Marketing

I believe I just got a glimpse of the future. For some time I have been speaking and writing about the far out ways we could be using digital technology in the future. Things like cloud computing, data mining, self learning virtual brains, data base marketing, artificial intelligence and fully automated e-services. All of these far out future ideas have been put into play with a new online service called Practice Activator from ActionRun.

For those Baby Boomers (and older) the term is largely pejorative, owing to its association with those who aided the Axis Powers during World War II. But there is another side to the collaboration coin. It is synonymous with team work. 

No self respecting discussion about communicating with patients of record would be complete without including social networking. Here are a few statistical tidbits, according to Socialnomics’ "Social media (is not) a fad: It is the biggest shift since the Industrial Revolution.":  

General dentists see volumes of patients each year. However, only 1 in 4 adults has straight teeth and a healthy stable bite. General dentists can add Invisalign® to their practices knowing there are many patients who can benefit from treatment.  An excellent way to market Invisalign is to educate patients about its benefits.

You’ve gone through the extra training. You’ve talked to specialists and even spent some time in their practices observing and learning. You’ve put the time in, and now you’re ready to add a new specialty service to your list of offerings.

The concept of market segmentation has been a part of the marketing scene since long before the phrase was coined. Any time someone with something to sell (or say, for that matter), identified and spoke directly to “…a sub-set of a market made up of people or organizations with one or more characteristics that cause them to demand similar product and/or services based on qualities of those products such as price or function“* they employed a market segmentation strategy.

There are two benefits your practice realizes from getting its patients to submit posts to customer review sites* and your social media. First, people increasingly depend upon service review sites in forming their opinions about a product or service, which in turn, predisposes them to making their product or service selection.

I use E-volution to denote the Electronic Revolution sweeping over us. One area where growth and change are particularly great is the relatively new phenomenon called Online Reputation Management (ORM), which, according to Wikipedia (as of 1/2010) is: The practice of consistent research and analysis of one’s personal or professional business or industry reputation, as represented by the content across all types of online media.

Ok. You didn’t go to dental school to become a marketer. But what’s a practitioner without patients?  One avenue for promoting a  dental practice is to sell yourself as an expert in your area of expertise. It can be a broad area –dentistry or a more narrow one-say teeth whitening or implants.

How’s your phone etiquette? Your team members can’t just answer the phone. They need to connect with the patient. Here’s how.

September 9, 2010-A brand new, course shows dentists fifteen of the fastest and most cost effective marketing strategies to grow any dental practice…during a “hot” economy or a “stone cold” one. This course is available by going to www.DentalMarketingDynamite.com. 

Given the state of our economy, businesses continue to look for ways to stay in touch with existing clients and attract new customers. One very effective tool, which is often overlooked because of the rush to get online and more involved with the digital world, is the newsletter.

Everyone is talking about it: Social Media. From Facebook to Twitter to LinkedIn, and from YouTube to the blogosphere, it’s difficult for the dental team to know what’s relevant, where to start, and how it’s ultimately going to improve the practice’s bottom line. It’s important and almost impossible to fathom the size of the opportunity and to grasp just how many new patients you stand to lose by not joining the conversation.

Fred Joyal is CEO of 1?800-DENTIST and author of Everything is Marketing: The Ultimate Strategy for Dental Practice Growth. He can be reached at goaskfred.com.

For more than 50 years dental laboratories have worked hard to differentiate their individual laboratory from the masses. In the early 1960s porcelain fused to metal restorations were just beginning to “come of age” and a few smart dental laboratories took advantage of this new technique to try to stand out from the crowd. There have been other techniques, materials and product/service innovations that laboratories have used over the years to try and gain a competitive advantage in an industry where everyone offers the same types of products and services.

Online marketing is becoming essential for many small businesses. Patients increasingly turn to the Internet to seek and connect with service providers. The dental market has gone digital, with leading practices developing a Web presence via websites and social media initiatives. This shift has made the Internet a more crowded and competitive space for practices. Increasingly dentists and specialists are implementing sophisticated online promotion advertising to fortify their search engine visibility.

A competitive business environment and the ongoing down economy have forced more and more companies to seek out new and better marketing alternatives. There is an increasing trend to use social networking as an affordable way to connect with customers and attract new ones as well.

If you think your current level of attention to the needs of your patients, both current and prospective is 'good enough,' think again.

Everyone knows the first rule of real estate is “Location, Location, Location.” But in the Internet age, the World Wide Web is quickly redefining what it takes for your dental practice to be ideally situated.

A website is certainly a key component of any dental practice marketing plan. And search engine optimization, which enables your website to rank higher in search engine results, also is an important strategy. But the unsung hero in today’s world of online marketing is most certainly the burgeoning field of online reputation management.

By now most of us realize the dental laboratory industry has dramatically changed and will never return to what it was five -to-six-years ago. In addition to technology and our stubborn economy, we are faced with two other important factors that are changing the face of our industry. First, the amount of laboratory work that’s being outsourced has increased at a higher rate than many industry leaders first predicted. This has obviously reduced a considerable amount of market share available to U.S. laboratories.

When deciding to enter the world of marketing, it’s essential for dentists to start not only with an idea of what they’d personally like to accomplish, but also what experts agree are the most urgent and important marketing strategies. This approach enables dental practices to create a more measured and organized marketing plan based on what works in the real world, rather than simply focusing on what might subjectively feel “important” in the moment.

  Value Defined We all want and deserve to receive value for our investment. Value can mean different things to different people. One might value getting his or her website up and running quickly, while another might be more exacting and patient. One practice might value appearance more highly than function. Still another might prefer quantity over quality of website visitors.

If someone were to tell you they knew about a powerful practice building tool that involves no selling, costs little (or nothing) to implement, enhances patient loyalty, encourages referrals, attracts new patients, builds team morale, makes a positive difference for those in need, is repeatable, and lots of fun, would you want to learn more?

  Example of direct mail campaign tracking program There are many elements to a marketing plan you can track with TTN (tracking telephone numbers). Here’s a sample marketing plan and how you can track the results.

Successful case acceptance-especially among new patients-begins long before case presentation. When a new patient enters your office, his antenna is finely tuned for all messages-spoken and unspoken-that will help him form an impression of your practice. When that impression is positive, it increases your chances of treatment acceptance.

The history of the public's perception of dentistry may be viewed as consisting of three waves. I like to describe the first wave with the term "Feel Well Dentistry."  During this wave, dentists were perceived as first and foremost who to call to get you out of tooth pain. 

With the economic prosperity of the eighties, and advances in esthetic dentistry and technology, many dentists became of the opinion that treating new patient emergencies was a waste of the dentist’s and team’s time. Symptomatic of this is what one heard when calling such a dental practice after hours: “If you are a patient of record with an extreme dental emergency you may call xxx-yyy-zzzz.” New patients were deliberately discouraged from calling.

There may be a “cool factor” that gets some people excited about new technologies, but CAD/CAM systems are business tools designed to make dental labs more efficient and productive. Taking something once done physically and moving it into a virtual environment can offer practical benefits to many labs. But if you aren’t marketing around your new capabilities and efficiencies, you’re not going to be maximizing your investment.

2009 was a year filled with opportunity and challenge (more of the latter than some may have preferred).  As the pace of change continues to accelerate, we should expect no shortage of challenge and opportunity in 2010. Much of this opportunity for growth will continue to be found online, specifically, in the area of reputation management. The challenge will lay largely in trying to keep up without being distracted from what you find fulfilling and profitable.