I had an email today that dropped into my ‘other’ inbox.
This is what used to be my ‘personal’ inbox, but now I'm not quite sure which is which, although I limit a lot of my email communication, as all of my internal stuff is on Slack.
The gist of the email was as follows,
“Hi there.
I tried to find your dental practice on ChatGPT, but I could only find (another clinic in your area listed), and so I think that's a problem.
Would you like us to help with your marketing?”
For another practice listed, I've pulled out the name of the practice just for privacy's sake, but you get the gist.
For all of us, the immediate response to that is, ‘something's wrong’.
There is a gap in our marketing, therefore, that we cannot manage because AI has come along so quickly, and if people are searching quickly on AI for your practice, then how are we going to get any business?
This is particularly poignant for anyone who is deep into pay-per-click or ads on socials/Google for generating income from their patients.
Again, this is most noted in things like composite bonding and a line of treatments.
What happens in this process is the panic rises, you go onto your own LLM, you start to search around and realise there's a gap, and then you understand you need some help, and then you buy some help in the hope that you've not missed a trick and that the other people that you're competing against (whoever you seem to think they are) are not doing the same thing as you.
This is panic business and panic marketing at its highest possible level.
Anyone trying to generate business like this can do it in all the fields of business that you have.
They can do it in vision setting; they can do it in finance; they can do it in marketing, sales, HR; they can do it in strategic planning; they can do it in anything.
They can start with the question, “Are you overwhelmed?”
It's easy clickbait; this is for everyone, but it doesn't solve the problem.
Planning your business from a state of panic- planning anything from a state of panic is never going to work.
Signing up to the London Marathon with 3 weeks to go, having never ran before, and then trying to panic train into marathon distance, is really not going to work.
The best thing to do would be to have an 18-month lead-in to that.
Start from build, really steady and get to the point where you can go the best you can for what you have.
And that is another lesson.
You're never going to be able to market the way that Coca-Cola markets.
You're never going to have brand recognition like Apple.
Why don't we all just sit back and understand that we are who we are and what we're trying to do is get better, not best. What we're trying to be is happier, not happiest.
Why don't we realise that we are where we are and this game is infinite, and realistically, there is no end apart from what is the ultimate end.
I would rather not encourage people to come to see us or to talk to us or to be helped in business with us in line with The Campbell Academy business portfolio and what we're developing in terms of a panic.
I would like people who are ready to take a step back, start again, build some bridges, build some foundations, and look towards the future.
3 years from now, we'll all be a little bit more brilliant than we are today.