Summary
- Wanting to be loved by everyone is a form of hiding, because authenticity invites criticism.
- Trying to appeal to everyone feels safer, especially for dental owners with high financial risk.
- Appealing to the masses turns a practice into a commodity.
- Commodities become average, unremarkable, unnecessary, and not the clear choice.
- Mass marketing fails because people are too different to serve meaningfully with limited resources.
- The opposite extreme, hyperpersonalization, also fails because it cannot scale.
- The solution lives in the middle, serving a specific group, not everyone and not every individual.
- Differentiation works when it benefits a clear group enough that they want to tell others.
- People share practices that feel like a great fit because it raises their own status.
- Differentiation starts with choosing who, not demographics, but psychographics.
- People make dental decisions based on psychology, not age, income, or zip code.
- Once the psychography is clear, the practice is designed for what that group finds meaningful.
- Key filters include meaning, status, culture, and past experience.
- Designing for past negative experiences, like dental anxiety, creates real differentiation.
- True differentiation creates different emotions, openness, trust, and willingness to proceed.
- This approach improves case acceptance, culture, staff experience, and long-term growth.
- Avoid mass marketing and hyperpersonalization.
- Use psychography to build something meaningfully better at scale.
It’s tempting to want to be desired by everyone, to have everyone love you and accept you for who you are. But that is a form of hiding. We are afraid to be vulnerable and authentic because we’re afraid of the criticism that might happen if we try to be authentic. By just being ourselves, we’re going to have people who criticize us. The most popular thing on earth also has haters. Some people hate water, right? And regardless of how much you try to appeal to everyone, you never will. And this is commonly known, but it’s not commonly practiced.
And there’s many theories of why this could be, but my hypothesis is that it’s just safer. It’s safer to follow the masses. And especially in something like dental practices where the owner fresh out of school or something like has taken out a significant investment and now they’ve put like a huge risk on the line and we’re challenging them to go out there and make mistakes with their practice. That notion is very scary. Of course, they’re going to want to play it safe, to want to appeal to as many people as they can. I get it. I get why that’s the case.
But let me explain why that can kill you, why that will kill your practice in the long run. By trying to appeal to the masses, we become commodities. We don’t have enough resources to significantly affect people in a meaningful way because people are so different. We would need an infinite amount of resources, of money, of different types of doctors, different types of staff members, to be able to service everyone’s unique preferences.
And so when we try to do mass marketing, we end up becoming very average. And when we become average, we become unremarkable. We become unnecessary. We’re not the choice. We’re not the best when it comes to being a certain way.
If I want dentistry that is gentle and I have severe dental anxiety, if I go to an office that looks like a dental office that is just like every other dental practice, I only gave them a shot because they said on their website that they were the gentlest practice or maybe reviews said it. But I show up and it’s not. How’s that going to make me feel? Am I going to tell my friend who also has anxiety of dentists to come to this practice, that this is a remarkable practice for people just like you? Chances are that’s not going to happen.
So the other mistake is that we start to create something hyperspecific. We create something that is way too individualized and we start to focus on each and every patient. And the mechanics are similar. When we try to appeal to everyone, we’re essentially trying to appeal to every individual. So this happens a lot in spectrums. When you get to one end of the extreme, you realize that the other extreme are doing just like similar behaviors.
Anyways, we go to the individual and we try to personalize everything for them. Now the problem here becomes scale. When we create everything uniquely for each person, it’s not going to scale. We can’t do it at scale. It’s again for the same reasons. It’s going to stretch our resources way too thin.
So what’s the solution? The solution here is obviously somewhere in the middle where we are not a commodity, where we are standing for something, where we appeal to a group of individuals. Okay. So it’s probably going to be somewhere right around here, right? And most practices are right around here. Some are trying to operate here and it’s not working well for them either.
The opportunity for us is to get very clear with who we’re serving and differentiate in a way that benefits these people so much so that they are willing to tell other people about it. Other people who believe the same things, who want a similar experience. Right? I’m not going to go out of my way to share your office to my friends if I don’t believe it’s a good fit. But if I believe it’s a great fit and I believe they will love the experience, yes, I will share because it will raise my status. And by giving my friend a valuable thing, I feel good.
So first we have to become clear with who we’re building this for. Who we’re differentiating for. The who we’re differentiating for is going to guide how we differentiate. And differentiation is another buzz word that gets thrown out a lot. It’s not what you think it is.
So first we pick who. Who is not demographics. It’s not an age. It’s not a gender. It’s not an income. It’s not a zip code. Demographics were how we used to target because we didn’t understand psychographics. When psychographics came along, we realized psychographics is how we make decisions.
So if I’m going to visit your practice, it’s a psychological decision. If I enjoy your practice and I find it amazing, it’s not because I had a certain zip code. It’s because my psychology aligned with how you’re presenting stuff.
So the who comes, we become more clear with who. We start to choose people based on what kind of psychography they have. All right? And then we start to create something for that psychography. We start to create something for people with dental anxiety, for people who want to work on their teeth to achieve beauty.
When we do that, we have to ask ourselves what do they find meaningful? What do they find in a dental office to be meaningful? And also there’s other questions of how do they view status? How is engaging with my practice going to affect their status?
Another filter we have to look at is culture. Are people like them doing things like this that I’m suggesting they do or are they doing something completely different?
And finally, past experience. And a very good example is people with dental anxiety. So imagine differentiating for people with dental anxiety, understanding that past experience creates a ton of meaning. So if you’re trying to be the number one dentist, the choice when it comes to people who have dental anxiety, it would benefit you a lot to design your office to not look like a dental office, to not look so clinical. There’s an infinite ways of avoiding past bad experiences.
So with those filters in mind, we create a practice. We differentiate in a way that is meaningfully better to the psychography of people who we want to serve. Again, that removes us as a commodity.
Now, if I have dental anxiety and I look at the market out there, now you’re necessary. Now I need to go to you if I have dental anxiety versus all the commodity of people who are just saying that we are great for dental anxiety. They show up, everything looks the same, all the touch points are the same versus you who’s actually doing things different.
The meaning that gets generated here is completely different. The feelings that get generated here are completely different. Here they might feel closed, apprehensive, defensive. Here they might feel open, engaged, and willing to move forward.
How is that going to affect your treatment rates or treatment closing rates? How is that going to affect the culture that gets built in your office? How’s that going to affect staff turnover, the enjoyment of people who they treat?
And again, here we move away from hyperpersonalization. This becomes too expensive. And now we’re able to create something at scale and grow.
All right? So shun mass marketing. Shun hyperpersonalization. Do both. Go for scale. The scale that we want from mass and also the personalization that we want from the individual. And we do that with psychography. And we build something better for those people.
So start with who is it for?