Marketing Your Dental Practice

dental marketing

marketing planMany patients turn to the Internet first when they’re looking for a new dentist, and dental marketing like are helpful for a practice.

As your dental practice grows, marketing becomes more important than ever. Successful on and offline marketing allows you to draw in new patients and extra revenue so that you can continue to expand. Whether you opt for print ads, billboards, or expanding your website, adding new marketing materials each year is a great way to make sure that you continue to grow.

There are numerous ways to market your dental practice for optimal success, including the following:

Encourage Positive Online Reviews

One important component of marketing your dental practice is doing your best to encourage positive online reviews. Many patients turn to the Internet first when they’re looking for a new dentist, and they’re going to look at the reviews for dentists that they’re considering. Also, patients tend to be anxious about going to the dentist in the first place, so it often only takes one small error to make them willing to consider switching dentists. For example, Invisalign aligners are changed every two weeks or so. If your practice handles Invisalign, this means that every two weeks you have the opportunity to attract new patients from the other practices in your area.

Encourage positive online reviews by providing your current patients with giveaway offers in the office if they leave a review. Consider offering them a discount coupon off their next appointment or session if they leave a review or refer a friend. Provide a specific bonus or service if they show you proof that they’ve left a review. Positive reviews are the lifeblood of dental practice marketing, so make sure that your customers are communicating with others that they’re happy about the service that they’re receiving from your office.

Have a Clearly Defined Message

Key messages are the statements that you agree that your target audience needs to know, see, and understand about your practice. It’s vital that these key messages show up throughout all of your branding so that your practice is easily marketable and clearly recognizable within the community.

For example, do you want to be known as a dental practice that works with children? Does your dental practice specialize in sedation dentistry? Clearly defining your messages, your brand, and your target demographic will help ensure that nothing gets diluted and everything stays on target. In turn, this will help you advertise to the customers that you want to attract.

It Takes a Village

As a dental practice owner, you can handle a lot of tasks on your own. However, there are always going to be knowledge gaps, because your focus is on dentistry, not law or accounting. As a practice owner, it’s vitally important that you invest in professional help, so that you can prevent accidental errors, gain access to additional revenue, and increase your potential for growth. Dental practice management consultants agree that, whether you are buyer or seller, a dentist seeking to transition in or out of a dental practice has to create a plan with a group of advisors with experience, such as an attorney, financier, appraiser, consultant, and a CPA who has specific experience in handling transitions to and from dental practices.

While you can put a lot of ideas to work on your own, it often makes far more sense to assemble a crack team of professionals instead. Then you can focus on what you do best, they can focus on what they do best, and everyone wins.

As you market your growing dental practice, it’s important to build a team of professionals to help you succeed, do the legwork and research necessary to stay on brand, and continually encourage positive online reviews. These three major components of successful marketing will go a long way towards business growth. In addition, working with a dental practice marketing consultant can help you take your business to new heights, allowing you to explore new avenues for marketing your practice that you may not have considered. Reach out to a local consultant to learn more about how they can help your practice.

The following two tabs change content below.
My Twitter profile

Valerie M.

Contributor at Small Business Marketing Tools
Valerie M. is a writer from Upstate New York. She received her Bachelor’s degree in Journalism from The State University of New York at Fredonia in 2016 and is currently working at a digital marketing agency where she writes blog posts for a variety of small businesses all over the country. Valerie enjoys writing about music, animals, nature, and traveling.