Practice Marketing

 Whether you are marketing your own small enterprise, a newly established business or even a dental practice, marketing strategies and resources play a key role. Marketing entails the ability to resource your services to the larger community, to be known by all and to effectively reach your target market. Many books, DVD’s and internet resources provide one with tips on ‘how to market your business / practice etc effectively’. Many of these ‘how to’ guides have shown proven success but unfortunately, what works for one business may not necessarily work for another. Practice marketing is a relatively new idea and it has taken the healthcare industry by storm. There is a large difference between marketing strategies used on a small business selling computer software and on a dentist marketing his private practice.

Initially, healthcare marketing almost entirely consisted out of the yellow pages (and one still finds the resources there today); this is the place where one can find psychologists, dentists, GP’s, orthodontists, pediatricians etc. With the expansion of the healthcare industry and especially concentrating on the dental industry, specialists within the field of cosmetic dentistry are faced with competition, in order to create business, a reference in a book will no longer suffice, the solution, dental practice marketing. One fatal mistake made by many professionals is the idea of, the more the better; this could not be farther from the truth. Advertisements are most certainly a great way for marketing dental practices but this does not mean that you must place as many advertisements in as many newspapers and magazines as possible. Effective marketing is done when one focuses on your target audience, places a few ads in varying newspapers (typical of your target audience) and then having these ads reprinted on a regular basis, for example, every Monday and Thursday of the week etc.

Effective dental practice marketing methods also includes, above others, to have a personalized website. The idea with your website should be that it is easy to find when one searches using keywords, it should also be easily downloadable with a ‘subscribe’ link on the front page. Weekly newsletters concerning the information about the cosmetic dental industry, your services etc will allow potential clients to get to know you and allow them more confidence in the utilizing of your services. A website should be as detailed as possible with as much information surrounding your services and what you offer. Practice marketing involves including yourself as a part of the community, you need to earn trust and people must respect that which you do. It only takes several pleased patients to leave your doors before you have referral appointments being made. Practice marketing therefore involves two main things, critical and creative thinking and good communicating skills.