Dental Marketing Tips To Get Patients In Your Chair

By Author: Greg Sands
Total Articles: 40
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Has the revenue in your dental practice hit a plateau or not growing the way you hope it would? If so, check out these tips to help you maximize your marketing dollars spent and increase patient count.

Dental practices should NEVER stop marketing and should have a well thought out multi-channel marketing strategy tailored specifically to the dental specialization, the location of your dental practice(s) and the structural support and scale of practice operations.

Here are 3 tips to help you overcome the revenue plateau:

Tip 1: One of the most common ways to chew away at your profit is to execute a marketing tactic without 100% knowing up-front what the direct and indirect costs are for that particular campaign. Dental practices already are paying a big chunk of their earnings for basic overhead. Make sure you don’t choose marketing vendors or tactics without gaining full disclosure on what the costs will be in the short and long-term.

For example, if you decide to outsource for your direct mail campaign, choose a vendor that can provide you an up-front total, bottom-line costs for a specified number ...
... of mailings to prospects and customers. Utilizing a turnkey vendor vs. a vendor that uses a piecemeal approach, your overall costs will be significantly decreased. Some vendors will lure you in with an attractive per piece cost, without disclosing other expensive items such as set-up fees, design fees, and mailing fees. Another common trend for marketing vendors is the hassle of locking clients into contracts. You have options, don’t bind yourself into a contract that could turn into a nightmare and tarnish your profit tremendously, especially without first seeing a fair return on marketing investment.

Tip 2: The glory of marketing today is the ability to track performance of virtually every marketing campaign. Any marketing medium you decide to execute, make sure there are processes in place that will give you the ability to track and measure the results based on your key performance indicators (KPIs should be established in the initial stages of the campaign).

As with any personal and/or business transaction, who doesn’t want to know exactly what the outcome will be and more importantly, the return on investment. Understanding what is and isn’t working is vital to your marketing success and the impact on increasing practice revenue. No matter what marketing tactics are included in the marketing mix, track and measure the response rates on an ongoing basis. This gives you the opportunity to eliminate wasteful spend, increase efforts that are having the biggest impact and gain better insight on your existing patient base and prospects. If you can’t track the success of a specific campaign, it probably is not a good idea to execute.

Tip 3: This tip is specifically geared towards the power of direct mail. Did you know people are 30 times more likely to read direct mail versus emails*? With all of the hype surrounding online marketing, I know it can get quite confusing on where to spend your marketing dollars. Direct mail offers dental practices something online marketing campaigns just can’t…and that’s the capability of getting your message to the right audience based on specific demographics such as location (the surrounding areas of the dental practices), income, age ranges, etc. Getting your messages to the right audience can significantly increase your response rates. Here are some dental direct mail strategies that has proven extremely successful for numerous dental practices:

Direct mail allows you to segment your audience by demographics other marketing tactics can’t –segmenting your postcard marketing with a specific message can be powerful, for example:

- For lower income groups, send those prospects postcard mailers that promote the payment plan options available at your practice or credit card programs which allow deferred payment plans

- Attract new patients by highlighting your testimonials, patient before and after photos or showcase your dental staff with a picture and by listing a complete profile of credentials

- Reactivate patients who have not made an appointment in a while, send a message that lets them know you are thinking of them and educate them on the long-term effects of prolonged dental care

- Promote your high profit procedures such as porcelain veneers, implants, crown and bridge work, etc. to audiences in affluent areas

The ultimate objective is to maximize your marketing efforts regardless of what marketing tactics you decide to implement. We are constantly bombarded with a ton of messages these days and it’s important your message is laser focused and doesn’t get lost in the shuffle. Once you figure out what works, continue with your efforts. Never stop marketing even when you figured out what marketing efforts have slowed the sales decay! Mudlick Mail’s specialized direct marketing experts can help your practice grow learn more with a free market analysis!

Article Source: Mudlick Mail