The Total Experience: The Five Elements of Interior Branding
Okay. You’re a dentist. You even have the diploma on the wall from a prestigious university and possibly a myriad of other specialization certificates to prove it. And your very own shingle out front of a practice that is yours! So what. So do a lot of others. What is going to make a prospective patient walk through your front door and check you out? What is going to keep them coming back and telling their friends and co-workers about you? Yeah, I know, you graduated at the top of your class and the guy across the street barely scrapped by, but does that prospect know that? Would she believe you even if you told her? All else being equal, the only way you can differentiate your practice from your competition is through branding.
Branding goes way beyond just having someone whip you up a fancy logo or sign and plastering it on your business card or on the sign out front. Branding is the emotional essence of what people think about you and your practice when they hear your name.
What immediately comes to mind when someone mentions BMW? Is it the image of being behind the wheel of a sleek, comfortable car, effortlessly winding your way through an Alpine pass; feeling confident in the tight handling and powerful engine snaking around the steep curves? That is the power of branding.
Over the next few weeks on this blog, I want to focus on the five elements I call interior branding. These elements all take place within the four walls of your practice and work together to determine whether you’re going to land that new patient in the first place and more importantly, whether she will keep coming back. The five elements are: color, light, and texture; human interaction; application of technology; ergonomics; and the “defining touch.” In essence, these five elements define your brand.
For the next five weeks or so, I will be focusing on each of these elements, in turn, and describing how they work independently and together to create a total client experience that defines your brand.
