If you are a football fan, you know that when your teams are having a bad year you like to think about other things. Well, my teams are not winning this year so I am paying more attention to the commercials.

I like tv commercials. I like to study them and think about how much money they cost, the psychology of the message and the trends in marketing they reflect. Lately, I have been wondering about mottos or slogans of companies. My favorite has always been, “The Ultimate Driving Machine.”

I am noticing simplicity in these slogans to say what the company is trying to sell. I find myself captivated by the ongoing series of commercials by Wrangler. If you have a man in your house, you have seen these commercials over the last couple of years. Their slogan is simply, “Real. Comfortable. Jeans.”

The beauty of this slogan is that each word stands alone to describe the product. These jeans are real, these jeans are comfortable and these jeans are jeans. But they also can describe the jeans as “real comfortable.” It’s genius!

Another company using the same technique is Belk. Their slogan is“Modern.Southern.Style.”

If you were to describe your practice in just three words, what would they be?

Breaking down your practice to its core elements is a valuable exercise. It is easy to remember when opportunities arise that may not be a perfect fit for you. It helps communicate the vision of the practice you are building.

Take a few moments and put down the best three words that describe the practice you are building. Share your three words with us here.

I will share the results next week.

Sincerely,
Mike

p.s. I may take the Belk one for my own.

Staying busy is one of the most discussed business topics in all of optometry. Usually, when optometrists talk about how busy we are, we are referring to our appointment books. We also discuss how far we are “booked out,” indicating how long I would have to wait if I wanted to schedule an eye exam in your office.

It is critical that we have steady traffic in our offices to keep things flowing properly. There are multiple strategies and services that we employ to keep our appointment books filled.

A primary component in every marketing strategy is in earning the loyalty from patients so they will decide to choose us again next year. Degree of loyalty is quite variable and strongly determines the likelihood of a patient’s return to your practice year after year.

“Recall” is the term most practices use to describe the system they use to administer their loyalty programs. It always begins with a strong recommendation to return from the doctor then may include a pre-appointment, a postcard, an email, a text message and a phone call.

Recall systems have undergone a lot of transition in the last few years due to changes in insurance coverage, electronic medical records, transient lifestyles, and the huge shift in the ways we communicate. There are multiple services now available that can dig into our records and automatically send messages to bring people back. Some are run by people and others by technology.

We have tried to make a number of adjustments to our system and have settled on a recall system that seems to be working well for us. Here is a LINK to our current recall system.

Take care,

Mike