Too much of today’s dental marketing is a straightforward proposition: “We do this for this much money.” Quite a few of a given market’s dental prospects will respond that approach. They’ll pick the lowest-price dentist, get some work done, and vanish.
There are several downsides to that marketing approach. You’re having to cut your rates to be the lowest-price provider. Your marketing generates little or no repeat business. And positioning yourself as a cut-rate provider is a turnoff to the 20 percent of prospects who are looking for a relationship with a dentist who they like, can relate to, and trust to solve their dental problems.
If your story is all about price, you’ll miss those prospects.
Tell A Different Story
Dentists today are viewed as commodities. That can be a hard pill for dentists to swallow, but it’s true. Dentists are deemed to be competent; with that belief, one dentist is pretty much the same as another. Price is pretty much the only differential.
Storytelling is an excellent way of becoming more to your prospects than just another dentist. Some dentists delight in telling stories; others hate it. But your better prospects are looking for a relationship, not just service. Stories told by you about how you and your staff improved patients’ lives are powerful. Stories told about you and your staff by delighted patients constitute social proof that you might very well be the right choice for prospects.
Many dentists feature videos on their websites of themselves talking about procedures. The vast majority of patients won’t understand, don’t care about, and aren’t interested in the technical details. Patients are interested in only a few things: Can this dentist solve my problem? Will it hurt? Will they understand my fear? Will I be delighted in the outcome?
Your stories, and those of your patients, need to address your prospects’ needs, wants, and fears. When you accomplish that, your prospects are predisposed to look on you as the only logical choice to solve their dental problems. When you and your staff provide one of those prospects with a superior patient experience and superior outcome, you have a patient for life.
Do You Have Time To Tell Stories?
You and your staff make money by seeing patients, not by shooting videos, managing your online reputation on social media and review sites, and writing story-focused blog posts. Doing any of those things well demands expertise and a considerable amount of time.
Not only that, but stories don’t have an infinite shelf life. A testimonial from four or five years ago has less impact than a patient who received services six months ago. Reviews that are older than a year are likely to be discounted unless there are many other, more recent, reviews. Today’s blog posts are tomorrow’s old news. Moreover, Google favors content that is authoritative, responsive to searchers’ queries, and fresh.
Get Back to Doing What You Love and What Makes You Money
If you’re done being “just another dentist,” but you don’t have the bandwidth to pursue a different marketing approach on your own, here’s what you need to do.
Visit patientattractionblueprint.com and arrange a BluePrint call. SmartBox reserves those calls for dentists who are interested in a proven system that can double or even triple their practices. You can get more patients, more profits, and more freedom.