Aspen Dental

Overcoming The 7 Dental Marketing Pitfalls
Would you like to make this a record-breaking year financially for your dental practice? If so, you better get marketing.

Good marketing is what makes the difference between a highly profitable dental practice and one which simply pays the bills. If you'd rather have the former – and lets face it, who wouldn't? - there are seven basic marketing pitfalls which you need to try and avoid.

1.Being generic
When it comes to marketing your dental practice, the last thing you want to be is generic. For generic, think "ordinary, run of the mill, the same as everyone else". If you want to be profitable, you need to be anything but generic. Try something different: use the things that are unique and different about your practice to develop some kind of brand which sets your practice head and shoulders above the rest.

2.Taking patients for granted
Your patients are the lifeblood of your practice – but you knew that already. So why are you taking them for granted? Go above and beyond the call of duty with your patients by taking a personal interest in them and making sure they feel comfortable when they attend appointments. Other little touches such as cards at Christmas go a long way to making your patients feel valued too.

3.Stop and Go Marketing
There's little point in sending out one mass mailing and then waiting for new patients to come knocking on your door. To be successful, your marketing has to be sustained: plan a campaign rather than a single assault on your target market, and don't just market when times are slow.

4.Not using referral programs
Word of mouth is by far the best dental marketing you'll ever get. If you're not taking advantage of it by using referral programs, then you're missing out. Encourage

your patients to spread the word amongst their friends and family by offering discounts or special offers for each referral they bring you.

5.Not leveraging the Internet
What do you mean, you don't have a website for your dental practice? A huge amount of your prospective patients will use the Internet to find a new dental practice. If you don't have a web presence, they're not going to find you – but they will find your competitors.

6.Not using a newsletter
You already have the names and addresses of all of your patients – so use them. Send out a monthly or quarterly newsletter containing details of what's new at your dental practice. Make sure the content is genuinely useful and your patients will start to look forward to it, and may even pass it on to their friends.

7.Not asking for feedback
You may well be doing a fantastic job as far as your patients are concerned, but if you don't ask them you'll never know. Ask your patients for regular feedback: that way you'll not only be able to build on the things you're doing well, you'll also be able to fix the things you're doing badly, before they start to loose you patients.

Conclusion: If you want your dental practice to be profitable, you're going to need to market it effectively, to bring in a steady stream of new patients. And to market yourself effectively, you're going to need to avoid the seven dental marketing pitfalls described above.


Robert Moment is a small business coach and author that specializes in teaching entrepreneurs how to successfully start and grow profitable small businesses. Visit http://www.howtostartyoursmallbusiness.com and take the FREE 7 day e-course titled, “Turn Passion into Profit: Small Business Startup”.