It’s that time of year when patients want their whitest and brightest smiles – even if they’ve largely neglected their teeth for preceding 11 months.
While many dentists run holiday specials to realize incremental revenue gains in teeth whitening and minor cosmetic procedures, they may be missing the larger and far more rewarding picture.
One And Dones Need Not Apply
Any qualified patient that contacts your practice is a potential gold mine. The lifetime value of a patient will easily run into many thousands of dollars, and you get that revenue without having to spend to replace that patient.
Here’s the problem: someone who contacts your office because you have the lowest price on a procedure will continue to want the lowest price. If he or she can’t get that from your practice, they’ll be gone… and you’ll be laying out hard-earned cash to attract a replacement.
That’s not to say that you should never run specials – they have their place – but you won’t get the kinds of loyal patients who will help you grow your practice. And you’re unlikely to get more elective cases of real value.
The Solution To The “Typical” Patient
Getting higher-value patients in your chairs requires a shift in your attitude. While you might find this hard to believe, SmartBox’s analysis shows that in virtually every market some 20-40 percent of dental patients have the discretionary income to go fee-for-service for the dental care they want.
The outlier markets are those that are economically challenged. Even in those areas, though, there are still some patients with money, and they should be your patients.
The first step is taking yourself out of the category of being “just another dentist.” It’s understandable if you bristled at reading that, but it’s true. Dentists today are viewed as being pretty much interchangeable. With nothing else to differentiate one from the other, the only relevant choices for patients are price and availability.
You can remove yourself from the great mass of dentists by emphasizing two things in all your external practice growth efforts – the patient experience, the solutions to their problems, and that they can trust you and your team to care for them.
Your Patients Don’t Care About You
Most dentists’ websites are full of information about the dentist(s) – dental school attended, post-doctoral training and certification, memberships, and the like. Those things aren’t important to dental patients. They want to know what you’re going to do for them, and how they’ll be treated while they’re in your practice.
Your patients want to eat the foods they love without pain, smile without embarrassment, and regain a quality of life that they might have thought was gone forever.
Does your current marketing approach emphasize what’s important to patients? If not, do you and your team have the expertise, bandwidth, and time to change how you go about attracting the better patients in your market?
You Do Dentistry And Leave The Rest To Us.
SmartBox has helped more than 4,317 dentists attract more and better patients. In fact, we’ve generated more than $3.14 in new patient opportunity for our doctors. We offer comprehensive practice growth services so that you and your team can do what you do best – see patients, solve their dental problems, and change lives.
If you’d like to learn more about what SmartBox can do to help you grow your practice, schedule a Practice Growth Call. You can enjoy the rewards of your holiday specials, and much, much more.