Undercover Marketing Secrets #84: Be careful how good of a marketer you are…

Over the last year and a half I have been working with a client. Before I started working with him, he was getting on average of five new patients a month. Then I started doing all of his marketing.

Within three months he was getting 30 new patients a month. He is a fee-for-service dentist, so his new patients are worth a lot more to his practice than a regular insurance office.

Within a year, he was up to over 60 new patients a month. Last year he doubled his practice from $1,000,000.00 in collections to over $2,000,000.00.

This past month, he got 81 new patients.

Ok, you would think I would be a hero. Yet, I am not. For any other practice, I probably would be. Instead, I worked myself out of making the same income from him.

Here’s why:

1. He is not equipped mentally to service that many new patients.
2. He keeps going back to his old mantra, “I hate marketing!” (He considers it a necessary evil. Even though it brought him close to 600 new fee-for-service- patients last year alone.)
3. He doesn’t have the best staff to be able to keep track of these new patients.
4. He doesn’t have the staff, nor the systems in place to service his existing patients.
5. He has no follow up system in place to keep in touch with the new patients he has offered treatment to.
6. He spends money on other things, but doesn’t keep track of that spending, so it seems as though he is only spending on marketing. (He wasted more money on other parts of his practice, yet feels it’s all been spent on marketing.)
7. He doesn’t want to work, so he has to pay out a lot of money to specialists and other associates to do the work, thus, less money going to him.

You see, it doesn’t matter how good a marketer you are, if your client isn’t the right kind of client. I don’t write this to bash him. I write it to inform you, the reader. If you are a marketer, you have to keep an eye on how good you are doing, as much as, how, you do what you do.

If you are a business owner, I would say to you, “Marketing can be your best friend. If you have a marketing person or agency working with you, make sure you set clear expectations. Plus, know your limits. Getting more and more is not always a good thing.”

Just so you know, because of the success of my marketing for him, he cut my working time in half, which means paying me half. He also cut the marketing budget by half. Chances are good, his new patient count will go down by half.

He will ultimately get what he wants. I always say, “Be careful what you ask for, for you will, ultimately get it.” I just might not be there for him, when he gets what he asks for and it isn’t enough, because I, like any good marketer, will find clients to fill whatever void is left in my schedule.