Seven dental marketing mistakes...and how to avoid them

As a dental professional, you face unfamiliar challenges in running and marketing your practice. You are confronted with increased competition (both locally and abroad), an oversupply of dentists, ever rising practice operating costs, and more marketing-savvy patients. On top of this, your potential patients are becoming more discerning about where they go for dental treatment, with many heading overseas.

In order to achieve practice success, it is essential to build long-term relationships with patients and prospects. Long-term patients are more likely to feel satisfied. It is they who welcome the opportunity to refer others to you and who will continue to use your services in the future.

Over my years working with hundreds of dentists as a marketing consultant, I have observed the common mistakes that prevent them being able to market their practices successfully.

1. Not knowing your numbers and not tracking them

One of the most common mistakes that I see is that many dental practices just do not track their numbers. There is a saying that “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail”. It is critical that you track all of the metrics in your business, and your marketing spend is no exception. The significant numbers that you need to know and track are:

average lifetime value of a patient

marketing return on investment

new patients

patient loss.

2. Not knowing your ideal patient

One of the cornerstones of any marketing campaign is knowing who your ideal patient is. Many practices make the mistake of not identifying this in their eagerness to go ahead with their marketing campaign as soon as possible. You need to stop and think about whom your marketing will be directed to, what this group of patients wants, what problems they have, and what solutions they need. The key to implementing a strategic marketing plan is identifying your practice’s ideal patient or target patient profile. Once you know your market, you need to establish how best to communicate with them.

3. Wanting a silver bullet

Marketing your dental practice to attract the right kind of patients, keep them active and encourage them to refer you to their contacts is no easy task. Many practices think (and hope) that there is a silver bullet to solve their marketing issues. This leaves them open to unscrupulous sales people and to disillusionment and frustration when their marketing efforts fail. The companies trying to sell you the marketing silver bullet that will solve all your marketing worries are constantly calling. Well-meaning friends, colleagues and patients may give you advice on what they think you should do to market your practice. The range of marketing media is evolving, and the rapid changes in online marketing make it almost impossible to keep up.

4. Taking a scatter-gun approach

I speak to many dentists who tell me that they have tried many different types of marketing and they have all failed and nothing has worked for them. When I dig deeper, I discover that they have tried many different approaches, but nearly all of these have been done in a haphazard way and in short bursts. I call this a “scatter-gun approach” to marketing. It does not work to try one approach for a month or two in an inconsistent manner without tracking the results or refi ning the campaign. This will always end in failure. It has been shown that it can take between six and eleven repetitions for patients to see or hear a message before they act on it. Do you know how many ways and how many times you communicate with your patients?

5. Doing it all by yourself

You have to remember that patients are more savvy than ever before. They are constantly exposed to a huge amount of marketing and their expectations of what is and is not professional are continually increasing. The reality is that when you are competing against the corporates, you need to ensure that your marketing is up to scratch.

It is very common for practices to have their branding and logo professionally designed and then decide to take it over, producing home-made brochures and other marketing collateral that use different colours, fonts and even versions of the logo. If you are not consistent, your attempts at establishing a brand will be in effective.

6. Procrastinating

There are just so many things for you to think about when it comes to your dental marketing. How can you fix your website that is not effective? Should you be engaging with your patients on social media and how to start? You know that you need to educate your patients on a regular basis, but what are the best ways to do this? You need reactivation and referral campaigns, but you have no idea how to carry this out in a professional and consistent manner. It is not uncommon to be so confused and overwhelmed that you spend your time procrastinating and doing nothing.

7. Not getting the right advice

When you own or run a dental practice, in fact any kind of business, there is no shortage of marketing advice to follow; there is an overwhelming amount of advice out there. You may have had the experience of wasting time or money on poor advice. The problem is that many dentists are not getting the right dental marketing advice. They may listen to many different sources and form opinions based on advice from people who may not understand the business of dentistry.

8. Summary

There is no magic when it comes to marketing your practice successfully. Quite simply, it comes down to:

picking the aspects of marketing you want to use, wisely and with due care and thought,

ensuring that, whatever marketing activities you decide to undertake, you perform to the best of your ability and budget,

being consistent,tracking your results—setting your goals and reviewing or refining them on a regular basis, getting good advice from trusted experts in the area of marketing you are undertaking.

It takes time, but the effort that you put in will be rewarded by more patients, increased production, better relationships with your team and patients, and a sense of control when it comes to your marketing. It is now time for you to focus on your marketing. By marketing well, doing it consistently, and avoiding the scatter-gun approach, you can avoid making the common mistakes that many practices make.