Dentists typically spend a fair amount on marketing their practices. They almost universally don’t get enough return on that investment.
Part of the reason for low ROI is that dentists tend to market like everyone else. Advertising on price, specials, and coupons brings in low-value new patients. Someone who needs implants, full-mouth reconstruction, or dentures won’t be motivated by a $50 off coupon. People who need cleanings, fillings, or light dental bonding, will be.
Most dental practices rely on a stream of those low value patients plus a comparative handful of higher-value patients.. Have you ever stopped to ask yourself what you’re spending to attract each new patient versus what you get in return? Even worse, have you ever asked yourself what you’re not getting?
You’re Throwing Away Marketing Dollars
This will sound odd, but your marketing might be better than you think. The crucial step in getting new patients happens on the phone.
The vast majority of dentists will swear that their phone answerers do a bang-up job of appointing new patients. They believe that even though they’re seldom in the front office when those new patients call.
Unfortunately, many dental practices – perhaps most – miss a huge number of opportunities to put more new patients in their chairs. SmartBox has data from an entire quarter of phone calls to our Elite level dentists’ practices. Like the vast majority of dentists, these dentists swore that their phone answerers did a great job!
Our dedicated Call Quality Analyst team listened to every one of those calls, as they do for all SmartBox dentists every month. Since the source of every new patient call is known through call tracking, it was easy to determine the phone answerers’ effectiveness.
The results were appalling. A huge number of phone calls during business hours weren’t answered. A large number of callers were rolled to voice mail or simply hung up. And as a group, phone answerers failed to appoint a good number of new patients through failing to take control of the call, poor phone technique, or placing an answered call on hold for too long.
Every new patient caller not appointed is a complete waste
of your marketing dollars.
Stop Losing Money on the Phone!
The odds are excellent that you’re not getting anywhere near the return on your marketing investment that you could be getting.
You make money by seeing patients and solving their dental issues. If you’re not doing that, you’re not making any money. You certainly don’t have time to train your staff on phone etiquette and converting callers to appointed patients. You don’t even have time to monitor their performance on the phone.
SmartBox dentists reap the benefits of the state-of-the-art, dental practice-specific phone training we do for them. Even more important is that we integrate those phone skills with our proven, industry-leading Patient Attraction System™ that can get you more prospects for your answerers to convert to appointed patients.
Get the new patients and the return on your marketing investment you deserve. Call SmartBox Web Marketing at 888.741.1413 and one of our Digital Practice Consultants will assist you.