There are literally hundreds of ideas that’ll come to you when we begin to brainstorm about dental practice marketing. The truth is, there are only a handful of well-placed and well-executed strategies that truly work and help your business reach ROI. If there is one thing you need to remember about the dental practice, it is this: it is a local business and local community members are your primary target audience.
Any marketing ploy you can think of should be focused on the local community members. These are your potential patients and they will also be the one to spread the word about your dental practice.
Create a patient referral system
What is the best way to get new patients with your dental practice marketing? From the existing ones. Once a person becomes a patient, that should not stop you from creating marketing strategies on how to get new ones from the existing clients. A whopping 92% of consumers say they respect and trust the referrals from their peers while 74% said that word-of-mouth recommendations influence their decisions.
A referral program will give incentives to your patients who will recommend your practice to their peers. Your incentives need to be relevant to your clients such as discounts and promos on existing dental services and products.
Start a neighborhood newsletter
Email marketing is the most effective way to reach your audience. You can create a community newsletter that you can send to your clients’ email addresses twice or once a month. It depends on how much time you have to write and edit these articles. But remember, you have to be consistent and regularly update the articles that you’ll send.
There’s a lot you can do with a neighborhood newsletter—you can create a testimonials section, an informative column, a collage of photos of clients, as well as new trends in the industry and the activities that your profession is involved in.
Send appointment reminders
If you want to remain connected to your patients, it’s important that you communicate with them regularly. Start by sending a welcome email to officially welcome them to your growing dental family. If they book an appointment with you, make it a point to remind them of the appointment a day before.
You can also send an appointment reminder via text message. This is a valuable way to stay connected with your customers and make sure they show up for appointments.
These efforts will endear you to your clients and they will feel that their patronage of your business is being valued. That kind of service will result in loyalty and hopefully, a lot of recommendations.