Secrets of Selecting Summer Melons (and Marketing Strategies…)
A Very Short Blog Post About Why You Should be Skeptical if any Marketer “Guarantees” You Anything
If you are a healthcare SMB trying to increase your patients and grow your revenue, then you are looking for marketing help.
And of course, I hope you choose me! But I admit that there are many excellent agencies out there.
However, there are some that are… well… NOT so excellent.
And they will say just about anything to get you to sign a contract.
Including all sorts of “guarantees”
“We guarantee you’ll rank #1 for “dentist near me” keyword
“We guarantee at least 5 new patients every month with our Google ads”
“We guarantee 10,000 new followers on social media in two months”
“We guarantee to increase your revenue by 30% this quarter”
These promises are designed to be irresistible.
But no matter how many years of experience they have…
Or how many positive testimonials they have on their website…
Or how many impressive businesses they have worked with…
There is only ONE guarantee you should take seriously.
And before I talk about it, I want to illustrate why guarantees and marketing tend not to go together very well…
The past 5 weeks or so, I’ve been eating a lot of water melons…
That’s because I love seasonal fruit. And it’s summer. Which means melons are in season.
Therefore… ITS MELON TIME!!!
Particularly cantaloupe (my favorite melon) and watermelon (my wife’s favorite melon).
But everytime I go to pick a watermelon, I enter a crisis that so many America’s face:
“How do I know if this is a ripe melon?!?”
Now for cantaloupe it is a pretty easy process, and I’ll share the secrets with you now:
You want a brown color (green is too fresh)
You want the “webbing” to be a bit raised (the smoother it is, the worse it is)
And most importantly, you smell the ends; if it smells sweet, then it is sweet
I don’t know if this is true or not, but I have also found that after you take it home, wait for small dents to form in the surface. When I cut those open they are soooooo gooooood.
But watermelons are a whole different ballgame.
There are a few tactics I know to use…
THUMP Method: hit the watermelon like a bongo. If it sounds “hollow”, then it is almost certainly ripe.
Thick Green Lines: There are dark and light green streaks on the outside of a watermelon. If the width of the green lines are about two adult finger lengths, then there is a good chance it is ripe.
Seeds: Seeded watermelons tend to be sweeter.
Brown/White Patches: If the bottom of the watermelong is brown and white, that indicates that it probably was allowed to ripen on the vine longer.
Brown Webbing: If there are streaks of brown lines across parts of the melon, almost like a spiderweb, then sugar was allowed to seep out of watermelon, and it will most likely be sweeter.
But even when I do ALL these things, sometimes I crack it open, and am not greeted by delicious, juicy, sweet, dark red melon…
But a pink, icy looking gross waste of time.
BLEH.
Picking watermelons is an educated guessing game.
Every climate, soil, water, farm, farmer… is a littler different.
There are no true watermelon universals.
And you might object: “But some people swear by the thump method!”
And I agree, there are some people so good at the thump method, that they can select a perfectly ripe melon every single time.
But the vast majority of people cannot, so they have to stick with those tactics.
But look at the list again… notice how I qualify everything?
“…almost certainly…”
“…there is a good chance…”
“…tend to be…”
“…probably…”
“…most likely…”
You are not a melon fanatic… you are marketing your tabletop game.
And for you, my point is this:
It’s the same way with marketing, including healthcare marketing.
THERE ARE NO GUARANTEES.
Every strategy, tactic, method, funnel, etc… is an educated guess.
We take whatever information we have about your customer base, the results of case studies, and studying industry/market trends.
And we do our best.
So why is it that all these smart marketing people fall so short?
There are several reasons:
Sometimes it is because the agency is too big, and everyone wants to “leave their fingerprints on it”, which overcomplicates the marketing campaign.
Sometimes the budget was not big enough to meet the goals in time
Sometimes the product/service is so niche that there is not enough of an audience for sustainable sales
Sometimes the product/service lacks distinction and/or superiority, so it is hard to overcome competitors
Sometimes the client gets way too involved and makes everything worse
Sometimes the marketer doesn’t understand the industry or product/service enough to communicate its emotional value
Sometimes the wrong marketing channels are used, either because it is wrong for the industry or not used by the target audience
The list goes on and on and on…
Does that mean us marketers are filled with doubt? That we are not confident we can market your healthcare business?
Of course not!
If you are good enough, falling short and failing is the exception, not the rule!
Like picking a watermelon, the strategies that have proven to work will probably work again!
But unlike watermelons, there are way, WAY more factors that go into a successful marketing campaign.
There are more elements outside of our control and variables we don’t know anything about.
Which is why there are two things you should ask before hiring a mareketer to help grow your healthcare business:
So if a marketer or copywriter tells you “Well I can’t make promises…” don’t fret!
1) ‘What strategies will you use, and why will they work for my business?”
Force them to explain what they are going to do for you.
And don’t let them generalize: ask them to explain the “cause and effect” of their marketing.
You want to know why what they do will work specifically YOUR product, customer base, industry, business, etc.
If their answers check out, then just like picking watermelons, there is a good chance you’ll get some sweet results! .
2) Ask for some kind of money-back guarantee
But I’m not asking you to just “take my word for it”…
Which is why THIS is the only guarantee you should care about in marketing!
Any professional, expert marketing freelancer or agency that is capable and confident (like myself!) will have no problem offering this safety net.
Now of course, it will come with some caveats.
A single blog post won’t suddenly bring hordes of new patients/clients to your healthcare business. You can’t look at that and say: “I’m unsatisfied, where my money back!”
The more a client meddles in a marketing plan, the less the “money back guarantee” holds up. A surgeon can predict a % success rate… but that rate plumments if the patient chooses to do the operation themselves!
The goals need to be realistic. If you want to be a millionaire by next year, you’ll have to spend more than $5k on marketing.
Long story short, work with the freelancer/agency to get some sort of guarantee into the binding contract you sign. It will require a conversation. It may require you invest more than you otherwise would. But you will also reduce the odds of “picking a bad melon”. And even if you do, you’ll be reimbursed for your troubles1
