by Michael Mosley
As dental professionals, you put a lot of time and effort into your career. However, with new practices emerging each day, it is more essential than ever to use effective marketing strategies to maintain a competitive edge. With a fresh year upon us, it is helpful to reflect on the past year. Perhaps you have maintained a satisfying bottom line, or maybe there is room for improvement. No matter at which end of the spectrum you fall, there is always room to increase patient satisfaction and drive revenue.
Looking forward into 2012, ask yourself and your staff if you are doing all you can to retain your existing patients, acquire new ones, and reactivate dormant patients. Furthermore, in a world of constant digital upgrades, ask yourself if you are using the Internet and social media to the best of your advantage. Competition is only getting stiffer and chances are if you are not taking the initiative to remain engaged and active with your patient base, some other practice is.
While the first marketing resolution of the New Year can be to reflect, let the second be to create a plan. Once you and your staff have established what is working, what needs improvement, what can be updated, and what is still relevant, it is time to put together a more detailed plan. Hold a meeting or create a strategy to include goals and various benchmarks you would like to meet and a deadline for achieving them.
Once you have established your goals or benchmarks, determine what strategies to implement for success. For example, if the newly slated business plan includes a monthly increase in revenue, decide on the best means to achieve this. One solution is a decrease in missed appointments, something that costs practices ample time and money. Then you may decide to implement a more efficient patient reminder system, such as text message or email reminders, to assist in this process. Many practices simply do not take the time to create such a plan because they feel it’s time-consuming or they don’t know what tools to use to accomplish their goals. Marketing plans can be as simple as selecting a single topic to send an e-newsletter about each month or as complex as multiple e-newsletters and social media posts around holidays, services, or product launches.
A good marketing plan should focus on creating a simple and effective line of communication between the practice and the patient base. While it is easy to become intimidated by all the new technological developments with smart phones and computer applications, it is best to think of these devices as new and faster ways for you to engage with new and existing patients. Becoming actively engaged in social media and e-newsletters ensures your practice has a voice. Keeping patients informed on everything from new office equipment to special offers or even educational content will make an enormous difference in the success of your office.
Being visible on platforms frequented by patients is also very important to marketing your practice effectively. Sending newsletters through the mail is no longer efficient, as most patients are much more likely to read something sent via Facebook or email. An otherwise solid marketing plan will have absolutely zero effect if there is not a patient to receive it. Through social media, a practice can insert itself into patients’ online conversations by building a following and posting meaningful content. Because your comments to patients you are following are most likely logged in to Facebook throughout the day, they are more likely to post a “check-in” while at your practice. The value of all your patients’ Facebook friends seeing that they checked in to their favorite dental practice is priceless!
This method is also applicable to appointments. By allowing patients to book and confirm appointments through mediums that they are already using (i.e., Facebook, Twitter, email, etc.), dental practices are leveraging effective marketing techniques that will not only result in improved bottom lines, but greater patient satisfaction that these patients will want to share with their network of friends.
Before a patient ever sets foot in a practice, he or she has probably done a web search and read what other patients have to say on Google, Yelp, or Yahoo. If a practice has a zero or negative online presence, chances are potential, web-savvy patients won’t be walking through that office’s doors anytime soon.
Many practices still have not quite figured how to use these new mediums to communicate with patients, and now is a great time to take that first step. Why? First, it’s cost- effective. A fan page on Facebook or a Twitter account for a practice is free. It used to be that direct mailers were the thing, but these costs add up quickly when trying to market to an entire zip code. A tough economy means tighter budgets, and social media is a perfect fit for smaller budgets. Second, social media is an instantaneous solution. Post or tweet right now, and your entire base of followers will know about it. Whether it’s a last minute opening you are trying to fill, a casual post about how the practice celebrated a holiday, or a current special being offered, the practice is putting the message right in the middle of the patient’s online conversation.
In 2012, it is crucial to give your practice a voice. Resolve to reach your patients through new and relevant marketing strategies. Practices have the option of managing these changes themselves, or they can integrate a full-service patient engagement system to streamline and manage marketing and patient communication for them. The key is to re-evaluate and update your former marketing strategies so your office can remain relevant and continue to thrive in the new year.
