Dentistry is consistently ranked as one of the two most desirable professions. That ranking is based on factors like working conditions, salary, and work/life balance. And people have taken note: there are more active dentists in the United States than at any time in history.
Dentistry is a great profession, but it’s also one that requires dedication and hard work. Still, that hard work should be balanced by adequate time off to spend with family and friends, and to pursue hobbies and pastimes.
It’s not like that for too many dentists in the U.S. Here’s why.
The Dental Marketing Kool-Aid
One that’s never covered in dental school is how to promote your practice and get new patients. For the vast majority of dentists, learning to market is on-the-job training. So, they look at what their competitors are doing and follow along.
After all, if their competition is in business, their marketing must work, right?
Well, sort of. Being in business isn’t the same thing as succeeding in business.
Most dental practices, even today, market their practices the same way that dentists did in the 1980’s and 1990’s. They advertise specials, promotions, low price, and insurance.
What they get in return are price-shoppers, one-and-done’s, and insurance-driven patients who only want what insurance will cover.
When dentists’ margins are thin, they’ve got to see a lot of patients to make even decent money. The result is that those dentists work too hard, for too long, for too little.
Beyond that, advertising takes a lot of a dentist’s time. Offers need to be decided upon, Ads designed and approved, and media bought every quarter, if not every month. That’s an additional hit to dentists’ work-life balance.
The one thing that dentists today do differently than their forebears to promote their practices is to have a website. But busy dentists don’t have much time to think about their websites, much less keep them updated. And in the vast majority of cases, those websites haven’t been updated in 6-8 years. That is an eternity in internet time.
Those thoroughly dated websites do more harm than good when it comes to attracting patients who will actually pay for the treatment they need. People are spoiled for choice these days. When it comes to choosing a thoroughly modern dental practice over one that looks like it’s still in the 1990’s, it’s no contest.
Embrace THE 21st-Century Dental Marketing Approach
SmartBox works with more than 550 dentists on three continents to help them get more patients, more profits, and more freedom. Our industry-leading Patient Attraction System
provides them with a consistent flow of new patients while freeing them to pursue dentistry, not marketing.
Discover what SmartBox can do for your practice. Visit smartboxdentalmarketing.com and reserve your free, no-obligation Practice Discovery Session. Invest 20 minutes of your time to discover how you can double or even triple your practice. We’ll take the results of that phone call and send you your personalized Patient Attraction Roadmap – again, absolutely free.
Stop working too hard, for too long, for too little. Learn how you can practice dentistry the way it’s supposed to be – as one of the two best professions.
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