Having been in dental practice for some thirty years, I’ve been very fortunate to benefit from the “beginnings” of several changes or shifts in marketing, and the way that we as dentists attract new patients to our dental offices.
Now there’ll always be a large number of dentists who say that their top method of attracting new customers to their offices has always been word of mouth.
I’ll contend for these practices that there are two truths:
1. They don’t have many new patients at all.
2. They don’t invest or spend any money on advertising and marketing to acquire new patients.
That’s why their biggest source of new patients is referrals only.
The simple fact of the matter is in this loud, crowded world, you need to, *NO*, I mean you *MUST*, be putting your name out there to the general public to let them know that you are there to serve them, and to let them know who exactly you are and what exactly you can do for them, otherwise how in the world will those people who are looking for your services ever ever find you?
When I graduated a little over thirty odd years ago, when we talk advertising or marketing for dentists and dental offices, well let’s just say this, that things were very very different. There were massively restrictive mountains of rules and regulations that dictated exactly how you were able to go about letting the general public know who in fact you were and what sort of dentistry and dental services you had to offer to them.
These regulations limited you to the size of a light box [very very small], and the size of a brass plate and even the size of lettering on those items.
There was no yellow pages advertising allowed; just purely line entry only.
Now I’ll hear people say time and time again that they don’t advertise, and don’t need to advertise.
I’ll contend that attracting a larger number of new patients to your dental office each month gives you greater flexibility in determining the type of dentistry that you wish to practice, by allowing you to discard some of those patients with treatment that you’d rather refer away.
A continuous stream of new patients responding to your targeted marketing allows you to build the dental practice that *YOU* want to build. Not become the dentist that your community dictates …you get to work in and run the dental office that you want.
Now prominent position and street front exposure allows you to compete successfully for passing traffic, and that’s OK if you are a general dentist hoping to attract the general population for general dentistry.
However, if you are trying to build a dental practice focused more towards a specific treatment modality, or towards a particular demographic of the community, then you are really going to have to spend some money on acquiring the patients you seek.
You see, money is attracted to speed. No question!
So if you are happy waiting to allow market forces and locality issues dictate your income, lifestyle, and where you live and where you’re children go to school, well that’s fine….but if you feel like you actually want to control your destiny rather than drift along and be dragged into conditions you’d rather not be in…Then you *REALLY* do need to take some control and dip into your pocket and *invest* in yourself so that you really do end up where you want to be rather than where external forces cause you to end up!!
Remember this!
You invested all that time and all those dollars to become a dentist! Years and years and years! And Thousands upon thousands, make that hundreds of thousands of dollars…..
*YOU* alone must dictate your own destiny…after all those years and all those dollars…Don’t allow anyone else to determine your future path….
Remember, *YOUR* dentistry is not just a commodity. The profession of Dentistry is not a profession or a service that anyone can just decide to do…
Dentistry is a university-trained profession. Both you, and the general public need to remember that!
So don’t let the general public treat you like you are just a commodity….
Because if you do, then you discount yourself, you lower your own value and worth….and that’s not what dentistry, or for that matter, the general population, that’s exactly *NOT* what they need.
Become more than just a commodity…become a point of difference..become *THE* dental office of choice in your locality, in your city!!
You deserve it! And your loyal patients deserve it! And your new patients deserve it too!!
“How to Not Be a Commodity” is just one of the many modules that make up The Ultimate Patient Experience, a simple easy to implement system I developed that allowed me to build an extraordinary dental office in an ordinary Sydney suburb. If you’d like to know more, ask me about my free special report.
Email me: david@theUPE.com
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