Dental Fill-In (DFI)

Dental Fill-Ins:

Background…Dental Fill-Ins (DFI) is in the business of providing temporary and full-time staffing to dental offices in Oregon.  They have been in business over 20 years and have done quite well without very much effort from a marketing perspective.   They had “first mover advantage” in their market area and had done a good job of building relationships with dental offices in the early years.  This early work carried their success for many years but business was waning.  They contacted Authentic Marketing to help them create a new brochure.

The Problem…  During the “Discovery” process we learned that DFI was consistently losing market share to a relatively new competitor in the market.   The real tragedy was that this competitor had higher prices!   

Their reasoning for wanting a brochure was: “Our competitor has one so we want one that is better.”  Their plan was to mail the brochure to dentist offices that were no longer using their services, mail to those who are currently using their services in an effort to keep them motivated to continue, and to hand out to new offices that have not used them yet.  While this strategy is better than what they were doing we determined that this effort would probably not be enough to change the behavior of the dental offices they were trying to attract.

The Solution…   First, we needed a reason to communicate with all three categories previously determined.  We concluded that the best approach was a complete change of direction.  Like many businesses, DFI had a difficult time distinguishing itself from the competition.  They all talked about the same things…great service, price, speed etc.  Our goal was to create a unique positioning advantage that would consistently create top of mind awareness for DFI when it came time for a dental office to book staffing.  

The result: The DFI Rewards Program.  This program was designed to incent dental offices to consistently book through DFI. The more they book the more they save! Based on our research nothing like this had ever been done in their industry.  We knew from discovery, cost and convenience were huge hot buttons for Dentists.  Having a reward system would accomplish two very important things:

1.       Drive dental office desire to consistently book with DFI in order to earn Reward Points and save.

2.       Allow us to focus a marketing campaign around this ground-breaking, never seen before Rewards Program. 

Next, we designed a small booklet outlining the benefits of The Rewards program and laid out the delivery strategy.  The dentists already using their service get invoices every month, so we decided to place a new announcement and a couple of the Rewards Brochures in an envelope that resembled their invoice.  That way we knew it would get opened and read.  Now…for the dentists that have never used DFI, we decided the best approach was to use their existing method of face to face office visits.  They could now walk in the door with a unique and client focused offer that immediately distinguished them from their competitors. 

Finally, we used a marketing approach that was very common among Dentists on the Dentists themselves—the “We Miss You” Campaign.  We created an over-sized, 3-postcard series focusing on how DFI missed them.  Using an approach that Dentists were already familiar with helped increase credibility and trust—it made them feel that DFI intimately understood their business.

The Results…   Over 70% of the existing Dentists, who received the Rewards Brochure in their invoice envelope, called and signed up (not to mention remembered to book a few more temps for the upcoming months).   

Utilizing the DFI Rewards Program as a new client acquisition strategy was also very successful.  Although DFI did not do a very good job of tracking results prior to the new strategy, together we estimated a 32% increase in new Dental offices joining the program and switching to DFI for their staffing needs.  Finally, the results of the “we miss you campaign.”  This campaign alone was sent to over 500 Dentists, the first time.  It received a 27% response from the first mailer, 7% from the second mailer, and 2% from the third and final mailer.  These results created an increase in revenue of 50%.