Days Are Gone When Dental Patients Just Lined Up At Your Door

The definition of external marketing is anything that lets a prospective new patient know who you are, and where you are.  Dentists in busier market areas pine for the days when all they had to do was unlock their door and patients were waiting.  Most had great dental insurance plans, and the biggest decision a practice had to make was when they were taking their vacations that year.

Now – new practices are open in every strip mall, usually with corresponding neon signs and large painted windows.  Opening hours from 7:00 AM to sometimes 9:00 PM are not unusual, and Saturdays and Sundays openings are much more common.  If you are on the 3^rd floor of an obscure office building – how is any prospective patient to even have a clue you exist?

Any public persona in terms of signage, radio, newspaper, yellow pages, and mailers is external marketing – the necessary life blood in a competitive market. One of the most frequently heard statements from dentists is:  ‘we tried yellow pages and that didn’t work. We tried newspaper and that didn’t work. We tried radio and that didn’t work.’  You get the picture. What they should have said is ‘we tried bad yellow pages, bad newspaper, and bad radio – and none of it worked’. Just about any message is better than no message, but if you are going to invest in any medium you better ensure you have a message that is tried and proven – and every response is tracked. The fact is that it costs an average of $125 in marketing costs to put a prospective hygiene patient in your chair. Forget making a dime off them during that appointment. It costs between $500 and $1,000 in marketing costs to put a prospective cosmetic or implant patient in your chair – again with no guaranteed return. If you are going to invest that kind of money, you better ensure that you do not lose one single inquiry. That could be the full mouth makeover prospect that slipped between your fingers. Get help in the tracking process. Our clients’ prospects are all tracked – usually with their name, address, and telephone number before they utter a word. It is just that important.

You must track patient response to any advertising medium – and don’t bet the farm (like a year long gamble on Yellow Pages) without testing your market. At least 90% of the dental ads we see are worthless. Don’t let your hard earned marketing dollars add to this equation!

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