Have you ever been wondering how to get more patients into your dental practice? You’re not alone. Dentists everywhere are searching for the best ways to combine technology and niche offerings in order to serve the most patients in the community.
Run a SWOT analysis
First things first. Before revamping your dental practice marketing strategy, you’ll want to run a SWOT session to identify the areas of your current business development efforts that can benefit most from boosting marketing.
What is SWOT?
SWOT is an analytical practice that evaluates a company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Use the following questions per category when working on your SWOT analysis:
Strengths:
- What makes my dentistry unique from local competitors?
Weaknesses:
- What complaints do we receive most from patients?
- Are wait times too long? Prices too high?
Opportunities:
- Which areas of our practice can grow?
- Which areas of our practice need to grow?
- Are we utilizing technology to its full advantage?
Threats:
- Are there budget issues we need to prepare for as we plan to expand marketing?
- Are there new or more practices opening up in the area?
- Is technology sweeping business away?
- Are there any other issues in our practice that could cause a problem?
Now that you have a thorough understanding of your businesses’ needs and growth opportunities, you can thoughtfully consider whether and how to implement growth marketing ideas. See below for our experts’ advice.
How to increase patients in dental clinic:
Identify Target Audience
Marketing efforts are completely futile if they are not directed toward the right group of people. Before embracing marketing efforts, research who is in your area, who is in need of your services, who is making most of the household decisions and what sort of information they like to receive in order to make purchase and service decisions. Depending on who you find to be your target audience, hire a marketing team or consultant that has expertise in that demographic.
Online Patient Reviews
Patient reviews online can make or break prospective clients’ decisions to choose your practice over another. Encourage happy clients to write favorably about your business online and tend thoughtfully and promptly to any consumers who have left negative reviews. In the event of negative reviews, do everything you can to make up the bad experience to that client so they can change their opinion and instead, become an advocate for your practice.
Patient Referral System
Did you know that on average, 70 percent of new patient growth in established dentistries should come from internal referrals? It’s true. That means if you don’t already have a referral bonus system in place, you need to create one.
A referral bonus system is the most effective way to encourage clients to pass along your name and market your dental practice by word of mouth. Assuming you are running an efficient practice and executing exemplary dentistry work, it should be easy to prompt patients into the next phase of referral, but a little incentive can go a long way.
Consider offering a discount on services or a free cleaning for clients whose referrals come in to visit your practice. If it helps, you might incentivize employees to encourage referrals with patients by offering a portion of new client profit or other bonus.
Look for Competitive Opportunities
Where your competitors are lacking, you can thrive. Take a look at competitor offerings — pricing, package bundling, hours of operation, etc. Make sure to offer hours and prices that match or beat your competitors, and see where opportunities arise for you to be the sole provider of certain services.
Marketing is essential in gaining new consumers for dental practices, and the tactics listed above offer an excellent place to start rebuilding your strategy. For more insight and guidance, reach out to our professional at Rosy Strategies.
