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Dental Marketing Basics

Sometimes the simplest data is the best. Marketing is not complex if you know the basics - that’s true with anything by the way. Here are some tools that are brilliantly simple and with them you really won’t have to sweat the small stuff.

The more that your prospective patients see your name in front of them, the more likely they are to call your number (and not someone else’s) when they need the services you offer. Many marketing efforts go unrewarded, not because they were off target, but simply because they weren’t given enough of an opportunity to work. Showing your TV commercial one time, running an ad in the newspaper once, or doing one mailing of postcards may not be enough to grab and keep your target audience’s attention.

Get your name out there, do it on a regular basis and people will remember you when they need to make an appointment for a dental cleaning or more extensive dental work. Actually, this particular datum cannot be stressed enough - and failure to adhere to it is the #1 reason new businesses fail.

You should also know that taking the time to really see which advertising pieces will generate the response you want, will pay off. Don’t just totally give up when a response is low - persistence is vital. Testing and tweaking your advertising can create a marketing campaign that hits the mark every time.

Measure your Return On Investment (ROI) in terms of actual MONEY not response rate. An advertising vehicle is working when the MONEY that it brings in has more value than the MONEY and time that is spent on the marketing.

Don’t fall into the trap of becoming discouraged by a small number of new callers responding to a large number of pieces. If you spend several hundred dollars to be in the view of a few thousand possible patients, it may only take a few of them responding for you to make enough of a profit for this type of marketing to be valuable. Three patients that need bridge work can more than pay for a successful marketing campaign. The usefulness of any vehicle can only be determined after the amount of income generated by the promotion has been calculated. If you spend 1/5 of what you generate or generate 5 times what you spend, your campaign was successful.

It is much easier to "sell" a prospect once you get them to call or come in to your practice. In “2-Step Marketing”, step 1 is to get them interested; step 2 is having them speak to a representative of your practice to get all the details - and get “closed” by that representative, most likely to make an appointment or to buy a product that you offer.

The design of your advertising piece must be eye catching and informative, but don’t try to close them on the entire dental treatment by explaining all of the details in one piece of advertising. The details of a business transaction often take many more words to explain than the main concept of what is being sold. For example, if your company offers great prices for your services, there is no need to list the prices for every dental service that you can deliver. Simply give examples of two or three different services and state somewhere in the advertisement that other discounts are available for your other services. This will prompt them to call to get the rest of the details once you have gotten their interest.

By no means have I given you all the basics here, but by learning and implementing these 3 marketing fundamentals, you are already on your way to marketing success!