Everyone has an opinion on what type of advertising is best. But the question remains…best for what? Confused? Well let me try to explain, then please jump in with your thoughts.
Advertising in the purely commercial sense of the word is designed to bring in business. Anything you say or print is okay as long as it does not violate a law and is not patently offensive. Admittedly, many businesses have a way of making one word or statement seem totally different from what they really mean; and then of course, there is the fine print. Do you ever read it? Some advertisements have two or three times as many words in fine print, the caveats, than are in the actual ad.
In our profession, we tread the line between being so far above the fray that to advertise is to feel sullied, demeaning…and the commercial aspect of our profession which requires most of us to sell something to earn our daily bread. At one time the university trained Audiologists were taught if not by word, then by inference, that being “commercial” was a no-no. “Let the untrained Dispensers do that.” After a while, it became apparent that both testing a client and recommending an instrument were less fulfilling than doing those things combined with selling and fitting the instrument. The Audiologist then gained valuable knowledge by getting direct and immediate feedback from clients as to what really did or did not work. For a time, Audiologists were expelled from ASHA for “selling for profit”, a natural outgrowth of the effort to control the entire client contact process. It started as a way of making sure the results achieved for their client were the same as prescribed by the ½ gain -1/3 gain or some other rule currently in vogue. But after a while, it became apparent that “selling” and “profit” were very tasty morsels and everyone, including ENT’s wanted a larger slice of the delicious pie.
Audiologists (in days gone by) and Dispensers had different teachers with very different views of what was the proper way to grow a business –office -practice. So now we come to the present, or at least how things have been done for the past fifteen years. Look at a broad selection of hearing aid advertisements put out by Audiologist owned offices versus Dispenser owned, and if you delete the names you might be hard pressed to tell which was which.
Advertising pieces provided by many of the manufacturers feature large discounts. They can be forgiven for this since they do not have direct client contact and are simply selling a product. But once advertisement masters featuring discounts were provided on a regular basis everyone jumped on the band wagon. Discounts, something that I never advertised became standard. Rarely seen were ads that I characterize as institutional which basically said, “I’m here – I’m good – Come see me!” Fortunately there were still some offices that did not go the 40% off MSRP (when was the last time you sold aids for full MSRP?) or the $1,000 off route.
I like to think that our profession (and we are, after all, health care professionals) can survive without our advertising sounding as if we’re selling used cars and encouraging our clients to look for the best “deal”. Am I right or have we gone too far to turn back? What do you think?
