A dental hygiene postcard marketing campaign is probably your most proactive tool for landing a job.

I’ve been helping clients with them for about six years now and they continue to do an amazing job of landing not only temporary work but interviews as well.

Dental hygiene postcards take a little more time to pull together but that’s partly why they work is because not very many hygienists bother.

So it’s worth reviewing the steps for launching your own dental hygiene postcard marketing campaign.

Where Can You Work?

The first step is to find all the offices you may potentially want to work at. This can be the boring part of the project – but it’s very important because narrowing the field saves you time and money.

You can find these offices yourself using the Internet. And it will give you a high degree of comfort that you have them all covered because no one knows the area you live in better than you.

But you can also hire someone. Go to Fiverr.com and hire someone to find addresses for all the dental offices within specific ZIP codes. This will usually cost about $20-25. The person you hire on there will likely use sophisticated “web scraping” software to do the work and send you the results.

What they scrape up isn’t always perfectly accurate as offices move around and spring up faster than the Internet reflects. So, if you want a better list, contact my friend Linda Belaus, owner of DentalJobs.net. Her business relies on frequent accurate contact with dental offices across the country and so she has access to what you need and can sell it to you for $40.

The end result of your dental hygiene postcard list should be a Microsoft Excel file you can use to create address labels with.

Dental Hygiene Postcard Design

There are several ways to get the design for your dental hygiene postcard. Local designers, online designers, templates, and then, of course, ME. Yes, I design lots of postcards for hygienists.

The main advantage I offer is that I can do it with your other materials (resume, cover letter, etc) and create a coordinated look.

A coordinated design package is impressive – it means you went to considerable lengths to market yourself and look professional. Employers love that! They are more likely to reward you with an interview if they see this level of commitment to finding a job.

The design of the postcard need not be too elaborate – in fact, simple works great because it’s easy for employers to know exactly what you want. Just include some type of picture – could be you or an icon or graphic that represents dentistry. Place a header at the top to grab attention, then provide some key bullet points of the value you offer them. And, of course, don’t forget to include your contact information.

Postcard Printing

I prefer to get postcards printed using Vistaprint.com. They offer a simple and inexpensive ordering process while delivering great quality.

Printing them through other online services is also an option, as is a local printing company.

Some will try and print them at home, but I would highly discourage this. I tried it many years ago. By the time I found good paper, extra ink cartridges, and trimmed them all down by hand I had spent almost as much as Vistaprint and didn’t have near the quality.

Postcard Distribution

Now that you have a list and printed postcards, it’s time to distribute them.

You have two options – hand delivery and mailing. If you have lots of extra time on your hands and absolutely need to save the money, hand delivery is not a bad option. In fact, I think you get an extra opportunity to interact with some office staff that is invaluable.

When you hand-deliver a postcard to an office, those receiving it will value it more. As a result, they will probably keep it visible because they feel they owe you something for your effort. It also gives the front office personnel a chance to see how personable you are.

But, if you don’t have the time to do all that running around, don’t despair. Most of my clients mail them out and get great results. Create some labels from your mailing list, slap them and a stamp on the postcard, then mail them out. I would recommend mailing them out in waves of 50 – so if you

I would recommend mailing them out in waves of 50 – so if you have 150 to send out, mail out 50 on a Monday, then the next 50 out the following Monday, and so on. Mondays work good because offices tend to get the most mail on Mondays. If you land in their box on a Monday you might get overlooked. And by sending them in waves, you help even out the responses in case you get lots of them.

Summary

Dental hygiene postcards work really well – check out my testimonials page and videos to see for yourself. Yes, they do take time and money, but I think most would agree they made it all back with even just one day of temp work. But just as important, they were able to take action and not have to wait for openings to be posted on job boards.

PS – as a bonus I want to share a quick video from fellow Career Coach Aimee Bateman who gives some great tips on staying motivated in your job search.