Know-How Exchange : Customer Behavior

Franklin,

Secondary research is great to get you focused in the right direction and give you a set of possible questions, but for situations that are very heavily geographic dependent - like yours - a rural area for dentists - nothing works better than primary research - go ask the people who will be customers what they think.

The first phase of primary research usually is completed in a "focus group" setting. Get a group of potential customers together and ask them questions concerning who and how they make the decision on choosing the dental purchase. Since you are interested in demographics, you may have to do a few focus groups from different demographic strata. Target 8 to 10 people per group. You can do this individually versus a group - but you lose valuable interactions between participants. The next phase is to develop a pilot survey. Test the pilot survey on 30 to 100 participants. Look at the results and then fine-tune. Then, launch the full up survey. In general, you will have to survey no more than 384 people to have statistically relevant results. You can calculate specifically for your case at:

https://www.raosoft.com/samplesize.html

If you're not comfortable with the statistics, being in an expert to help you structure the flow, questions, sampling plan, etc. Your results are only as good as your plan. Be glad to talk to you about it further.

I hope this helps.

Wayde

You need to consider the possibility that separate selection processes would exist for a consumer looking for a dentist for:

1. General long-term oral and dental care, inc. oral hygiene and prophylaxis
2. Cosmetic and orthodontics
3. Emergency dental care - pain, root infections, accidental broken teeth etc. Weekends and after hours work - nothing much worse than the pain of a root canal infection.

I imagine in a rural practice one dental surgery might have to be able to do everything demanded from time to time, rather than specialising in one form of the art and referring all other work off elsewhere.

In agrarian communities it may also not be unknown for the dentist to have to work on valuable animals from time to time - different tools, though, I hope!

Hope that helps.

ChrisB

The key is you're positioning yourself as high-end, which probably means higher-cost. Do the added services justify the added price to your prospective clients? Will your services be covered by dental insurance or totally out-of-pocket? Are you looking to have a concierge service or simply a high-end specialty practice? Finally, what's the competition like - what do they offer, what do they charge, what would make you different from them?

Franklin,

If the dentist practice is in business currently has patients, I'd include some of them in there. After that, effective cold call would be more effective, but perhaps more costly per person. If the cold call script and cold caller is good, this would offset the cost (kind of obvious after I say it, but I wanted to stress the importance). I prefer active methods versus "passive" methods. A direct mail piece is somewhere in between in cost and effectiveness. The ad is probably least effective. In all cases, plan on a significant incentive to entice people.

Your best bet, however, would be to combine at least two of the three or all three into a campaign in sequence. Add a website also. For instance, do a direct mail piece - with actions of "See our website, the ad in the paper, or call us." Then the ad - first 50 people to call get a [blank] in addition to the incentive. Then cold call the list and refer to the direct mail piece. On the website, have an enrollment form with demographic screens. Versus 4000 people for the direct mail or cold call separately, you can get the number down to 1000 with the sequential "drip" campaign."

Wayde