Yesterday, I was talking to a registered psychologist, and she was asking me about the possibility of getting some “free” samples of digital marketing for her practice. Since she is not in the marketing business, it is understandable and completely normal that she believes that we can deliver any results by doing this, as if it was a cake sample to evaluate the flavor. After further discussion, it was clear to me that she needed professional, expert Orange County branding, but we’ll get to that later.
It got me thinking that here at Twelve12, we have discussed a lot about marketing, but we haven’t talked about how our customers should value their work and others’ as well by doing this. I asked her a simple question: would you be able to decide if a surgeon is good if he gives you a sample of a surgery? Even better, would you consider to give me some free therapy samples so I can evaluate how good you are? I could tell by the look she gave me that even though she wasn’t happy with my answer, she was also beginning to understand what I was saying.
To get rid of the bad vibes, I proceeded to explain that there are so many factors involved in a company’s marketing and that it is almost impossible to evaluate the work based on one single step. What do you need? Do you need to sell more? Do you need to get people to know you? Do you want to become a trusted source of information? Do you want to publish and sell books or are you looking to book lectures? The strategies are completely dependent on the goals.
When I mention a published book, her eyes brightened. Almost every person I know in the medical field, especially a psychologist, wants to publish a book. She explained that she had a lot of information for a book, but wasn’t sure that she was well- known enough to publish anything, and here is where we started looking into branding. As a “company”, her mission is to help people with the best care possible, and she has that covered, but now she needs short, medium and long term goals.
Her short term is to start publishing online, to build up an audience. Her medium goal is to finish up her book and give workshops and lectures. Her long term goals somehow blur at this point, but she managed to define very specific goals. And if you were asking yourself, yes, branding also applies to people and as a parallel project, she will be working with professional writers to start completing her first published book.
Don’t fall into the trap of giving away “free” samples if your product is not designed for this type of promotion. It could hurt your credibility and your business, and sometimes, it is better to regroup and improve or develop a better branding strategy and achieve the results that you are looking for. If you find yourself in need of Orange County branding, give us a call today and find out more about all the options that you can find at Twelve12.