How to drive practice growth with a marketing coordinator

Off the top of your head, which makes more sense: A highly skilled dentist taking time away from patients to arrange the catering for a marketing event or an enthusiastic part-timer handling that and the thousand other tasks involved in conducting the practice’s multi-strategy marketing program?

Even if you were really outgoing, creative, persuasive and great with details, you still shouldn’t take a hands-on approach to practice marketing. Far better to pay someone else to do that job, bringing in so many new patients that you can spend 98 percent of your time chairside.

That’s the beauty of delegating responsibilities for marketing to a part-time marketing coordinator (MC). This modest addition to your payroll will yield dramatic results, not only by bringing in more patients but also by enabling you to produce more dentistry. According to a major study conducted recently by the Levin Group Data Center, practices with an MC had 31 percent higher production.

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Upgrade your marketing program

Are you currently using 15 or more ongoing marketing strategies? Not likely if you don’t already have an MC handling the considerable logistics that such a program represents. The amount of work involved would inevitably curtail your ability to provide the clinical care and customer service your patients deserve. And yet, as the Levin Group has proven time and again with our marketing clients, you need this many strategies to make sure you’ve got something to appeal to everyone. Working 4 to 6 hours a week, an MC can meet this requirement.

Will your strategies be innovative, providing value to your current patients who refer as well as to the new patients they send your way? Dentistry has become a competitive field. You can no longer assume you’ll get enough new patients to grow your practice-or even to avoid decline-without smart marketing. The right MC will come up with fresh ideas for generating referrals.

Can you count on getting at least one referral a year from 40 to 60 percent of your current patients? Imagine how such an achievement would impact your practice. We’re talking geometric growth! Levin Group has seen countless practices reach this target, thanks to the effort of their MCs. By tracking progress toward this overall goal as well as monitoring the performance of individual referral strategies (so that underperformers can be replaced), your MC will help grow your practice dramatically.

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Do you think of customer service as a marketing tool? You should. Patient referrals are a form of word-of-mouth advertising. If your current patients receive excellent service from you and your staff, they’ll want to tell their family members, friends, coworkers, neighbors and others about it. When they do, they’ll be just a tiny step away from suggesting those people come to you for dental care.

You’ll still have control of your marketing

Assigning the responsibility, accountability and vast majority of the work involved in marketing does not prevent you from calling the shots. Meet with your MC to discuss new strategies, progress toward targets, resource allocation and other issues. You’ll still make the major decisions but without making a major time commitment.

Hiring a part-time MC is, without a doubt, one of the best moves any practice owner can make. Once you do it and begin seeing the results, you’ll wish you’d done it a long time ago.

New Year, Better Performance: Are you looking to make practice improvements in 2017? Get started by scheduling a free 30-minute practice assessment. Speak with a Certified Practice Analyst about capitalizing on the opportunities within your practice. To schedule your assessment, call 888-973-0000 or email customerservice@levingroup.com