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Contact Us if you have more questions and thank you for your cooperation.

5 Ideas for Marketing Your Dental Practice Like a Pro

Author: Janil Jean
01.16.19 / 3:18 pm

You may be a pro at giving patients beautiful smiles, but when it comes to marketing your business I bet you have your doubts. As a dental practice owner you can’t afford to have those, which is why you’ll find these marketing ideas a great way to supercharge your strategy. And before you wave it off, let’s be clear: your practice is your business so it’s important that you give it some tender loving care (aka marketing) to grow it.

Create a Brand, Not a Practice

One of the most important things that dental practice owners forget is that, not everyone is interested in using your service initially. You have to dress up to impress, and in business that means branding.

A brand according to the American Marketing Association is, “a name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller’s good or service as distinct from those of other sellers.

Creating a brand will help distinguish your practice from your competitors. Brand building can start as simply with getting a logo design, and can go as complex as branding your office décor, billboards, signage, brand identity, apparel, and more. The idea is to psychologically train your patients to associate your service quality with visual stimulation. Wherever they see the colors, symbol, or mark, they’ll immediately recognize your brand.

Build Fan-Following Not Clients

When you’re so focused on securing clients, you often only see how much revenue you’re generating. That is good business sense. But when you concentrate on wowing your customers, chances are, you make great impressions on them, enough to keep them gushing about you all day, week, or month long. I know I do when I visit a great dentist!

The next time you treat a patient, make the effort of being a bit more friendly; pay attention to their preferences; play along with their pain points (literally); and there’s no harm adding some wackiness to the process. After all you want them to remember you, and create a fan out of them. Their word of mouth will pay off long after their visit. This leads us to our next point.

Focus on Quality, Not Quantity

What is dentistry about if not skilled service? According to D. Scott Trettenero, while every dentist tries their utmost to give quality service, all dentists are not the same, and likewise their services. From the perspective of patients, quality means these four factors: empathy, responsiveness, reliability, and capability.

Take time to review your practice’s process right from when a potential patient calls for an appointment to the point when they have completed treatment and left your office. Where can you improve? What can be minimized to deliver faster service? What to add to better the service? Focus on processes that would improve quality.

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Be Tech Savvy, Not Tech Addicted

We understand that as a dentist you have to keep up with your profession by attending numerous workshops and conferences, as well as attaining certifications. But while all those pertain to your skills as a dentist, you have to also be tech savvy in the business sense.

Get online. The world today operates online, and offers plenty of opportunities that you’d find extremely useful to be tech savvy. Some of the ways that you could use technology for your business includes setting up a website about your dental practice as described here:

Business Directories – List your dental practice in directories like Yellow Pages, Vitals, Wellness, and Zocdoc so that potential customers can easily locate you when they are looking for a dentist. Be sure to give complete contact information.

Review Sites – Reviews help give your potential patients an unbiased view of your service, and most help ranking for your website, too. Try to get five star reviews on sites like Yelp, Trustpilot, and Better Business Bureau, etc.

Social Media – This one you may have used for friends and family before but it’s time to give some serious thoughts about building your personal brand through social media. Build a community, be responsive, and be there for your past and potential patients.

e-Newsletter – How do you show your expertise to Millennials and young adults who are always glued to their phones? Shoot an e-newsletter to your existing clients to tell them about your new and improved services, and while you’re at it, there’s no harm requesting that they share in their circles.

Dental Apps – If there is a service in this world, there is an app for it. If you’re not convinced then the reasons listed here will.

Communicate, Not Sell 

In the end, I would like to advise dental practice owners to communicate, not sell. When you start selling, you are concentrating on what YOU will gain out of it. When you communicate you will focus more on what you can give to benefit your patients, and that’s what would interest THEM. If you’re too busy, then create channels of communication and make yourself reachable. Remember, the nearer the patients are to you, the more comfortable they will be in reaching out when they’re in need of your service.

Janil Jean

Janil Jean

24 responses to “5 Ideas for Marketing Your Dental Practice Like a Pro”

  1. I’ve seen that paying attention to what is actually happening with my marketing is paramount to the success of my practice. I can’t simply trust it is being done right and that I am getting the results I want. I want and need to be involved, which helps bring better results.

  2. Nice Share! The ways you mentioned for the dental business are useful. Another factor I got up for the marketing is to focus on the local SEO as it’s helpful for the Voice searches.

  3. Great article. Agree, one way to step ahead the competition is to be visible online. You need to have a strong online presence to retain your existing patients and attract new clients. You should promote your services and create a brand that distinguishes your practice from your competitor and the way to do it is through digital marketing/social media.
    Outsourcing this area of your dental practice is not only a wise decision but a cost-efficient strategy. Since you are busy and focused with patient care, this is better handled by experts. Top outsourcing providers, such as Cloudstaff can help you with various services. From billing and insurance claims to appointment setting and digital marketing, trusted outsourcing provider like Cloudstaff ensures that you have access to the right staff no matter what roles you require.

  4. I agree. Branding is more than leaving a memorable impression to the audience, it can be a representation of what is the customers expect from the business.

    Good branding can create customer loyalty, enhanced credibility, and build trust.

  5. Hey Janil Jean, It is really an interesting & informative blog about branding a dental practice. It really gonna help, thanks for sharing with us. Look forward for more new blogs from you. Kindly visit here for any dental queries https://www.wedentist.com/

  6. Hi Janil,

    Great article! I came here looking for some extra inspiration + ideas and glad I found this piece.
    We totally agree with everything and we just wanted to add that EMAIL MARKETING is something that has boosted our practice considerably when we started to take it seriously.
    As you said communication with your patients is key and we found that our regular emails not only help with patient education but also staying “in reach” and at arm’s length with our patients.
    We would recommend that our fellow dentist colleagues also start collecting emails and focus on giving regular content updates to your base, it did wonders to our office!
    Thansk again for this article!

    • Thank you Bence. That is indeed a very strong marketing tool you have there. You can develop a fan base through email marketing, and it can be used for increasing conversion in the long term.

  7. Hey Janil!
    Great article, and dead-on. Branding is becoming more and more important, especially in Google’s Search Algorithims. It’s all about trust, and if your brand feels inviting online and reflects how people feel when they visit your dentist office, you’ll see the results through reviews, and ultimately through local results with Google. Keep up the great work!

  8. Hey Janil! I am a dentist myself, and while I do believe I am starting to learn marketing online a bit day by day, your article has definitely helped me get a leg up in this sector.
    The biggest issue I have is with setting my business as a “brand”; it seems like such a non-tangible topic/sector that I always feel very difficult to wrap my head around it. What do you define exactly as “branding” – there’s not one single definition; it always seems to differ on whom I ask.

    • Thank you Dr Surbhi for reading my post.
      The easy way to define a brand is consider it like a personality – how would you define your brand if it were a person? Having said that to make your brand stand out, ensure that you maintain a consistent visual, message and deliverables. It’s all about earning a reputation for what you believe in, and deliver to your customer.
      Moreover, branding is built not created overnight. Hope this helps.

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