11 Things Every New Dental Office Should Do

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11 Things Every New Dental Office Should Do
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• Invest in the least risk marketing first. Dont
  start out with radio, TV, expensive magazines or
  billboards. Doing marketing out of the proper
  sequence puts your dollars at risk. Dental office
  marketing is an inherently risky activity. Guard
  your marketing dollars and protect against
  excessive risk.

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• 1. Signage. Both external and internal. Your
  outside sign is critical. People who are already
  looking for you need to be able to find you. But
  people who arent looking for you will also see
  your external sign and be reminded that they need
  to see a dentist. You win either way.

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• 2. Internal signage. Internal signage would be
  photos of great smiles on your walls. Also
  reception room videos. These present what is
  possible.

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• 3. Internal marketing. Establish a protocol to
  communicate with your existing patients. This
  could be electronic newsletters (or even old
  school printed newsletters). Tell them what else
  you can do for them other than what they may want
  at the moment. This would also include a Facebook
  presence.

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• It would also include a way to get reviews from
  your existing patients. It might also include pay
  per click ads. Also investigate online scheduling
  so you can capture patients who find out about
  you and want to make an appointment but its
  Sunday night and youre closed. It also includes
  text and email to patients for appointment
  reminders.

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• 4. Create a kick-ass website. Not necessarily a
  BIG dental practice website. Videos are
  essential. Present the result, not the steps that
  lead to the result. Video patient testimonials
  are essential. No retracted smiles. No pics of
  your ops. Nothing surgical. Nothing that will
  remind them of the sound of the drill (zzzt
  zzzt). None of that.

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• 5. Proper SEO. Dental SEO is too complicated for
  you to manage yourself. Just dont go there. Hire
  this out.

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• 5. Proper SEO. Dental SEO is too complicated for
  you to manage yourself. Just dont go there. Hire
  this out.

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• 6. Start your external marketing with the least
  risky medium which is dental direct mail
  marketing (properly done of course). This might
  mean postcards but I would advise not to do that
  first. Present your prospective new patients with
  a full tri fold presentation that gives them 8 or
  10 reasons to choose you. You cant do that with
  a postcard (not enough room).

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• Stay away from excessive price incentives. If
  you think you can compete with the corporate
  dental chains on price you cant. You will
  lose. Actually you have already lost. They have
  much bigger marketing budgets than you. Dont
  compete on price. Target the top half of the
  dental market instead.

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• Stay away from excessive price incentives. If
  you think you can compete with the corporate
  dental chains on price you cant. You will
  lose. Actually you have already lost. They have
  much bigger marketing budgets than you. Dont
  compete on price. Target the top half of the
  dental market instead.

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• This would be moms/women who would never choose
  a health care provider for their families based
  primarily on price. The bottom half are looking
  for a deal. The top half are looking for value.
  Target the top half.

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• 7. Practice Management Consultants. At some
  point along the way you will likely need the
  services of a practice management consultant.
  Your marketing should get the phone to ring with
  high quality prospective new patients, but what
  happens after that? If they arent properly on
  boarded and delivered to in an effective way, you
  will see them exiting through the back door.

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• 8. Handle New Patients Properly. Another thing
  that is very important is how new patients are
  handled when they call the practice. You may
  think that the dentist, the RDHs, the
  assistants, etc. are the most important people in
  the practice. And they ARE.

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• But your entire enterprise rests on the
  shoulders of the person/people who answer the
  phone. Nothing happens in a dental practice (of a
  revenue consequence) until or unless the phone
  rings. If the people who answer the phones arent
  properly trained then your practice is doomed.
  They will squander your marketing dollars unless
  they know how to convert callers into new patient
  appointments.

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• 9. Track Incoming Calls. Along with that is
  proper tracking of the incoming calls. How did
  they hear about you? You need call tracking to
  really know the answer to that. This will prevent
  you from wasting money on marketing efforts that
  arent working.

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• 10. Use Resources Available to You. The above
  is the foundation for your marketing house. Our
  company does all of the above, but some practices
  may prefer to have several different companies
  performing the various tasks.

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• 11. Build a Solid Foundation. You cant build
  a house without a solid foundation first. After
  you have that you can venture into other forms of
  print media, radio, TV, billboards and so on. But
  without the foundation you will be wasting money
  on the other mediums.