Give A Gift Of Publicity

Being the Holiday season, it is a time for giving.

Many of you in your practices create some sort of giving program. Maybe it is a giving tree, or perhaps you have a barrel where patients can drop food or toys for less fortunate families or children.

This is a great idea, a great program and shows your heart and the true meaning of serving others. But have you taken every possible step you can to ensure that your barrel gets filled?

What if you could promote your charity collection for free? What if there was a way to collect more food from the public to fill your barrel? And, what if there was a side benefit of possibly drawing some new people into your practice…and maybe they become patients?

Well, never fear, there is a simple way to do this.

ACTION TO TAKE: Create a press release promoting your food/toy/whatever collection and send it to the local media. Make sure you include details like where the goods go once they are collected, how long you are taking donations, and how much you are hoping to collect.

News outlets (especially newspapers) love these feel good stories. If anything, you will get a mention in the calendar of events section. It will hopefully draw new people into your office to drop off food, and they may turn into patients of your practice.

Don’t feel bad asking for these donations and possibly getting a patient or two out of it. Many charity organizations have ready-made programs designed for this purpose. These are free to anyone willing to collect donations, and often include everything you need including a fill in the blanks press release.

When Bill Gates makes a $1 Billion donation to the World Aids Awareness Association, he knows that the media will eat it up. He’ll make sure to create publicity not only for the charity, but also himself. The charity doesn’t mind his promotion because they get $1 Billion as well as the publicity.

If you do run a charity giving program in your office, it is to the charity’s and to your best interest to promote it to everyone you can. This includes press releases as well as announcing it in your newsletter to your current patients. This will draw in more gifts to the charity, and possibly create some patients for you too.

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EMC Dental Marketing is a full-service Dental Practice Marketing, Dental Advertising, and Practice Management agency that focusses on solving a dentists top 2 problems - attracting new patients and retaining the patients they already have.