Marketing

In my ideal utopia, all patients would place a high value on their dental health and happily schedule all treatment recommendations without hesitation. As my 16 year-old daughter would say, “good luck with that!” We all know it doesn’t quite work that way. Patients often need some motivation to schedule treatment, especially when the condition is asymptomatic.

The truth is that patients know very little about their dental insurance as evidenced by the fact that each year, hundreds of millions (billions?) of dental insurance benefits go unused and necessary treatment remains uncompleted. Consider sending an ‘End of the Year Insurance Letter’ to your patients who have dental insurance.

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“Patients don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”

                                                                                              -Omer K. Reed DDS

Patient referrals from your good patients are one of the best sources of quality new patients for your practice. These referred patients tend to arrive in your office with a high degree of trust and confidence. Showing your patients that you genuinely care about them is a great way to nurture more referrals. The evening ‘we care’ call from the Dentist is a powerful way to demonstrate your care and compassion for your patients.

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In an earlier blog post, I suggested the following 5 strategies to grow your practice in a soft economy:

1.  Make whitening a core element of your practice

2.  Develop a comprehensive marketing plan

3.  Use photography for patient education

4.  Get Serious about diagnosing and treating perio disease

5.  Design an effective new patient experience

Let’s talk about marketing. Today, marketing is a crucial skill set that you must develop! It is important that the Dentist and the entire team adopt a marketing mindset. The best way to adopt this mindset is to read an incredible book written by my friend, Fred Joyal. His book is titled, Everything is Marketing: The Ultimate Strategy for Dental Practice Growth. I suggest that you and your entire team read this book as part of your Office Book Club.

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The reason I bought a dental practice is that I wanted a learning and teaching lab for my clients where I could test concepts and techniques and report my experiences. Here is an experience that happened this past Monday.

A new patient in her early 50’s called our office after receiving a direct mail post card from us. She needed to be seen urgently because her veneer on tooth #8 (done by another dentist) had fallen off. Our scheduling coordinator recognized the urgency, told the patient she called the right office, and that Dr. Nielson would be concerned and would want to get her taken care of as soon as possible. Laurie, our scheduling coordinator, provided directions to our office and advised the patient to come in immediately.

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Recently, I wrote a blog post about five specific strategies that can help your practice grow in a soft economy. The first strategy I recommended was to make whitening a core element of your practice. In this blog post, I will provide more details.

I am a firm believer that whitening is an under-utilized service in dentistry! The fact is, people want and value whiter teeth. In a recent USA Today survey, 85% of the people surveyed listed ‘make then whiter’ when asked how they would like to improve their teeth. WOW, think about that for a minute. 85% of the people want whiter teeth! The great news is that we have the technology to give patients what they want.

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“Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision”

                                                                                   -Peter Drucker

Peter Drucker is one of the best-known and most widely influential thinkers and writers on the subject of business management. His writings have predicted many of the major developments of the late twentieth century including the emergence of the information age. His wisdom helped American businesses thrive and his teachings are especially relevant in the current challenging economic times.

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Does having 45 boys ages 16 and 17 in your office on a mid-summer Wednesday evening sound like your idea of fun? What if their parents were with them and they were in your office to have impressions taken for the NFL-quality mouth guards we are making for them? Well, that’s exactly what happened last night in my dental office.

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