It may be a stretch to say that your patients have to take out payday loans to pay for their dental care, but it brings up a point.
What kinds of patients are you getting?
Are they patients who have the resources and the willingness to pay for the care they not only need, but want?
Or are you getting patients who want only what insurance will pay for and at the minimum cost to them?
That’s not to suggest that people of lesser means don’t deserve quality dental care. Rather, it’s to point out that the value of some patients to your practice is far higher. As an added bonus, those higher-value patients generally represent the kind of dentistry you love to do.
So why aren’t you getting more higher-value patients?
Blame It On Your Marketing
There’s a kind of “marketing hypnosis” when it comes to dental practices. But instead of getting sleepy, dentists all over the country fall into lockstep following and outdated and ineffective marketing model.
Price-based marketing gets you low-value patients. Period. Better dental patients are looking for something else.
Think of it this way – if someone is willing to plunk down six figures for a luxury vehicle, do they really care about a couple hundred bucks? Not much. But specials, discounts, and rebates are practically the lifeblood of today’s automotive sales industry.
Give Them Want They Want
Dental prospects with discretionary income can afford to be choosy, and they are. They choose the dentist who they like, relate to, and trust as the dental expert to solve their oral health issues. They flat don’t care about what insurance will pay or about saving a few bucks out of pocket.
Your marketing doesn’t appeal to better patients because the idea of a “discount dental expert” makes no sense. They’ll look elsewhere, pronto.
Attracting better patients requires a full-court press, so to speak. Every aspect of your marketing has to work together to position you as the dentist of choice for the patients you want to attract. Your website, blog, social media, paid advertising, emails – everything has to be coordinated in a strategic way to influence prospects over time to choose you.
Achieving and maintaining that coordination takes a lot of bandwidth, because it’s a process rather than an event. It’s never done. It’s a huge lift for a busy dental practice.
And, it takes a lot of pretty specialized skills. Maybe you or one of your staff members has those skills. Is fine-tuning your marketing approach the best use of your time? Almost certainly not.
Besides, you’re a dentist and you became a dentist to do dentistry, not to ramrod a complicated marketing operation.
Dr. Jonathan Gilbart of Hagerstown, MD saw the writing on the marketing wall. He said, “I’ve had different companies in the past. They’re good at this, they’re good at that, but they don’t put it all together. I don’t have time to put it all together. I want to focus on my patients and focus on what their needs are. I like to tinker with the stuff, but to be honest, I’m not that great at it. So, I wanted to find a company that could do everything, as far as marketing, for me.
“I decided to make the leap of faith, and I’m glad that I did because I’ve been very happy with SmartBox and their ability to take all the stuff, put it together, and handle that aspect so I can focus on my patients.”
The Fork In The Road
You can keep marketing on price and getting too many low-value patients. You’ll work too hard for too long for too little to make any real money.
Or, you can work less, earn more, and enjoy life! Here’s how.
Schedule a free, no-obligation Roadmap call. That’s all it is – a conversation over the phone that takes about a long as it takes you to place a single crown or a dental implant.
The entire purpose of the call is to see what’s possible for your dental practice, and to give you a complimentary Roadmap to get you to that possible. It’s yours to use however you like.
The choice is yours: too many low case value patients, and practicing dentistry the way it was always meant to be.
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