with Patient NEWS, programs are further enhanced by digital printing, which enables campaigns to be personalized to the household name and include dynamic QR codes to track scans down to the address. Coupled with call tracking and Practice ZEBRA^®, our clients can track new patient production from their newsletter.

If you’re a successful dental practice interested in growth, it’s worth looking at a newsletter campaign for your office.

Wayne Lavery