Dental Marketing: The Basics

Helpful Marketing Information for the Dental Industry

For those of you in the Dental or Dental Management Industry, you may have found that you are not receiving as many new patients as you would expect. There is always a reason for this, and it may be helpful for you to check your current situation against the following marketing basics:

1. Good Communication: Whatever marketing techniques you are using must communicate well to the audience that receives it. That doesn't mean just putting out a message, it means putting out a message that will be received well. For example when handing out referral cards to patients, if they are attractive and have a pronounced message they will likely be handed out to others who will in turn pay attention to them and you will see many of those people walk into the office. If not, you might be spending time and effort on a marketing strategy that is not working as well as it should be.

2. Any Marketing is Better Than None: Generally speaking, no matter how professional an office or a practice is, if there is no marketing happening then it's quite likely that there will be very few patients for you to care for. An attractive and comfortable office and great care for the patients are very helpful to the maintenance of a practice but do not substitute for "speaking out" and letting other people know you are there. Unfortunately a beautiful and professional practice may as well be invisible if no one knows of it's existence.

3. Volume: In order for marketing to be really effective in any type of industry (including Dental) marketing must be done in volume. The amount of new patients received will always be proportional to the amount of marketing-type communication being sent out. The bottom line is this: If just a little bit of marketing is occurring then you will just get a percentage of that back in terms of new patients. (It's very helpful to have some sort of marketing system set up in any type of dental practice that generates lots of "outflow" to the public and continues to do so. It doesn't necessarily have to take a lot of time to do this.)