Can Your Dental Marketing Plan Be More Successful?

Always! Here are five ways you can improve your marketing results!

Frequency. Patients need to hear from you outside your practice more than for an appointment reminder. A direct non-administrative message sent 4-12 times per year will keep your name and service in focus. Most successful dentists send a combination of quarterly mailed patient newsletters and monthly email campaigns. And a monthly direct mail schedule will skyrocket acquisition results (with the right targeting, offer, and content). 

2.       Quality. Is the quality of your marketing and advertising actually costing you patients? Take a critical look at all of your mailers, email newsletters, brochures, social media content, websites, internal handouts, call handling… If the message isn’t consistent, if there isn’t a perceived value in everything that represents your practice, your brand and reputation for excellence in dentistry may be being negatively (albeit subtly) impacted.

3.       Targeting. Analyze your market and your patient base to find more of your ideal patients. Upsell/Cross-sell/Reactivate. Are you confident that 100% of your patients are aware of all of the services you offer? Have you created compelling offers that resonate with your market and make it easy for patients to respond?  

4.       Push. The idea that patients will find your practice on their own is what SEO companies sell on. When patients have a need (or pain) they may look for someone like you. That’s a type of “pull”marketing … where you’re waiting for someone to knock on the door – not at all targeted and very passive. On the other hand, when you “push” your brand and services in front of people you want to attract, you create demand. You take control. You trigger interest, you initiate a relationship, and you draw those ideal new patients to your practice on your timeline.

5.       Media Mix. An effective marketing plan employs a variety of tactics including direct mail, Internet, email, and more. The most reliable and dependable medium is mail. It can be highly targeted, it will reach 100% of your audience with a very high readership rate, and it’s trackable. Internet and PR activities are very important too. On the less targeted (and more expensive) side you have newspaper, magazines, radio, & TV.

Ideally we all need a combination of internal and external marketing programs that employ a combination of push and pull marketing tactics. When setting our marketing budgets, we should allocate our biggest percentage on methods proven to work, and then if desired, test a smaller component on less-reliable tactics. Always budget for the right amount of frequency and make sure that the quality of every campaign reflects the quality of your practice.

Every dentist has existing patients that are primed for upsell or cross sell. They have ideal prospects and inactive patients that are ready to take advantage of their dental services. However, without the right marketing plan and approach, this revenue can be delayed or permanently lost. Folks either don’t do anything (because they don’t know about the services they should desire) or they may call a competitor because of an advertising piece or because they found another site when they surfed online. A more comprehensive marketing approach will help you capture revenue now and continue to increase it over time.

Every practice has a huge opportunity to upsell existing patients. Every practice has a tremendous opportunity to better engage patients and attract ideal new ones. Talk to your Account Manager about how we can help streamline your marketing image and improve your marketing strategy so you can become more successful and more profitable.

For additional information on Dental Marketing from Patient News call 888.377.2404 or visit www.Patientnews.com.

Source- http://www.patientnews.com