How to Get More Patients for Your Dental Office?

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.