A few days ago, I bought the ticket for my second-ever Sean D’Souza meetup, this coming April, in Lisbon, Portugal.
Sean, as you might know, is an old-school online marketer who has been selling info courses about marketing since 2002.
The first meetup of his I attended, in Seville in Spain last year, was great.
I met a Hungarian who runs a dental clinic in Budapest, Hungary. We bonded over the fact that I lived in Budapest for a long time and had only good things to say about the place.
I guess he was grateful. Because in return, he told me his story and opened my eyes as to what marketing really is and how powerful it can be.
I’m about to share a part of this guy’s very clever marketing strategy for his dental clinic.
I can’t overstate how valuable and cool it is, at least if you’re into marketing.
What I’m about to write is worth reading closely, and remembering, and pondering. Here goes:
For years, the Hungarian ran a highly successful dental clinic doing dental tourism. He built the business on Google ads. Swiss or Brits came in to get their teeth fixed at a discount while enjoying a fancy hotel in Budapest.
And then, corona came. Lockdowns. Travel shut down entirely, as did most businesses.
After a few weeks, dental clinics in Hungary were allowed to reopen. But international travel to Hungary remained closed, which meant dental tourism was out. The Hungarian’s dental clinic had all these fixed costs, and no patients.
So he paced the floor of his empty clinic… he paced… and paced… and he came up with a plan.
He decided to create an entirely new dental business serving only locals. And how.
Within six weeks, he filled the entire practice… without running any ads, which had become super expensive because all the other clinics were running them… without tapping any prior customers or network… without begging masked people on the street to come in for a free cleaning… without creating content… without becoming a social media influencer… without paying other such influencers to promote him.
Pause for a moment.
Ask yourself.
How would you do the same?
How would you get dozens or hundreds of new patients, ready to pay you large sums of money, within just a few weeks, starting with nothing, except the tools of actually delivering the service, and your knowledge of human psychology?
Here’s how the Hungarian did it:
He started approaching the offices up and down the busy street where his offices sat. He would ask to speak to the CEO or to some other top exec and say:
“I have a dental clinic nearby. I’m going to write an email to promote my clinic to your employees…”
So far, so bleh. But this next part is not:
“… and I want you to send it, in your own name. It’s a pandemic outside. People are scared. Even small infections could compromise their immune system, and could prove to be deadly. So I want you to say that you, Mr. CEO, were thinking about your employees, and you reached out to us, and fought to get us to offer a special deal, a huge discount, to your employees to check if they have any dental problems. This is about healthy teeth of course, but in the present moment, it can keep your employees from getting sick or dying. You are doing it because you care.”
Pretty good, right?
Good, but not a sure shot. Mr. CEO might want to look good to his employees, but he might also have bigger, more pressing problems to deal with.
So the dental clinic owner continued with his pitch to Mr. CEO:
“Because of the lockdowns, your business is not operating right now. You are not making money. The fact is, when your employees come to us for their checkup, most of them are sure to have dental problems that will require further work. We will charge them a fair price for this work. And we will give you 10% of these fees to help you out, so you have cash during this hard time, while your business is frozen.”
Result?
Like I said, an entirely new business, a full clinic, highly profitable, in just 6 weeks time.
After the Hungarian told me this, I marveled for a while. And I came up with what I call gift-box theory.
Imagine a collection of beautiful gift boxes. Imagine the small lump of coal you want to sell.
Your small lump of coal might not be very attractive on its own (“I want you to promote my business to your employees”).
So you put your lump in one gift box (“be a hero to your employees”). But no need to stop there. You can then put that gift box into a second gift box (“… and make money at it too”).
Each market has its own set of beautiful gift boxes that they care about, that mean something to them, that tap into their emotional responses.
Your small lump of coal probably means nothing to your prospects. So it is your job as marketer to identify the gift boxes that your market responds to, and then to stack a combination of them in such a way that the entire experience — lump of coal inside a sequence of gift boxes — thrills your prospect.
Actually, there was more to the Hungarian’s story — more gift boxes, more smart and clever and free marketing they continued to do after this initial effort, which grew their business even larger.
But I’ve already shared too much. I wouldn’t normally write so long or share this much how-to information. But I profited from that Sean D’Souza meetup. I’m sure to profit from the next one. And so I wanted to give you something valuable as well.
That said, what I’ve just done is not a good sales email. It’s not what I recommend doing in my Simple Money Emails course. Therefore, I do not expect you to buy anything from me today. But if you want to prove me wrong, here’s more info on everything I offer right now: