Category: In Practice

Starting a new dental practice can be challenging, especially when it comes to marketing. In today’s digital age, having a strong online presence is essential to attract new patients and build your brand. But with so many dental practices vying for attention, how can you stand out? Here are five creative ideas to help you market your new dental practice and connect with your community.

1. Host a Community Event

Hosting a community event is an excellent way to get your name out there and connect with potential patients. Consider partnering with local businesses or organizations to host a fun and informative event. You could offer free oral health screenings, distribute oral health information, and provide refreshments. You could also offer a raffle or giveaway for attendees to enter.

2. Create Engaging Video Content

Video content is becoming increasingly popular, and it’s a great way to showcase your dental practice’s personality and expertise. Create engaging videos that educate your audience about oral health and dental procedures. You could also showcase your team and facility to help potential patients feel comfortable and confident in choosing your practice.

3. Offer Social Media Promotions

Social media is an excellent tool for promoting your dental practice and engaging with your community. Consider offering social media promotions, such as discounts or giveaways, for patients who follow or interact with your practice on social media. You could also partner with social media influencers in your community to help spread the word about your practice.

4. Implement a Referral Program

Referral programs are an excellent way to incentivize your existing patients to refer their friends and family to your practice. Consider offering discounts or other rewards for patients who refer new patients to your practice. You could also offer rewards for patients who leave positive reviews online.

5. Focus on Patient Testimonials

Patient testimonials are a powerful marketing tool. Ask your satisfied patients to share their positive experiences with your practice on your website or social media channels. You could also create video testimonials to showcase on your website and social media. Encourage patients to leave reviews on popular review sites, such as Google or Yelp.

In conclusion, marketing your new dental practice requires creativity and a willingness to think outside the box. By focusing on community involvement, video content, social media promotions, referral programs, and patient testimonials, you can build a strong online presence and attract new patients to your practice. Remember, marketing is an ongoing process, so be sure to regularly evaluate and adjust your marketing strategies to ensure they are effective. With a little creativity and hard work, your dental practice can thrive in today’s competitive market.

You’re a business owner, so naturally one of your primary concerns is attracting new customers. Marketing strategies are critical for growth and that’s where Ai Healthcare Marketing will go to work for you. As a marketing agency, we help you develop the tools you need to reach out and get new people through your doors. Our entire business is built on the fact that marketing efforts are a vital investment. They grow your business from the outside in. But are you growing from the inside out?

We excel at helping you develop and grow your brand. We can build you a fantastic website, manage your digital presence, create your sales-funnels, generate social media buzz, build your direct mail campaigns and manage your SEO. We can help you optimize your brand to convert Google searches into initial contact with your office. Employing a combination of the above “marketing tool kit” strategies is designed to accomplish one mission, get your phone ringing and send people through your door, but then what? Bottom line, those customers are real people, craving a genuine connection with whom they do business. And who creates that meaningful connection with your customer? Your team.

Your team is the heartbeat of all your marketing endeavors. They make your brand come to life for your customer. You can get 100 people to contact your business per week, but if they don’t feel important, valued, heard and cared for by your team, those same 100 people will move on to the next business on their Google search page. In most businesses, the first connection for the customer is with your team and not you. And they typically have more face-time to either make or break those relationships. For these reasons, your investment in them is vital to your overall success and to the ROI on every marketing move you make.

So, are you growing from the inside out? Are you investing in your people while simultaneously investing in attracting new customers?  Investing in them means really getting to know the individuals on your team and helping them grow professionally. Sometimes it also means helping them move on to a culture more suited for them.

GET TO KNOW THEM

Just like your customer is looking for that genuine connection with your team, your team desires the same connection with you, with each other and to the overall vision of your business. We as human beings want to know we are contributing to something bigger than ourselves. We want to make a difference. We want to feel that the work we do is meaningful and valued.  When we feel those things, we grow and reach higher. We are inspired to stretch beyond mediocrity. We invent, we innovate. We feel fulfilled and we have the necessary free heart space to make those meaningful connections with the people we serve.

It’s easy to let entrepreneurial tunnel vision blind you to the human condition of your team. And before you know it, you’re only seeing a manager and not Brenda. The reality is though, Brenda doesn’t stop being Brenda when she sits down at her desk.  Each person is not merely a skill set. Are you taking the time to get to know each member of your team beyond their title and job description? Do you have constant and consistent communication with each team member individually? Do you truly listen to their ideas, goals and dreams? Are you taking the time to understand what motivates them, what makes them feel appreciated, and to the contrary what deflates or discourages them? Much like parenting, what works for one child does not work for the other. Great leaders adjust and adapt to the unique personalities of those they lead. By getting to know your team, it will inspire them to do the same for your customers.

HELP THEM GROW

As the saying goes, “nothing changes if nothing changes”.  It’s unrealistic as business owners to expect our team to work diligently to grow the business if they themselves are not growing. There is always more to learn no matter what position they hold.  Learning inspires thinking. Inspired thinking leads to new ideas and improvements to systems. There’s a reason doctors are required to have continual education, because it leads to better patient care. Your team is no different.  Being intentional about your teams’ continuing education is, therefore, an investment in better service to your customer.

There are a plethora of ways to help your team grow. Some cost money like attending seminars. But there are many ways to invest in their ongoing growth without having to budget for them. Here are a few ideas:

• Lead them in personal goal setting sessions
• Start a team book club
• Watch TEDtalks together and discuss
• Send weekly emails with links to articles that pertain to growth in your industry
• Allow cross-training experiences with fellow team members (This is huge! It leads to a more cohesive team as well as fresh ideas)

WEED THEM OUT

Ok, so the hard truth is you could spend time getting to know a team member and invest in their growth and at the end of the day, you could still have an employee who is not delivering the outcomes your business needs.  It’s easy to get caught in the trap of feeling like it’s less painful to work with what you’ve got than to go through the labor and time intensive process of finding a new employee. And as hard as it is to let an employee go, it is important to know when that time comes. In fact, many business owners often say after replacing a mediocre employee “I should have let so-and-so go sooner than I did”.

That being said, some employees are worth an extra investment.  Theodore Roosevelt said, “People don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care.” It’s a great barometer to use when trying to decide if you should keep or weed out an employee. Do they truly care? After all, you can teach people a multitude of skills but it’s extremely difficult to teach someone to care.  Caring employees take personal responsibility. They are teachable. They show a willingness to get better, be better. They fit your overall culture. Those are the people deserving of your patience.

Opportunities and Connections

As a marketing agency, our service to our clients is creating opportunities for people to meet you and your team.  Your team creates the connection that causes them to stay. Your success is dependent upon both opportunities and connections. We’re here to help grow your business from the outside in. You’ll get the biggest return on your marketing dollars when you’re also growing from the inside out.

Do you know how your team is doing at making WOW factor connections with the leads from your marketing ventures? If not, we can help. Our call monitoring service allows you to hear how each incoming call is being handled by your team. It allows you to identify areas where additional training might be needed for individual team members. Give us a call today at 800.742.3734 so we can ensure your marketing dollars have the greatest potential for growth.

In my experience working with dental practices, I’ve seen a trend where the focus is too concentrated on trying to bring in new customers through external marketing efforts, that it’s forgotten how powerful a tool it can be to simply ask your patients for referrals, and it’s [FREE].

So here’s the deal:

Using referral marketing to increase your customer base is easy and one of the most effective ways to grow your practice, and again it’s FREE! By asking existing satisfied customers to recommend your practice to their friends or loved ones, you increase brand awareness and word-of-mouth advertising.

And why not:

Often, these existing customers are more than happy to spread the word about your business for you. Also, there is nothing difficult about leveraging this existing pool of resources right in front of you.

 

What Are Patient Referrals?

Patient referrals are an organic and influential method of marketing where your current patients recommend your dental practice to their friends and family.

So, you may be wondering:

Why should my Practice focus on referrals to get more customers?

Well, as mentioned above it’s free, but the real magic comes when you can increase your marketing budget because of the increased patient referral revenue. By using this strategy religiously is how you become as Dr. Bill Williams book says; “THE $10,000 A DAY DENTIST.”

You can’t afford to overlook this free strategy.

 

Conversion Rates Will Go Through The Roof

According to Nielsen, prospects are 400% more likely to make a purchase when it’s recommended by their friends; this is because your prospects will see that piece of information as more reliable and more relevant to their needs.

I know what you’re thinking:

“It’s too intimidating to ask directly for referrals.”

“It’s uncomfortable to ask a patient for a referral.”

Remember that the worst thing that could happen when asking a patient for a referral is a rejection or a polite “no.”

With that said I would start with patients that you’ve already built rapport with and that you know are satisfied patients.

 

Come Up with a Game Plan

1. Just ask them!- I promise after a few times it will be as natural as breathing. You may have patients already that would love to refer you, but it just hadn’t occurred to them.  Make this a requirement of yourself and your staff to politely ask patients to refer their friends and family, and it won’t take long before you see the results.
2. Develop a patient referral program- Get a system in place and have goals for the program. Hopefully, you are having morning staff meetings (if not you should be).  In those meetings have your staff commit to asking 1-2 patients for a referral.  In the next morning meeting, ask your staff if they asked for the referrals, this will help hold them accountable to the program.
3. Incorporate referral marketing materials- Have these materials in the waiting room as well as on the front desk, this will make it easier for you to talk about the program and ask for a referral. If you give your patients any branded marketing materials as they leave your practice, be sure to throw in a referral form.
4. Choose wisely- Carefully choose the patients you ask for referrals. If you ask a difficult patient for a referral it’s highly likely they will refer someone who’s difficult as well.
5. It’s easy and effective. Start asking today!

 

Build Strategic Partnerships

Another easy way capitalize on referral marketing is by partnering with dental specialists that you aren’t competing with to refer your dental practice to there patients and vice versa. This allows the cycle to continue with satisfied customers bringing in more prospects to be converted to satisfied customers as well.

 

Conclusion

Asking for patient referrals is a must for every dental practice and should without a doubt be a part of your overall marketing strategy. By getting satisfied patients to introduce your business to others, you get to enjoy [FREE] word-of-mouth marketing.

Even if your potential prospects do not set up an appointment, you have still gained, as you have raised brand awareness. With proper communication, you will surely build a community of loyal customers that will help you spread the word about your dental practice – both online and off.