Brand New Brand

By Daniel A. Bobrow, MBA

President, American Dental Marketing

Synopsis

There is overwhelming consensus that effectively branding your dental practice is a very important growth strategy. Branding is an ongoing process. Ultimately, how the practice delivers on its promises determines its overall success. It is therefore essential that systems and expertise be in place to ensure quality and connsistency of service.

To build and maintain a strong practice brand, it must first be determined what differentiates a practice from its competition. Then the practice must determine its market position. Only when these have been achieved can the practice determine how to express its brand, its professional identity. The practice should choose a name and logo that offers memorable simplicity along with consistency and function. It need not be literal, as its purpose is to remind people of the positive experience they associate with your practice.

The marketing plan is implemented only after a practice becomes equipped with a powerful professional identity and understanding of that identity and its market position. All strategies comprising your marketing plan should be measured against your positioning statement to ensure consistency with your brand identity. Ongoing monitoring through surveys and a willingness to continually evaluate and adjust systems and communications will ensure the strength and vitality of your practice brand.

The goal of this article is to bring some clarity to the nebulous concept known as “branding," and to place in perspective this essential ingredient for creating and managing an effective marketing plan.

(Note: If the meaning of a word or phrase is unclear, a glossary of terms has been included at the end of this article.)

What, exactly, does it mean to build a brand? While there is overwhelming consensus on the value of owning a strong brand, most of us are hard pressed to agree on the definitions of branding concepts.

The goal of a brand is to provide current and prospective patients with one or more unique reasons for becoming and remaining a part of your practice. Fortunately, to successfully brand your dental practice, you do not need to be different from every dentist in the world, or even the country, state, or city in which you practice. Your goal is to positively differentiate yourself from others in your service area.

Misconceptions

People often equate a brand with a logo. While a logo is an important ingredient to an effective brand, it is but one, albeit a very important one, of a number of methods of conveying the impressions, feelings, expectations and emotions of your brand.

Branding is much more than a neat logo, catchy name and clever ads. It is about everything you do to fulfill the promise of a superior patient experience.

A common misconception about branding is that it is something one chooses to do, as if it were a project one could start and finish. Branding is an ongoing process that occurs in every interaction between your practice and its “audience.” The only question is the extent to which you are in control of the process.

To answer whether you should brand your practice, I am reminded of what author Elie Weisel answered when asked if he believed in Free Will. “You have no choice!” The same applies to branding, because whether you realize it or not, we all brand.

Out of Sight is not Out of Mind

A costly misconception is the belief that branding is not important. As David A. Aaker shares in his book, “Managing Brand Equity,” “Everyone understands that, even in bad times, a factory must be maintained … because maintenance needs are visible. By contrast, the maintenance of an intangible asset, such as your brand, is more vulnerable to neglect, to the detriment [of your practice.]”

Benefits

Ironically, it is the very intangibility of a brand that gives it so much potential value. While individual experiences with your practice are transient in nature (indeed, the services you offer will most certainly change over time), your brand is an enduring representation, in the form of a unique set of feelings and impressions, in the minds of your patients. This enduring value is also important when it is time to sell the practice because the good will associated with it does not leave when you do.

A strong brand bolsters relationships with current and prospective patients because brand loyalty arises not so much out of rational consideration, but more from an emotional affinity or personal connection that is typically stronger than any negative experience.

To illustrate this resiliency, think of a product or service with which you have a strong, positive association. It might be a beverage, airline, restaurant chain, or automobile. If you have an isolated negative experience with that brand, for example, a flat, warm 7-Up^tm, a delayed flight, or a poorly served meal, you will probably continue to have a positive association with that brand.

Your brand helps to “humanize” your practice by presenting a “face” or “personality” in the form of a symbol. This humanizing function can aid in the formation of trusted relationships, which are the glue that binds your practice to its patients. It is also a great way to “immunize” your practice against being viewed as fungible, thereby securing patient loyalty.

Successful branding has benefits beyond building a strong and cohesive association in the minds of your patients. By articulating what sets you apart from your competition, you will think about important internal and strategic issues such as your practice vision, immediate and long-term goals, and professional values.

Identify Your Identity

You may be surprised to learn that creating your brand identity is actually the second phase of your practice's brand building strategy. To successfully portray your practice, you must first establish what comprises your individuality and identity.

Although in marketing terms "identity" means the visible symbols of an organization, product or service, it consists of much more than a logo, name, tagline, colors or typestyle. These are merely the outward expressions of an organization's core identity, which will ideally represent all your practice stands for.

To identify and express your practice’s core identity, you must first identify its core benefits. Core benefits are all the positive and important experiences patients expect from your practice. Exciting opportunities for practice differentiation include such safety and comfort maximizing benefits as:

· Needle-less anesthesia (“The Wand” or equivalent)

· Laser Dentistry

· Enhanced Diagnosis and Treatment of Periodontal Disease

· Early detection of possibly cancerous lesions using Visalite^tm, Velscope^tm, etc.

· Digital Radiography

· Cosmetics (Snap On Smile^tm, Lumineers^tm, Zoom^tm, Brite Smile^tm, etc.)

· Holistic Dentistry

Another great way to differentiate is to create an "off-core” benefit for your brand. Look for a benefit that is intuitively important to the consumer, but not (yet) generally associated with dental practices. Examples of off-core differentiation are the commitment of a practice to support a worthwhile cause or offer spa dentistry. Still another example is the dental practice of Steven Rinaldi, DDS, who’s Massachusetts-based Andover Smiles hosted an art show featuring the work of area grade school students. Artwork was hung throughout the office for people to tour. This one event directly resulted in new families joining the practice.

Other opportunities for off-core differentiation include:

· Education focusing on the links between oral and systemic health

· Nutritional Counseling

· Diagnosis of risk factors for:

o cancer

o cardiovascular disease

o diabetes

Note that today’s off-core benefits may become tomorrow’s core benefits, which illustrates the process of brand expansion. In this way, successful brands enjoy “immunity from imitation” because they have created a “community” based on more than the delivery of quality dentistry.

Positioned For Success

The next step in branding your practice is crafting its position, which is a kind of abbreviation for all that makes you unique in your area. The goal is to distill this into two sentences, one beginning with “To” and the second with “We are.” For example, our company's positioning statement is:

TO: Private practice dentists in the United States wishing to maintain or accelerate the growth rate of their practice.

WE ARE: A dental patient marketing and communications firm emphasizing value, tracking technology, and flexibility, which constantly strives to exceed our clients' expectations.

Armed with your identity and position, which means you have identified one to three core messages, you are ready to develop your Professional Identity System, the outward expression of your brand.

Key ingredients of your Professional Identity

When developing or revising your professional identity, be sure to keep in mind the following:

Memorable Simplicity

People tend to use shorthand to summarize and deal with all the external stimuli, so don't expect people to retain or share detailed descriptions about your practice.

To cut through the communications clutter and leave an impression, one must jettison the ambiguities and oversimplify the message. This is especially important for clinicians to understand because so many of them feel they must explain in minute detail everything about a procedure, their credentials and expertise, etc. The goal is to lay claim to a single quality, attribute or benefit that no one can dispute. Examples include “ouchless” for Curad, "safety" for Volvo, and "fewer cavities" for Crest.

Think for a moment about your high school days. Do certain personalities stand out in your mind? Do you associate a long and detailed description of these kids? Or are your memories a tad more succinct, e.g., The Brain, The Jock, The Nerd, The Dork, or The Bully? Right or wrong, fair or not, one of the keys to a successful brand is memorable simplicity. Good, friendly, clean, safe, caring, and comfortable, or maybe a combination of these, is the best you should hope for.

Consistency

Be sure to apply your brand consistently across all expressions of it, because only through repetitive and consistent exposure will mindshare, that is, retention and recognition by your target audience, be achieved. Just consider how many times you need to see the same TV commercial before you know what’s being sold, and you'll get the idea.

Function

As you choose the final form for your professional identity, be sure to address such seemingly mundane but important considerations as:

· Logo dimensions. Will the logo fit everywhere it needs to go, such as signage, your Web site, and direct mailings? If it is too detailed, longer than it is wide, etc., you may have problems placing it where you want it.

· Color choices. Be sure these are consistent with those associated with your practice. Also, be sure to select colors that are readily available and easily reproduced by your printer.

· Background(s): Be sure that the colors you choose for the background on your Web site, walls in your office, signage, etc., do not wash out or clash with parts of your professional identity.

· Access to artwork: Be sure you have a strategy for storing, accessing, and editing artwork, as well as resolutions suitable for both print and Web applications.

Designers who are given carte blanche to create your identity may not give necessary consideration to these “real world” matters, which can result in costly and unusable design. Also, sometimes very important considerations are “hidden in plain sight." This occurred with a client whose current identity, while professional in appearance, failed to make explicit reference to the fact he is a dentist. People thought the logo was that of an attorney, accountant, or M.D., but not a dentist. The best way to prevent this is to ask people, ideally those not related to dentistry, to look at your professional identity during its development.

Delivering On The Promise

Be aware that every time the following occurs, your audience is forming an impression of your brand:

* The manner in which an incoming and outgoing phone call is handled, both during and after
office hours

* What patients hear when they are placed on hold, and how long they are kept holding

* The time it takes to answer the phone and how it is answered

* Appearance of the reception area

* Wait time

* Handling of insurance, billing, and other paperwork

* Treatment presentation

* Professionalism, attitude, and enthusiasm of the staff

* Overall appearance of the practice (treatment, reception, lavatories, exterior) and staff

Over time, these impressions build identification with certain perceptions that are retained by those who experience them and then communicate them to others. Remember that people will share good news with a few people, and bad news with many.

Certainly the quality and consistency of your service will determine if your brand be trusted to supply the promised benefits. Only solid business management, interpersonal skills, and clinical expertise can guarantee this. But until a branding strategy is firmly in place, the rest is, at best, a well-kept secret.

If your audience perceives your brand to align with their beliefs, they will want to join your community, in other words, make an appointment and accept treatment. Your challenge is now to keep them. This illustrates the “yin-yang” of branding in that the brand generates interest, retention and positive expectation, the practice experience reinforces these sensations, and viewing the brand reminds the patient of the positive experience. The circle is complete.

Glossary of Terms Related to Branding

Brand

The unique sum of impressions associated with a particular company, product or service. If the impressions are overwhelmingly good, if individuals desire a steady affiliation with the brand, the brand will endure and become an important - perhaps the most important - asset to a company, the greatest asset you'll never see.

Branding

Branding is the process by which a cohesive and enduring impression of an organization, product, or service is formed in the minds of audience members.

Brand Attributes

These are functional or emotional associations assigned to a brand by its customers and prospects. Brand attributes can be either negative or positive and can have varying degrees of relevance and importance to different customer segments.

Brand Audit

The brand audit is a comprehensive and systematic examination of collateral (both tangible and intangible) that relates to a brand.

Brand Awareness

This is a measure of the target customer’s ability to recall your brand. It is the realization by a consumer of the existence and availability of a particular product or service. Brand awareness is a common measure of marketing communications effectiveness. Unaided awareness is spontaneous, and aided or prompted awareness is when the name is recognized among others that are listed or identified.

Brand Community

This is what happens when values and interests are shared with both community members and its sponsors.

Brand Equity

This is the value, both tangible and intangible, that a brand adds to a product/service.

Brand Essence

This consists of the core characteristics that define a brand.

Brand Expansion

This is the exposure of a brand to a broader target customer market, geographic market, or distribution channel. For example, “Orange juice: it isn't just for breakfast anymore,” and Michelob Beer’s ill-fated, “Introducing the seven day weekend.”

Brand Extension

This is the application of a brand beyond its initial range of products, or outside its category. This is possible when the brand image and attributes have contributed to a perception with the consumer/user where the brand and not the product is the decision driver, e.g., Starbucks now sells food and music, not just coffee.

Brand Identity

Brand identity is a unique set of associations that the brand strategist aspires to create or maintain. These associations represent what the brand should stand for and imply a potential promise to customers. It is important to note that a brand identity refers to the strategic goal for a brand, while brand image is what currently resides in the minds of consumers.

Brand Image

A set of associations within the minds of target customers that represent what the brand currently stands for and implies the current promise to customers. (Note that brand image is what is currently in the minds of consumers, whereas brand identity is what the brand aspires to be.)

Brand Personality

This is comprised of the human qualities and/or the persona that best reflects the character of the business. In determining how best to articulate what sets it apart from its competitors, a business may find it helpful to imagine how it might be personified.

Brand Promise

What the customer is assured of receiving, and the emotional and practical value that the customer can expect as a result. This can be illustrated by a cause-and-effect sequence that begins with a business' key messages and ends with the unique benefits its audience will enjoy as a result.

Community

A community is a group of individuals having one or more things in common. Historically, a community was characterized by its locality e.g., street corner, synagogue, push carts, etc. Today, the successful community must be mobile, exist in real time, and be available. Often, we "put things in the way" of our community, e.g., a Web site home page that is difficult to navigate.

Competitive differentiation

These are the unique benefits that set the company, product or service apart. Although each component of a business' identity is integral to what Joan-Noel Kapferer terms "creating a difference," it is often useful to delineate exactly how a business, product or service differs from the competition. In this context, competitors and their offerings are cited by name so that direct comparisons can be made. A simplified statement of competitive differentiation might look like this: “Unlike Company X (a competitor), which does such and such, Company A (your company) offers you these advantages.” Clearly, this form of explicit differentiation is not an appropriate strategy for the dental professional.

Core Message or Core Benefit

Distillation of the various components of a business' identity into one or two essential distinguishing characteristics, which can then be used by the various foundational elements - logo, name, slogan, and other outward expressions of its identity.

De-positioning

This involves attempting to change the identity of competing products relative to the identity of your own product in the collective minds of the target market. For example, a practice may stress the relative superiority of professional tooth whitening over a store-bought “do it yourself” alternative.

Identity Program

Clearly establishing what an organization knows about itself. This begins with a candid assessment of how the organization sees itself in its environment. This gives the business perspective, allowing it to ascertain where it is in terms of organizational values and philosophy, customer/prospect profile, competitive landscape, etc., as well as where it wants to go. After establishing exactly what it knows about itself, the organization can concentrate on articulating what makes it different.

Articulating a differentiating message is perhaps the most critical step in an identity program because it establishes what makes the organization distinctive. The message that results from this process should unambiguously answer the questions, "Who are you, what do you do, and why should I care?"

Key Messages

These are the few facts and support points essential to audience understanding of your business. Because audiences cannot remember everything a company tells them, businesses must decide the two or three points which best convey their individuality.

Logo

A logo is a unique and identifiable symbol, association, name or trademark that serves to differentiate competing products or services. It is both a physical and emotional trigger that creates a relationship between consumers and the product/service.

Off-Core Benefit

A positive experience or expectation that is intuitively important to the consumer, but not (yet) generally associated with the service or organization in question.

Positioning

The process by which a marketer creates an image or identity for a product, brand or organization, for a target market. It is the “relative competitive comparison” the product occupies in a given market as perceived by the target market.

Position Concept

The one essential idea you own or want to own in the minds of your audience. A measure of the extent to which one succeeds is called mindshare.

Professional Identity

Your professional identity is the total of symbols and verbiage comprising the outward expression of a brand, e.g., logo, color(s), name, tagline(s), paper texture, look and feel of Web site, etc.

Repositioning

This process involves changing the identity of a product, relative to the identity of competing products, in the collective minds of the target market.