Achieving Success in the Practice of Dentistry – Part Six

Successful dental practices make marketing a top priority. In this day and age, you certainly need to spend money to make money. I am advocating to my clients that they spend up to 3 to 4% of annual collections on marketing strategies to attract new patients. I also don’t believe that there is one magic bullet that will apply to every practice and every situation. And beware of people selling you on that concept. You need trackable data to justify every marketing plan, and you can’t be married to a plan forever. You have to be flexible –sometimes have the courage to abandon something that you thought was a good idea–and possibly invest more in strategies that seem to be working. Here are some possibilities to consider.

Internal Marketing – I have always been a huge fan of internal marketing because it is very inexpensive, but it can be very effective as long as it is done consistently. Internal marketing is defined as marketing to your existing patient base. I am big on rewarding patients in all kinds of ways for their referrals. Have fun with this–leave your comfort zone and do something different or unexpected. A key component of an effective internal marketing program is hand written notes from the doctor. I suggest there is the opportunity for at least two or three of these to be written everyday. Patients feel so very important when they receive a note from the doctor.

Internet Marketing – I have seen enormous benefits from Internet marketing that begins with the development of a great website,  that through various and clever SEO techniques, positions well on the local Google business map. It is hard for me to believe that something like 40% of all dentists still do not even have a website. They must be living under a rock! You simply have to play in the Internet world. Everyone these days searches for everything on Google–I mean why would you go anywhere else?

Google Adwords – Targeted campaigns are effective for specific services like same day crowns, implants, invisible braces, etc. These are the kind of popular services that are often searched. When people click on these campaigns, they can be directed to a very nicely designed landing page within your website. You can start to get into spending some serious money here, but you will definitely drive traffic. Again–in  competitive metropolitan areas where it is more difficult to get organic rankings of your website on the Google map–Adwords campaigns can level the playing field.

Facebook Advertising – I am starting to see more successful practices getting involved with Facebook advertising. It is much less expensive than Google Adwords. But in order to be successful with Facebook, you have to make a commitment to be responsive and reactive with posts on your Page. Successful practices have one or two staff members who  take this on as a project spending dedicated time every day creating new content and responding to comments. Most doctors do not have the time for this, or even more to the point, don’t understand it.

Direct mail–I recently wrote a post about this. I am feeling more positive about this marketing medium, and it is definitely something to consider.

Marketing and advertising is a business apart from dentistry, and there are experts out there that you can hire to help you. It really helps to have an objective advisor in this area.

In conclusion, I would like to make one very important point regarding patient retention. It is futile to try to attract a continual source of new patients–and absorb all of that cost–if you don’t continue to take good care of these people forever. It is critically important that you retain and please these patients on an ongoing basis. Having an inviting front door that is wide open will not help if the back door is open as well.