Dentists who advertise like most other dentists get what most other dentists get – price shoppers, insurance-driven patients, and one-and-dones with little or no loyalty to the practice.
You can keep a dental practice going with those patients, but it’s not pretty or fun. Those types of patients create a dental treadmill – low case value, high volume, and a lot of work for not enough return. The dental treadmill is physically and emotionally hard on you and on your staff.
It takes a lot of time and effort to increase a practice’s bottom line. Part of the reason for that is price and insurance-based dental practices are usually involved in a price war against their competitors. Since price and insurance are important to those prospects, and since dentists are widely regarded as competent, the lowest price “wins.”
That’s Not All There Is
Not all dental prospects in a given market are driven by low prices or insurance acceptance. Roughly 20 to 30 percent of prospects have the ability and willingness to pay more for the right dentist.
The right dentist is the one that prospects view as relatable, likeable, understanding, and the expert to solve their dental concerns. They’re not interested in commodity dentistry. Rather, they’re looking to establish a long-term relationship with their dentist of choice. Better patients are interested in the total experience they have with you, your staff, and your practice. And once they choose a dentist, they tend to be very loyal.
The fact that better patients are out there is good news for your practice. However, they don’t care much about low price and insurance and won’t respond to that kind of advertising.
It Takes More Than Marketing Tweaks
You can’t succeed by advertising yourself as the relatable, trustworthy, discount dental expert. That has about as much credibility as offering a brand-new Porsche at a ridiculously low price.
You’ll need to revamp large parts of your marketing approach to get the better patients in your market. That almost certainly involves rewriting your website content to focus more on the benefits of choosing you; establishing a strong and engaging social media presence; and implementing carefully considered and timed email marketing campaigns, among many other things.
Sounds Exhausting, Doesn’t It?
If yours is a high-volume dental practice, time and energy are already at a premium. Do you really want to take the daunting task of revising the way you promote your practice?
Probably not. Fortunately, you don’t have to.
SmartBox works with more than 550 dentists on three continents to help them get better patients. SmartBox dentists have the enjoyable luxury of focusing on doing the dentistry. We take care of providing a steady stream of patients with higher lifetime value to the practice.
Visit www.smartboxdentalmarketing.com and click on the “Get Started” button. Schedule your free, no-obligation Practice Discovery Session
. Following the 25-minute phone call, SmartBox will send your completely personalized, free, Patient Attraction Roadmap.
There’s much more out there than price-driven, insurance-driven, one-and-dones. SmartBox will help you mine the better patient “gold” in your market.
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