One of our SmartBox staffers used to live in the small town of Worland, Wyoming. Before you run a search or reach for an atlas, Worland is in north-central Wyoming, roughly in the middle of the Bighorn Basin, and boasts somewhat over 5,000 inhabitants.
Search “dentist worland wyoming” on Google, and you’ll discover that there are 11 dental offices with Worland addresses. That’s in a small town and it represents a lot of competition for a relatively small patient pool.
You probably don’t live in a town the size of Worland, but if you extrapolate the results to larger cities, you discover both an opportunity and a problem: there are many more dental prospects, and many, many more dentists trying to get them. In fact, in larger cities, your online presence is swimming in a sea of search results.
Unless you have a very strong online presence to help you place high in search results, most of that sea of prospects won’t find you. They won’t even know your name.
You can try direct mail marketing to your zip code and neighboring zip codes to take advantage of the proximity factor. Other dentists will be doing the same thing. You can spend money on newspaper ads that will be seen by relatively few these days and forgotten by most. Your potential patients are looking online for a dentist, and that’s where you have to establish your presence.
Stand Out in a Sea of “Me, too.”
If you’re going to get your share and more of the dental prospects in your market, you’ve got to stand out from your competitors. That requires you to position yourself differently in your prospects’ minds.
Dentists today are assumed to be competent. Memberships, authorship, and training don’t carry the cachet they used to. About four-fifths of your prospects are motivated far more by low price, availability, and insurance. Those are also the prospects that your competition is marketing to.
What about the other 20 percent of prospects? That group has the ability, and willingness, to pay more for a dentist they can relate to and trust. When you set up an online system to attract that segment of your market, you can position yourself as the only logical choice to solve their dental problems. That’s arguably the ultimate in differentiation.
You Can, But Should You?
A Patient Attraction System™ represents quite an undertaking. There are many aspects that have to work together seamlessly to get you found online and to keep you in front of your prospects until they decide to choose you. There’s another aspect that helps you determine precisely what parts of your marketing are delivering the most new dental patients.
It’s possible for dentists to create their own attraction system – you’ll find everything you need to do just that at www.smartboxwebmarketing.com – but it’s probably not the best use of your time and talents. You make money by seeing dental patients and solving their dental problems. You make zero money by optimizing your website, creating reams of online content, and shooting your own videos.
Get back to what you went to dental school for, and what you love to do. Go to www.smartboxwebmarketing.com/blueprint and schedule a Patient Attraction System Blueprint™ Session. They are reserved only for serious dentists who want to see a patient attraction system that can double their practice. You can get more patients, more profits, and more freedom.