You went to dental school, not business college… but you wound up as an entrepreneur!
At the end of the day, it’s your business, and the long haul well-being of that business is dependent upon you.
In light of all this, how can you use marketing to gain more exposure for your practice, and ultimately, grow your dental practice with more patients quickly?
Here are 5 power tips for you below that could transform your business…read on!
#1 ‘Discover’ Who You Are
The most essential thing you can ever do in dental showcasing is position your practice. Comprehend what makes you remarkable.
What separates you from the rest of them?
Night-time dental consideration? Better sitting tight space for children? Cutting edge dental equipment?
Utilise your uniqueness to differentiate your practice against your rivals.
To do this, it’s pivotal to see how you fit into the nearby market.
Which service do you offer? Inserts and Beautifying agents? Surgery? Zoom? Shiny new laser drills? What’s the nearby rivalry for every service?
Exceed expectations inside your specialty. Set yourself apart starting from the guy the road offering the same services.
#2 Get Referrals!
It’s no surprise that 57% of patients find a dentist through referrals and word of mouth. So why not put some strategies into place to get more clients?
Put mechanisms into place to encourage your patients to talk about you. Are you giving them the ‘wow’ factor that they would mention you during their dinner parties? Are you giving them a reason to talk about you on Facebook?
Sometimes a simple gesture of giving them a free gift (like a bottle of wine) to take home can make them talk about you and share about their experience on social media.
Simply asking them to share about their experience on their social media pages can also be a good way to generate more referral customers.
#3 Offer an Easy First Step
Think of your business as a series of relationships with your patients. The easier it is for people to take the first step of visiting your practice, the more likely you are to form long term relationships with your patients.
For example, getting a check-up, while basic, is not something highly desirable for most people.
Having a stranger put tools in your mouth for 30 mins is not exactly high on the list of things most people enjoy doing.
On the other hand, offering a teeth whitening service is highly desirable for most people. After all, who doesn’t want whiter looking teeth?
So you could make it easy for your new patients to try you out by offering a free teeth whitening service!
Once they are on your dental chair you can always ask them to do other things so that their teeth look better. 90% of people are not going to come in just for free teeth whitening.
In any case, this opens the relationship for a repeat visits and that’s where you maximise the profits from your relationship.
[Tweet “70% of people will check out your website and social media pages before walking through your door”]
#4 Embrace Social Media and the Internet
According to Adobe, 70% of people will come and check out businesses on their website and social media pages before they walk through the door and do business with you.
So make sure your website is presentable and that your social media pages are reasonably active. More importantly, make sure you address any criticism and negative reviews on your social media pages and other review websites.
The Internet is responsible for 13% of new patients, and is the second highest source of new business for many dental practices after referrals. So make sure you take care of your online assets.
#5 Facebook Marketing
Most marketing experts might tell you to do SEO or Google Adwords for your online marketing.
I’m here to tell you those may not be the most profitable avenues for you.
Why?
SEO: While I agree with optimising your website for searches by having the right keywords etc. I would not be spending too much money trying to get to the top of Google.
Two simple reasons:
First reason is that no one can tell you how much it’s going to cost you to get into the top 3 positions.
Which to me, is a big gamble.
Second reason- If you appear on the top page of Google, people will still compare you with others through comparison shopping.
Google Adwords suffers from this flaw too.
I’m not saying to not use them, but they should not be your only sources if you want high quality patients.
Personally we have obtained great results for many dental practices using Facebook marketing.
Here are the reasons:
#1. Our method eliminates comparison or price shopping.
#2. Our method builds your brand as a trusted expert
#3. Facebook advertising has very powerful targeting tools that allows you to zoom in on your ideal customer.
If you are able to implement just a few of these steps above, I guarantee your practice will get more new customers than ever before!
Good luck!
If you are interested in finding out about my ‘done for you service’ that’ll get your phone ringing off the hook with new enquiries for your dental practice. Click the button below to get in touch.
