How to Market your Dental Practice, Part 2

How to Market your Dental Practice

This is Part Two in the series, How to Market your Dental Practice.  In Part One of our Series, How to Market your Dental Practice; we discussed how important it is to know your client. We hope you took the time to look at who your patients are, determine their needs and figure out how they find you. You can review Part One, here. In Part Two, we are going to review how to identify your business goals and add more structure to your marketing.

Structured Marketing

After taking a look at your current patients and seeing what marketing efforts are working for you, (or not working for you), we hope you have a better understanding of what it takes to market your practice and how important it is to add structure to your efforts.

If you want your marketing time and effort to pay off, you have to add structure; that means creating a marketing plan. We all know a carpenter would not build a house without using blueprints; so we do not recommend you market your practice without a plan.

If you follow the steps in this series, How to Market our Dental Practice, you will have the core of a marketing plan that will add structure to your efforts.  Before your plan is complete, one way to add structure to your marketing effort is to identify your business goals.

Identify your Business Goals

Identifying your business goals mean asking the questions, “What do you want to do?”, and “What result do you need from your marketing efforts?” If your goals are not clear, it’s tough to know the who, the how, the why, the where and the when of marketing. Take a look at your business needs. Do you want more Twitter followers, more email addresses or more leads? Identifying and knowing what your practice needs to accomplish is half the battle.

Patient Cycle

Let’s take a closer look at your Patient behavior that we discussed in Part One. Understanding where your patient is in your customer cycle will help determine your business goals and what marketing approach to take.

Your patients, both present and future, can be put in five different groups of the sales cycle. Understanding where your patients are in your sales cycle will help you determine how and when to reach them.

1. Future Patients

This group is more or less anyone who needs some form of Dental Assistance. Your Dental Specialty and location will narrow down this potential patient group.

Marketing Effort Required:
You have to do new patient marketing. You have to reach out and make them aware that you exist. You have to let them know how you can help solve their dental problems.

2. Potential Patients

Potential patients have responded to your marketing efforts you did for the future patient target market. The Potential Patient group may have called you about your hours or what insurance you accept. They may have liked you on Facebook. You told your story and they responded.

Marketing Effort Required:
You have to continue to let them know what you do and how you can help them. You have to engage them and earn their trust.

3. Patient Leads

Leads have asked questions and connected with you. They liked what they saw and made an appointment.

Marketing Effort Required:
Continue to engage them. Remind them of their appointment. Let them know about your all your services. Make it easy for them to keep their appointment.

4. Patient

Patients found you, they liked your story, gave their trust to you, made an appointment, showed up, you took care of them and they paid for your services.
Congratulations, you hard work has paid off.

Marketing Efforts Required:
Amaze them; not only with your skills but with a follow up message, a thank you or some great customer service. Communicate with them through a survey, schedule their next visit.

5. Repeat Patient

Wow, these patients really like you. They responded to you and your efforts, made an appointment, showed up, paid you and came back for more. Good job.
Marketing Efforts Required:
These are your fans. Let them spread the word for you. Ask for reviews, ask for referrals. You have worked hard to get these patients; now let them go out there and spread the good news about your practice.

So, which group do you need to target the most? Where do you need to build awareness?
Your business goals become the segment you need to target most.

If you need to connect to more future patients than your goal to create more leads. Your marketing efforts should reflect that.

If you get a lot of leads, than your efforts have to be to convert better.

If you have a lot of one time patients, than you need to market for repeat business.

If you have a lot of patients but not a lot of new patients, than you need to spend your time building a referral network.

Conclusion

If you identify your business goals, your marketing effort will have more structure. Identifying your business goals gives your marketing plan the structure it needs to create a path to success. Once you know what your business goals are and your client’s needs; your marketing efforts will connect the two.

Good Luck!