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Decrease Your Stress, Increase Your Profits

Decrease Your Stress, Increase Your Profits
Four Must Have Strategies to grow Your Dental Practice

Welcome to the new economy! An economy where uncertainty is the new normal, competition is fierce, and patients are less loyal and more cautious about where, when and with whom they spend their money. Face it, this economy has changed, and if you want to stay in the game let alone grow your dental practice, then you need to change with it.

Overhauling (or even just starting) your marketing strategy needs to be top of your list for 2016. In today’s economy, marketing needs to be much for than traditional radio spot and newspaper ads you have used for years. To succeed today you have to get above the white noise, create buzz about your practice and get your staff and your patients engaged in the process.

This needs to be a full-team effort, because growing a dental practice today is different. You see, far more than this economy has changed, your patients have changed, and how patients choose a dentist and stay loyal to a dentist has changed. They are no longer interested in what you are saying about your practice and your procedures, no instead they are turning to their friends, their families and even google reviews. Practice growth today has become far more about the patient experience, and what they are saying about your practice, then what you or any full page ad or television spot have to say.

Now before you start worrying about how you are going to get this all done, or get to feeling overwhelmed by another thing you need to learn to do or add to your long list of strategies for success, let me assure you the information we are above to cover will actually decrease your stress while increasing your profits.

The changes in our economy, while challenging, are actually really good for a dentist who loves what he does, loves his patients, and understands the importance of prioritizing the patient experience. Growth today, when you understand how this economy has changed, and how those changes have impacted how and why patients buy is actually less stressful and more successful when you apply the right strategies.

Four Must Have Strategies to Grow Your Dental Practice

1. Market Inside Out – as Steven Covey says, begin with the end in mind. You need to start by looking at your practice from the inside out, and getting a solid understanding of what the current patient experience is like. Take an hour or two, with your staff, and walk through your practice as a patient. How are you greeted on the phone What is it like to walk in your practice, sit in the dental chair, check out? Once you understand that, do everything you can to make the patient experience better. Remember your best sales people are your current patients, and you need to make sure that those patients who are coming to your practice now are “wow’d” by the experience. Give them something to talk about, and make them jump at the chance when you ask for referrals. Do this on a quarterly basis, engage your team in the process, and you will consistently give your patients something to talk about.
2. Engage with Video – video is your friend, and ensures you stand out from your competition. Our smart phones and inexpensive tripods have made shooting a video easy. Instead of sending newsletters or magazines, try sending a video out to your patients giving them a dental update. Get your staff to send video happy birthday cards, and get your patients to put those wonderful testimonials on a video. The more you can engage with video, the more potential patients will engage with your site. We use a lot video in my husband’s practice and on his site. New patients always comment that they feel like they know him, and are comfortable with him before they every meet him. The other wonderful thing about video, is the huge power of the marketing, the little to no cost, and the strong return on investment
3. Manage Your Reputation – remember what you say about your practice in traditional advertising pales in comparison to what others are saying. New patients listen to what existing patients are saying, and existing patients are making their experiences known via google reviews and other online channels. While there is not much you can do about those few patients that may leave a negative comment here and there, there is quite a bit you can do to increase your positive comments. You need to get active this year, and manage your online reputation. Understand that people searching for a new dentist are searching online more than ever. Even if they’ve been given a strong referral, they are likely to look you up online before they call to set the appointment. What they see online, the reviews you have (or do not have) will make all the difference. A great process that we use to ensure we maximize our great reviews potential is www.getmorereviews.com.
4. Harvest the Low Hanging Fruit – your existing patients are your best resource for more potential work, referrals, and increased services. If you want to grow your practice, make it easy on yourself, and take every opportunity to talk to your existing patients about doing more with you. The top two reasons that your existing patients do not do more with you, is because they do not know what you have to offer, and you never asked. Challenge your staff to review pending work, review the schedule and focus on two patients every day to proactively talk to about new procedures, and send out periodic updates (video of course) to existing patients about new procedures you are doing, or successful cases you have done. Your patients want to do more with you, you just need to help them understand how.