It’s that time of year – in the last 10 days I’ve received 2 different yellow pages directories found lying on my doorstep. Yellow pages advertising used to be the primary focus of my marketing budget. About 5 years ago, our practice ran a full page ad in at least 3 different books and a smaller size ad in 2 additional books. Oh, how times have changed!

If you are trying to decide whether to keep or eliminate yellow pages from your marketing budget, here are some suggestions:

Establish a tracking system

Most yellow pages offer (for a fee) a unique phone number they place in your yellow pages ad that will track these calls and forward them to your real phone number. These serves not only identify the volume of calls, but also record them. The yellow pages company provides you an ID and password for their website where you can run reports to find how many calls came in to your office thanks to this ad – and that’s how you can identify the number of potential new patients your yellow pages ad is bringing in.

Listen to the calls

If you already have this phone tracking service from the yellow pages, then go online and listen to each call. You need to know how your secretary is handling these calls. You need to find out how many of these phone calls turn into scheduled new patients.

Determine your ROI

Once you listen to the calls, you can document patient names and find out if these patients actually came in for their appointment. You can check your computer ledger to see what production/collection you received for each patient and compare the total with what you’re spending on this ad. In general, you want to shoot for a return on investment of 5:1.

By using this system, I have eliminated all yellow pages directory advertising except for one book. In fact, I was surprised to see how well this one directory was performing for us! When we decided to renew our ad in this book, we made the assumption that most of the potential new patients using the book were most likely senior citizens – and we targeted our ad to this group directly.

We’re also using the yellow pages to gain feedback on our competitors. When I see a directory that we have dropped completely, I flip immediately to the ‘Dentists’ section to see which dentists in my area are still paying the money to advertise. I find it interesting to see which dentists are still investing in a full page ad when I tracked the book’s performance and I know it didn’t perform. This tells me which dentists are paying attention to their marketing and which are still doing the same thing they used to do in the past.

Do you think the Yellow Pages are still a viable advertising medium?

Is the Yellow Pages still a viable advertising medium, or is it dead? Let us know your thoughts in a comment below.

Almost all dentists go through a lot of training to be where they are now. But just how successful are they in their chosen career? Every dentist must possess some important quality traits to be TRULY successful.

3 Important Quality Traits Every Dentist Must Possess

1. Integrity

Every good dentist should have a noble purpose and maintain integrity. This ‘two-rolled-into-one’ attribute is the most important character trait every good dentist should possess.

Purpose simply means to have a vision, mission and goal – a plan or mental picture of what you want to do with your career. The more noble and genuine your purpose is, the more known and successful you will be in the long run. Integrity, on the other hand, is the difference that sets one apart from the rest. Integrity denotes doing your job to the best even in the absence of praise or evaluation. Integrity always indicates quality. If you have a noble purpose, coupled with integrity in your work, success is not far off from where you are.

2. Good People Skills

A good dentist should be open to communication and care. Being a dentist requires you to have constant correspondence with your patients. To succeed in this career, the lines of communication between you and your patients should be clear. You have to develop the skill to let your patients know and understand why they need such procedures in a humble, respectful way. Similarly, you must have the same attitude when hearing out your patients’ needs. Doing so will also transmit that trait to your staff and the people you work with.

Aside from this, you should have the caring touch or the passion to serve. Without this, you may be simply treating your patients as a means to get by everyday life, not as a giver of care to them.

3. Punctual

A good dentist should be punctual. Nothing spells more disrespect to your patients than to continually have them wait for you over long periods of time. Being habitually late brings a bad reputation to your name and a negative message to your clients that you do not value their time. If something comes up, communicate. A good quote to remember comes from W. Mathews. He says, “Nothing inspires confidence in a business man sooner than punctuality, nor is there any habit which sooner saps his reputation than that of being always behind time.”

Final Thoughts

Practice all these three character traits and you will most likely never run out of clients. Remember that the best way to promote yourself is not by what you say about yourself, but by what your patients tell their friends about you.

What should we add to this list?

If you have a trait or traits that you would like to add to this list please leave a comment below.

Dentists Are Not Master Marketers

Dentists are not just people who take care of people’s teeth. In the business standpoint, they are also managers, leaders and motivators. But although they have a number of roles to fulfill, dentists need to realize that they are not the best advertisers and marketers. A person can try to learn the ropes but, at the end, it is the experts who will most likely dominate this field. Most of the time, dental ads consist of faces of dentists plastered on walls with write-ups that sing their praises.

Patients Care About Their Own Needs First

But the fact is that patients do not care about you. They do not care about the image that you project. On the other hand, they care about themselves. The reason they choose to have treatments done on them is because they care about themselves. They go to you because they want to feel or look better, not because they think of how wonderful you are. This is why you need to think twice before commissioning an ad with your face all over it.

Your Practice’s Name Is NOT Your Brand

The first lesson that dentists need to know about marketing is branding. You know that you have successfully branded your practice when people recognize it as soon as they hear your practice’s name. The problem with some dentists is that they believe that their name is synonymous to their practice’s brand. But this isn’t the case. Most companies which have effectively branded themselves do not use the owner’s name as the brand name. It’s time for dentists to come up with a good brand name and then use this in their external marketing campaign.

Understanding Your Customers Needs Is Critical

The second lesson that dentists must know is to identify with those individuals who they are advertising their practice to. Because the patients have self-serving reasons for going into our dental clinic, you need to know exactly what their wants and needs are in order to appeal to them better. You can talk about how your practice offers treatments which are minimally invasive and painless in order to appeal to those who may be scared of going to the dentist.

Your Thoughts

What additional “Truths” about dental marketing would you add to the list?

One of the many advantages of email newsletters is being able to build your relationship with your customers. Email newsletters also help contribute to your practice’s branding efforts and promote awareness. At the same time, these newsletters are immensely helpful in the improvement of your practice’s customer service, and add value to purchases and registrations. And there are more benefits that one can give out. But just like any other marketing tool, there are a lot of things that can equally go wrong with your email marketing campaign.

Newsletters vs. Promotions

Some marketers do not know the difference between an email newsletter and an email promotion. An email promotion is action-oriented in that they are designed to motivate a person to do something like click a link, sign up, make a purchase or visit your physical store. This can be done with the help of discounts or coupons.

On the other hand, email newsletters may contain a few action-related elements but the real reason for sending these newsletters is to build a long-term relationship with the readers. These newsletters do not ask or motivate patients to do something. However, newsletters help to build trust and credibility so that the reader will be much more willing to take action in the future.

Basically, a promotion tells you to a buy a new desk chair but a newsletter gives out the benefits of having a desk chair.

Publisher-centric

There are a lot of things that can influence subscriber loyalty but the most important factor is content, valuable content at that. The content which you include in your newsletter should not just be useful but also timely and relevant. An effective newsletter should deliver interesting information to the right people at the right time.

There are a lot of newsletters that are filled with so much announcements, staff products, services, etc. These things may fit perfectly fine in your newsletter if your readers are interested in your business the same way that the owner and employees are. But chances are that your readers won’t be.

It is more likely that your readers are interested to know the solutions for industry-related problems and content of that sort. This is why you should integrate such kind of informative content instead if your want to keep your newsletter’s subscribership high and keep readers entertained.

Using the wrong success metrics

Most of the metrics used to judge the success of newsletters are wrong. It can be extremely difficult to calculate a newsletter ROI because newsletter costs are immediate while the benefits are long term. This is why one way to measure revenue is to measure the revenue before and after prospects subscribed to your newsletter.

Your Thoughts

Have you discovered additional e-mail marketing mistakes that you’ve made or seen others make? Please leave them in a comment below.

The holidays are here and when reading this, you will feel inspired to offer holiday gifts for patients to purchase and give their friends and family. What a great way to share the good word about your dental practice and give the gift of optimal oral health! This is also a great way to add another income stream before this year ends.

When I speak about dentistry now, I say things like, “It changes as fast as the speed of light,” or “If you miss that annual meeting, you miss the turn of the century!” Trends change so quickly in the field of dentistry, so let me fill you in on the latest change that can really boost your bottom line:
New ways to think about promoting your practice.”

Holiday Gifts Increase Sales & Promote the Practice

Imagine the ability to reinforce prevention with your patients and market your practice on a regular basis. This is an open opportunity to all of us in the field of dentistry…if we change our old paradigm about self-promotion and sales.

When I think about my early days as a dental professional, I remember when the ADA spoke of the “undignified” practice of advertising. The belief that no practice should stoop to advertising was a solid mass in most minds who stepped foot in a dental office. Never did I hear phrases like, “Dentistry is a business.” Times have changed, however, and in order to financially thrive, we must start thinking in a business mindset. Here are a couple pointers to get you started and get your practice pointed in a profitable direction.

Don’t Be Afraid to Try New Promotional Activities

Successful businesses seek more business, and so should you. Back in the day, it was taboo to solicit referrals. Today, however, we no longer need to feel uncomfortable asking our patients and friends for referrals. There are many ways to do this without feeling awkward or pushy. For example, your auxiliaries and of course the doctor, can simply say to patients upon their checkout, “be sure to tell your friends about us!” Another idea is to develop a referral rewards system. Perhaps you have a stack of business cards in the waiting room that say, “Refer a friend and receive 20% off your next home care products purchase from our office. Have you checked into any of the new patient referral programs? — for example: Loyal Patients, Inc.

That leads me to my next point: selling oral care products. When analyzing the success of your business you must learn where the profit centers lie — and where you can build new profit centers. This is a proactive step in any business. One main profit center today in dentistry is home care products, and lots of dental practices are missing out because of old habits.

I specifically remember a dentist I worked for saying, “I don’t have a pharmacy in my dental office!” Think about it, though: Do we want our patients to go to their local drug store to buy the least expensive toothbrush or the mouth rinse that is on sale this week, when we could have offered them a better product AND contributed to our own bottom line? In the practice I worked where the dentist refused to have a “pharmacy,” I took note that 2/3rds of my patients never did get that prescription for Gel Kam filled at their local pharmacy. (Now that is sold over-the-counter in many areas.)

You’re a Business First

Yes, times have changed, and on top of viewing ourselves more and more as business people, we must foster a preventive patient-centered dental practice, that offers patients more options for maintaining oral health. We want to be certain that patients receive the best procedures, products, and services. We also want to promote an atmosphere where team members are encouraged to grow and build a rewarding career — and that’s a lot easier when the purse strings aren’t so tight.

Recently, a team member of Dental Practice Solutions and I, analyzed the amount of money added to a dental practice’ profits when they have these prevention products available for purchase in the dental office. These can contribute easily to an added $30,000USD annually, to your dental practice. The best part: selling home care products requires a very small upfront investment, and the return is quick and very easily done by everyone on the team participating.

Sample Gift Package

You can get creative, too. For example, group together a Waterpik
™, power toothbrush, toothpaste, mouth rinse, tongue cleaner, and floss. Then, wrap in beautiful packaging, and promote as a gift pack around special holidays. This is just one more opportunity to add that personal touch.

Not only are patients going to be asking for refills on the products they use when they come in for their dental visits, but imagine these same people coming by your office to buy a beautifully wrapped gift for someone they love in the month of November, December and even the day of Love; February 14th. Be sure to put your dental practice’s business card in every packaged gift.

Gift packs are not only a wonderful way to keep your patients healthy but also for them to share the good word and have a reason to return to your office. So now, we’ve made a complete circle back to the topic of referrals. In this case, you can let your oral care gift packages do the referring for you!

We are the oral care experts, so why wouldn’t we want our patients to come to us for the expert advice about the products and care that can help them live a longer and healthier life?

Your Thoughts

Will you offer home care products to your patients during this holiday season? If so, have you done this in the past? What were your results? If not, tell us why in a comment below.

When you are running a small dental practice, it can be very difficult for you to create awareness about your practice with little or no budget at all. In order for you to grow your practice and gain more patients, you need to factor in new competitors who may have a more aggressive campaign than you, lack of marketing, poor reputation and overall scarceness of resources. All of these things can hinder the growth of your practice and may even lead to the decline in the number of your patients.

As a dentist, being responsible for taking care of the dental health of your patients at the same time having to take care of your practice’s marketing campaign is a no non-sense job. In order to help you out with this daunting task, here are a few inexpensive ways for you to spread awareness regarding your practice.

1. Contribute to Local Homeowner’s Association

Tie up with local homeowners’ associations and offer to write articles or tips to them. These associations often have community bulletins or newsletters which are often running low on material. You can offer to write a couple of articles for them weekly or give talks regarding dental health. You’re not only creating awareness for your practice but you are also building trust and confidence among your prospective patients.

2. Contribute to Local Chamber of Commerce

You can also approach local chambers of commerce and offer to provide education information to the small businesses in your community. You can talk about occupational situations wherein these employees’ dental safety is at stake.

3. Run Inexpensive Local Paper Ads

Try running inexpensive advertisements in your local community paper. You can also offer to write articles or have advertorials, a mix between advertisements and editorials.

4. Befriend Local Realtors

Make friends with the realtors in your community and target new families who are moving into your community. Chances are that these newly transferred families do not have a dentist in their new area yet. You can ask realtors to refer you to these families and individuals when they are in the process of buying a new house. You can provide brochures or business cards for these realtors to give out.

5. Participate in an “Ask Dr. X” Column in Local Paper

Persuade your local newspaper to come up with a “health” section to their website. You can show your support by being available for interviews or questions should any healthcare related queries suddenly come up. You can also provide tips to readers who send in their questions or run a column.

Your Ideas

These ideas are just scratching the surface. Do you have additional low-cost methods of raising awareness for dental practices? Please share in a comment below.

When people are headed off to see their dentist the trip is often filled with anxiety, whether from anticipated pain or merely the unknown of what is actually the cause of their malady. In order to attract new patients and retain one’s current ones, dentists need to make sure that the physical office environment works in tandem with the overall branding and marketing to convey a soothing and comforting message. Of course, the message and interior also need to project competence so as to instill patients and prospects with confidence.

Strive for Consistent Branding Strategy

This is no easy task. So often dentists hire one firm to design a website for them, another to create a logo, a third to assist with print advertising, and yet another to design their office interior – none of which are ever introduced to one another or encouraged to work together as a team. Successful entrepreneurs however, realize that all of these players need to work together in concert, with a single branding message and mission in mind if they are going to achieve a positive return on investment. The goals of attracting new patients, reducing patient turnover, and increasing referrals will only be achieved if the experience patients have when visiting the website is repeated when calling to make an appointment and reinforced when stepping through the front door for the actual exam. If at any time along this path the experience changes or fails to live up to expectations, the confidence level falls, and the anxiety level rises increasing the risk for a cancelled appointment or a failure to return for future service.

Keep Brand Shapers Involved

Now, this doesn’t mean that one necessarily has to hire a redesign of the website, office, logo, and other advertising materials at the same time. While that might be the ideal scenario, as small business owners we all know that budgets rarely allow for all of these projects to happen at once. What it does mean is that once a branding message has been establishing for the practice, all future players working on aspects of the marketing for the business should be introduced to and expected to collaborate with the marketing team that developed the branding message so that the new pieces will be designed to fit seamlessly into the overall strategy and work to reinforce that which has come before.

Does your practice have a continuous flow of new patient referrals? Do all team members maximize every opportunity to point new patients to your practice? Are you meeting your monthly new patient referral goals?

While studying business practices for IBM, Frederick Reichheld discovered seven habits of referability that led to IBMs early success. As revealed in his book, The Loyalty Effect: The Hidden Force Behind Growth, Profits, and Lasting Value, Reichheld’s research points to repeatable behaviors which I have found to be directly transferable to every dental practice.

As you review these seven habits, evaluate how well they are represented both in your practice and through your team. Focus intently on your work as the practice leader as well as your entire team’s efforts in referring new patients. You might be surprised to learn how many potential new patients you and your team are leaving outside in the cold.

1. Courtesy

“Please” is still a magic word along with the phrases “Thank You,” “Yes Sir,” “No Maam,” and “Your Welcome.” A courteous practice is a growing practice because moments of courtesy with your patients become stories shared with their friends. “Dr. Smith is so nice…”

2. Being on Time

Ten years ago the goal was to get patients from the waiting area to their room by their scheduled appointment time. For today’s patients, personal schedules are tighter and time is more important. “On time” today means patients are driving away from your practice by their expected completion time.

Being on time is more about managing patient’s expectations than ensuring that you meet every scheduled time. One way to manage patient’s expectations is to pad every treatment by at least fifteen minutes. If a typical prophy requires an hour, share with your patients to expect one hour and fifteen minutes for their treatment. “Mrs. Williams, you should expect to be here from nine to ten-fifteen on Tuesday.”

Meeting or exceeding their time expectations will lead them to share their story with others.

3. Using Names

People love the sound of their own name. Using names creates immediate rapport with patients, shows you care, and lowers trust barriers. Make it a rule that patients are always addressed by their names.

Dental Assistants and Hygienists can greatly help doctors who tend to forget names. Simply implement a practice in which the hygienist or assistant always refers to the patient by name as the doctor enters the room.

In addition to using names, if applicable, your team should address patients using relevant honorifics such as Reverend, Dr., Judge, Professor, etc… In Paragon, we recommend using a 25 to 30 year rule as a guide for when to address patients as “Mr.” or “Mrs.” If the patient is at least 25 to 30 years older than you or other staff members, the patient should always be addressed as “Mr. Smith” or “Mrs. Jones” out of respect.

4. Happiness

Come happy – Stay Happy – Go Home Happy. Over two decades of in-office consulting has taught me that happy people schedule more treatment. In fact I usually recommend that unhappy front desk people be immediately replaced. It is critical for growing practices to establish the necessity of happiness and replace team members who do not meet those expectation.

5. Accepts Compliments

Although we may think it represents humility to deflect or demur when complimented, it is more like rejecting a gift. A compliment is a gift and should be received with a gracious and heartfelt “Thank You.” People love to feel like their gift is well received.

6. Asks for referrals after being complimented

In the same way that a compliment is a gift, it is also a perfect opportunity to ask for referrals. “Ms. Jones, thank you very much. I’d also like to offer you a compliment. We count it a great privilege to serve patients like you. If you have any friends like you, we’d love to have them as patients.”

7. Always asks for referrals

To build a well-oiled referral machine, every team member must be trained and empowered to see opportunities and maximize them. Here are a few quick tips for creating referral situations:

• THE OPENING: “What do you do?” Your team members are often asked in social gatherings what they do for a living. Teaching them a proper response creates referral opportunities.
• THE RESPONSE: “I work for one of the best dentists in Ohio – she’s phenomenal.”
• THE TRANSITION QUESTION: “Where do you go for your dentistry?”
• THE OFFER: Every team member should be empowered to pull out a business card, flip it over and hand-write an offer of $100 off a new patient exam. This hand-written offer provides a personal touch to the invitation.

According to the A.D.A., five out of ten people do not currently see a dentist regularly. In addition, two who currently see a dentist are ready to move on to another dentist. In other words, seven out of ten people are always looking for a dentist. Do not leave them outside in the cold, but open the door.

Now What?

Even if you, as the practice leader, scored sixty out of seventy on the evaluation of each habit, your team may be lagging far behind. Every team member failing to implement these seven habits may represent several potential new patients every month.

Which of these seven habits do you and your staff need to focus on today, this week, this month, this year? What is your specific plan to fully implement these habits throughout your practice?

New habits will bring new patients and new patients will create new profits.

Go for it!

Your Thoughts

How many of the 7 habits of referability do you see in your practice? Which do you need to work on?

If you have a website for your practice or you are going to set one up soon, check out these important search engine optimization tips below to ensure you are maximizing online traffic.

1. Go Local

Recently Google has been making major changes to the way search results are displayed. They now are including local website listings for major keyword searches where once, they did not show. This means optimizing your website for local keywords can make a huge difference in the amount of traffic you get.

Add your office location in your website’s META tags, in the footer, on the contact and about page and so on. Also include Google map directions on your contact page.

Another easy thing to do is to sign up for Google Places, which will make your website show up for even more local searches. Be sure to ask clients for reviews, because good reviews can make all the difference in whether or not someone decides to call or visit your website for more info.

2. Create Landing Pages

A typical website does not have many pages. Typical pages could include the home page, services page, contact page, about page and so on. If you want more search engine traffic, you are going to need to have more content on your site.

One great way to start is to create a landing page for every service you offer that includes local keywords. For example, if you offer teeth whitening services and your practice is in New York City. You should set up a page for Teeth Whitening in New York City that is optimized for the service keywords and the location keywords.

Be sure to also interlink your pages using descriptive keywords to help with rankings and better indexing of your site. You may also want to link to all these content pages from your main services page.

3. Get Backlinks

I see many dentist websites go up that are optimized for search engines, but not many actively try to attract more backlinks. If you want to rank for keywords such as “dentist, new york” you are going to need backlinks with that anchor text pointing back to your website. It’s as simple as that.

Submit your website to directories, guest post, write great content, create white papers, network with people and websites in your industry and do anything else you can to attract backlinks.

4. Get Social

Search engine rankings are now being affected by social votes on sites such as Twitter and Facebook. This means it will be very important for you to have accounts and pages on these sites so that you can attract more votes for your business.

Stay active on your profiles, add widgets and badges to your site and if you have a blog, install a social bookmarking plugin to make it easier for people to share your content.

5. Start a Blog

Search engines love fresh content and people love great articles. When you start a blog try to publish posts that will actually help bring in potential customers. Examples of posts could be “5 ways to pick the right dentist” or even a post using local keywords, offering a promo code or incentives to come visit your dentist office.

The more often you post and the better your posts, the more traffic and new clients you will potentially get. Keep these tips in mind, put them to use and you will be on your way to having a steady stream of new clients.

Your Tips

Do you have additional SEO tips that have succeeded in boosting your website/page rankings? Please share them in a comment below.

One of the questions asked often is: “I already have a Profile page on Facebook, do I really need a Facebook Business Page?”

That’s sort of like the question (in dentistry) “Do I really need to floss?” You know the answer ….Only the teeth you want to keep!!
Originally, Facebook was only for making connections, not for business, hence Profile pages. It was a profile of you, your personal information, likes and dislikes.

Then businesses begin to see the power Facebook held and started creating Profile pages for their businesses (which is actually against Facebook rules). So in true Facebook fashion…Facebook started making changes (imagine that!) and created the Business page portion of Facebook. Profile pages are very limited as to what can and can’t be done as far as a business is concerned. The most noticeable being viewers have to wait to be confirmed after sending a “friend request”.

Profile Page VS Business Page

To see how the two differ let’s look at PROFILE -vs- BUSINESS this way:

Your PROFILE page is really a personal page (and not to be used as a business per FB). It’s like your home. If someone comes to your door at home, they knock on your door and have to wait to be let in.

Your BUSINESS page is just that….your Business. When someone comes to your place of business, they walk right in (during business hours of course). They don’t have to wait to be “confirmed”. Remember we live in an age of ‘instant gratification’! With that said, think about people interested in doing business with you having to wait outside until you let them in (PROFILE: waiting for you to confirm their ‘friend request’). That could sometimes take days. By that time, you may confirm them, but they may have already found someone else to do business with. You’ve lost a potential client or patient.

With a BUSINESS page on Facebook, your visitors walk right in as soon as they “Like” you. The “Like” is just opening your door. No waiting for you to approve them. Come to think of it, when did you ever have to wait to be approved before you could enter a store or business to shop or receive services?

We also talk about branding and how important it is to brand our business. In fact we spend a lot of time…writing posts, uploading pictures, creating videos, posting our bios, responding to viewers…branding our business…to get viewers and potential clients and patients to come to our Facebook page….only to have them….wait while you approve/confirm their friend request!

That’s like finally getting a new prospect to call your office….only to be put on endless hold…and hope they are still on the line when you get back to them!
Why would you want to make a prospective new client or patient wait to see all you have available to them when they don’t have too?? You’ve spent and invested too much time in getting that prospect to your Facebook site to make them wait!

Then if you’ve seen the light and are thinking….”OK, If I create a Business page, will I lose all the people I’ve connected with on my Profile page?” Absolutely not! You still are connected to them, can market to them, and will point them to your business page. If you’re comfortable with creating Facebook pages, you can create your own business page (connected to your profile page) or outsource it to a social media specialist.

Bottom Line

So in answer to the original question: “…..Do I really need a Facebook Business page?” Answer: “Only if you’re in business!”
The point is, when you’re in business, you always want to put your best business foot forward. So unlock your doors and be “Open to the public”. Create your Facebook Business page and let your new prospects… walk right in!

Your Thoughts

Do you have a Facebook Business Page for your practice? If so, how has it impacted your practice?

You know exactly how to fashion a retainer to hold teeth in place, but retaining your customers is a whole different story.

They come, they go, they switch practices, and what can you do about it other than just doing the best job you can when they’re in the chair?

A whole lot, actually. When it comes to coaxing reluctant patients back into your office, email marketing can ease the pain.

How Email Is Designed to Bring Customers Back

Email’s recurrent nature makes it perfect for increasing retention. Sending emails on a consistent basis builds a good rapport with your patients, and eventually, a relationship of trust.

And let’s face it. Your patients make themselves pretty vulnerable to you and your sharp, shiny dental pick. Trust and a good rapport are vitally crucial to getting them comfortable with coming back again and again.

Let’s talk about how to use email to build that trust and rapport.

Four Ways to Leverage That Potential

1. Follow up with first-timers

New patients are doubly apprehensive – they have the usual worry about discomfort, plus the anxiety of a first-time experience. Get them comfortable from the moment they book their first appointment by sending them a follow up series.

Introduce yourself and your staff, include personal anecdotes, explain any quirks in how you work. (Use sunglasses to keep the overhead light out of their eyes? Tell them – they can look forward to it!)

Is there anything they’ll need to know when they show up? How early should they arrive? Where should they park? The more helpful details you can provide, the more they’ll appreciate you reaching out.

2. Pop up periodically

Once you’ve got your patients’ anxiety under control, you have to deal with their, ah…selective memories. After all, who can remember that March is the month they get their teeth cleaned?

There are two ways to address this little issue:

1. If you’ve got your CRM integrated with an email service, send a triggered email to each patient when it’s time to schedule their next cleaning, based on the date of their last appointment.

2. If not, schedule a broadcast to show up every few months. Decide on a frequency that’s often enough to keep you in patients’ minds, but not so often that they get overwhelmed and unsubscribe.

3. And fill them with valuable content

You don’t just want to remind your patients to go to any dentist; you want them to come to you, specifically. You can earn their loyalty by filling your emails with content they’ll find truly helpful, whether it’s entertaining or educational.

Your patients will appreciate the effort you’ve put in, which will come in handy when that toothache kicks up.

Ideas of fun or educational content you can send:
• Fun facts about teeth
• A History of Toothcare timeline
• A look at toothcare across the globe
• Effective flossing techniques
• Insights into the flouride debate

4. Later on, get more personal

Over time, your patients are going to expect you to know them better. If they can tell they’re still getting a generic email along with the rest of your patients, they may actually feel alienated by your messages. Fortunately, email services usually offer the option to split your subscribers into segments. That way, you can send each patient information based on their own oral health interests, increasing their appreciation.

By reaching out with email in these ways, you can be not only a dental hero, but a patient retention superstar.

Free E-mail Marketing Guide from AWeber

Email marketing is cheap compared to other marketing methods and as easy as you need it to be (just use an email template and send as many emails as you want). If you want the basics of how to get started and set up and the ball rolling, download this free guide. Then put these ideas in place and watch your practice grow!

It’s safe to say that all qualified dentists are experts. There’s no arguing that. However, the difference between a successful dental practice and one which is barely thriving is how these dental professionals are recognized as authority by their patients and the rest of the community. One important aspect about dental marketing is how to turn an expert into an authority.

Know Your Strengths

What are you good at? This is one question which you need to answer and don’t be modest with your response. Consult your CV or ask your closest friends. Try to think of two or three of your strengths and your areas of expertise. In order for your transformation to begin, you need to know exactly what you can bring to the table should individuals choose your services.

Actively & Consistently Build Your Brand

Brand your practice with the help of your specialization. The best way for you to attract patients is to set your practice apart from the others. This is where specialization will come in. Start building your practice’s brand by telling potential clients that you specialize in and are a recognized authority on an area of expertise you’re particularly good at.

Now that you’ve accomplished those two requisites, it’s time to start your transformation.

Share Your Expertise with Patients & Community

Talk. The only way for you to become an authority is to share your expertise. This means you need to give speeches. Participate in community events and share your specialized knowledge. In order for your speech to be more understandable to people who aren’t familiar with dental jargons, you can present your speech in a problem/solution format.

Teach or Donate Time to Local Dental Schools

Teach. You do not have to handle a class but make you can participate in a once-in-a-while community college class where you can share your knowledge to students. Those who prove to be good resource persons usually receive more invitations which can lead to more public exposure.

One of the biggest challenges facing our industry is a lack of education when it comes to selling. By nature, dentists are analytical, and we typically haven’t been in a position where we needed to sell our services. But you may want to consider a strategy to sell bigger cases. The biggest point to remember is that most patients require a fair amount of education.

Unless you have killer marketing, your new patients have probably been referred to you by recommendation but really don’t know what you can do for them. The more people know or understand about their condition, the better positioned they are to buy. The only limiting factor will be their budget, and you usually will not know what it is. When people make major purchases they generally have a good idea of what they are buying and how much it will cost. This means they are qualified to make their purchase. To qualify your patient you need to pre-screen them.

The Qualification Process

Qualification begins with your marketing. This starts with printed material provided in your website, newsletters, reception and treatment rooms. Next there is the dialog that always occurs in the form of discussions or stories you and your staff tell your patients. Lastly there is the discussion on the phone with the patient as they schedule the consultation. Your staffer in charge of this duty needs to spend time creating rapport, educating and throwing hints of possible fees. As you can see, this staffer has an important role and needs to have a vast understanding of the problems, procedures and fees. Don’t leave this to the first person to answer the phone. Train someone for this role. Have your receptionist refer the call to this key person.

Managing Expectations

Qualification even continues when the patient presents for their consultation. Take the patient into your consultation room and begin with some active listening. Engage them with questions that help you get a grip on the history of their concern and what they might already know about potential treatment options. If you know approximately what the fee might be, then throw out some hints that help frame the patient’s expectation. Use comparisons such as ‘it can cost as much as a new car or room full of furniture’ or anything else you think the patient may relate to. The key is that when you are ready to give the patient the actual fee they should not be shocked or surprised.

Practice Makes Perfect

This is a delicate process that needs to be nurtured and practiced. The patient may tell you early on that they know it will be expensive even before they know what the treatment will be. You can respond by agreeing and framing by giving an example. Always leave the patient with some options to suit their budget. Allow them to bow out gracefully. Don’t avoid discussion of cost. The more often you bring it into the discussion the less sensitive the patient will be when they hear the actual fee. Any major concerns that you hear from the patient will clue you into the level of qualification that the patient has. For instance, when they frequently mention dental insurance you know that they will be dependent upon it. This may actually disqualify the patient. Any disqualification is permission for you to throw out some estimated fees to check their reaction. Ask them if this will pose a problem. If it does, then you can quickly shift gears to a different plan and re-qualify them.

The Bottom Line

Qualification is the key to ensuring your marketing efforts continue to be cost-effective by generating long-term, happy customers.

Your Thoughts

How do you qualify your patients. Give some specific examples if you can in a comment below.

Social media is here and whether you are utilizing social media in your practice/business or not, your employees are! It would be great if you could depend on posts being all positive and upbeat, but we know that’s not reality.

You know Social Media and implications it can presents to the practice/business . You know the importance of having some type of Social Media Policy in place for your practice/business, but… what areas need to be addressed?

The top 9 areas to address in your Social Media Policy:

1. Policy Statement: This is a generalized statement about participating in social media. Tie it in with your Office Manual and Personal Conduct. Also address/acknowledge what’s done on their time is their business, however certain activities at work or outside work that could affect job performance, theirs or another employee, or the practice/business interests are a proper focus for a practice/business policy.

2. Definitions: Reference the Social Media Channels and Social Media Networks you are referring to in your policy. Ex. Blogs, micro-blogs, social networks, social bookmarking, sharing platforms, etc. Also reference how these might be address. Ex. Internet, mobile, text, email, etc. Also reference the Social Media Account Ex. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Blogs, and any other Social Media Channel.

3. Objectives: Establish and include guidelines that employees adhere to and why you are initiating the Social Media Policy.

4. Guiding Principals: Address how you expect employees to use social media at work and outside work. Who can “speak” on behalf of the practice/business. What can and cannot be discussed while at work or on their own time. Assure online activities don’t interfere with job requirements or commitment to patients/clients.

5. Respectfulness: Interaction online at work or on their time, always careful of what’s posted. Ex. Don’t say/post anything you wouldn’t want seen on the front page of the local newspaper or your Grandmother to read!

6. Disclosure and Transparency: Social media is all about trust and building relationships. Be aware of what you are posting, be honest, and disclose your true identity. Transparency and Authenticity (open and genuine ) are the two key elements in Social Media.

7. Privacy: Address you, the Employers, right to privacy and Employees right to privacy. As such employers and employees have the right to keep personal opinions, thoughts, beliefs, and emotions private and employees are prohibited from violating another employee or their employers right to privacy.

8. Confidentiality: Effectively managing and protecting confidential information is critical. Failure to manage and protect confidential information correctly and what that could result in. ALSO Employees can disagree but external blogs or other online social media channels are not to be used to air employee disagreements. **Note: Again, be careful of what’s posted. It’s going to be on the social networks for a long time. If in doubt, don’t post it!

9. Penalties: Failure to Comply with these Social Media Policies may result in: List what could happen if an employee does not comply. They could include: Warnings, No longer have access to certain information, Disciplinary action, up to and including termination, even Civil or criminal penalties as provided by law (depending on the situation).

Once printed, make copies for each employee. Then have a staff meeting introducing and going over the social media policies of the office. Then have each employee sign that they understand and have received a copy.

This is not an all inclusive list nor do all of these have to be addressed. Your practice/business will determine how involved you need to be with your social media policy.
However, whether your practice/business is actually using social media should not be the determining factor for whether or not you need a social media policy. The fact that your employees ARE using social media makes having your social media policies in place…critical!

If you have your social media policies in place, what area’s did you address not listed here?

***NOTE: This is not meant to be legal advice and I am not an attorney.

Your Thoughts

What, if anything, would you add to Livvie’s list? Have you experienced any negative effects as a result of failing to address any of these areas?

Inspire Sense of Want or Need

Although businesses are trying to veer away from the idea of appealing to the emotions of their target market, the fact still remains that an ad campaign which strikes the heartstrings of prospective customers really do work. Creativity may be important but it is only secondary. Effective ads are those which inspire a sense of want or need within those in the target audience. Being able to do just this will make any ad campaign extremely convincing securing businesses of ROI. But moreover, being able to launch such kind of campaign will not just help with the sales but also with establishing your brand.

Be Consistent

The trickiest part of advertising is that the job is never done. After you launch a successful campaign that does not mean that you and the rest of the company or organization can call it day. When customers and potential customers are exposed to the same marketing strategy and ad for an extended period of time, they will begin to lose interest in the entire campaign and the ad’s effectiveness will slowly wane. That is exactly the reason why corporations feel the need to reinvent themselves again and again. This is to continue to exact and retain brand loyalty.

Choose Campaign Strategy Wisely

So how can businesses create a good ad campaign? There are three methods of doing so – single benefit, characterization and narrative. All of these strategies have the potential of working as long as they are used appropriately. The single benefit methodology links a product or service with one advantage that consumers cannot find from its rivals. For instance, a dental clinic which offers spa services along with the standard dental procedures can include this fact in their ad campaign. Characterization centers on a person who talks about how he or she found the product or service extremely helpful. Finally, narrative method involves the evolution of a story starting from the problem to its resolution. Regardless of what strategy a business decides to utilize, it is important for target customers to relate to the campaign. For instance, the dental clinic in the example above might play off their busy patients’ desires to relax while have important dental procedures done on them at the same time.

Final Thoughts

Advertising campaigns might help but sometimes they are not enough to seal the deal. Complement ads with marketing and sales promotions to really entice your existing and potential customers to make a purchase.

See the big picture

As a healthcare provider, it can be difficult at times to see beyond the clinical care you are giving and gain perspective on the big picture – the overall patient experience. And sometimes you may wonder, why does it even matter? You provide impeccable dental care, right? What more does a patient need in their dental experience? Today, the answer is, much more.

Focus on Customer Service

You cannot deny the fact that you are a small business owner and with this comes competition. If you want to be the dentist of choice in your community or for your target audience, you MUST step up and make customer service a primary focus in your practice. Excellent clinical care is absolutely necessary for you to succeed – and excellent customer service is absolutely necessary for you to thrive.

Where do you begin?

Begin at the beginning: With the telephone. How you answer the phone, gather information and, in a nutshell, how you speak to your prospective patients can and will make all the difference in their decision to schedule – or not to schedule – an appointment with you.

Develop the New Patient Experience

The new patient experience. Take the time necessary to develop this, to enhance this and ultimately, to perfect this in your practice. If you take your new patients through a phenomenal first-time visit – they will return, they will say yes to treatment, and they will refer! What more could you ask for!

Treat every visit like it’s the first visit

Treat your patient family with the same attentiveness each time they visit. And, each time they visit, ask for referrals. With every great experience comes a great story they will want to share with a friend or family member. Remember, the little extra steps you take will build a relationship that can last a lifetime – or at least a career-time!

More information about developing outstanding customer service

Visit www.jamesonmanagement.com/orange to request Orange Papers on popular practice management topics by Jameson experts.

Your Thoughts

How does your practice provide exceptional customer service?

1. Is the domain name of your website (ie. hawleylanedental.com) registered in your name or the name of your web services professional/agency?

Why? I have seen several cases where a web site creator used their own name instead of the client in the domain registration. This means that the the intellectual property (ie. domain name) does not legally belong to the client. One of my clients lost his domain name (and a lot of business) to an unscrupulous website designer who used it for, lets say, nothing to do with dentistry. Use a service such as http://www.whois.net/ to check your registration information. Extra points if you have also registered the .net, .info, .org, .biz versions of your domain to protect them.

2. Are my procedures contained in one page or does each procedure have its own page?

Search engines associate themes with individual pages of a website. Combine that with the fact that people search for specific services and are usually not interested in other services. For example, if someone searches for ‘implant dentist stratford ct’ the search engine will give precedence to pages optimized for keywords relating to ‘implant dentistry’ in that locality. Also a page dedicated to your implant services gives you the opportunity to inform, educate and persuade the reader that you are the ideal dentist for that specific procedure. You don’t want to make them search your site for a paragraph about your expertise in implant dentistry.

3. Is the traffic to my site measured?

The business mantra ‘You can’t manage what you don’t measure’ is especially true on the web because you can find a lot of actionable information about your online presence. Such as the number of visitors who arrive at your site but leave immediately (‘bounce rate’), the ‘keywords’ that are driving traffic to your site, the number of visitors who come from different sources such as search engines and social media, the geographic locations of your website visitors, the most popular (and unpopular) pages. This information is vital because it allows you to evaluate the success of your marketing campaigns and identify what is working and what is not.

4. What words do people use in search engines to arrive at my website?

If your site is ranking for ‘romanian poker casino ringtone viagra’ you know something is wrong. You probably want to strike a balance between brand keywords (dentist or business name), local keywords (‘dentists in stratford ct’) and more generic keywords (e.g. ‘dentures cost without insurance’). For competitive online marketing you should really do keyword research to quantify the specific keywords and synonyms that generate conversions (ie. contacts that turn into clients) and then see how many visits your website generates for those keywords.

5. How many contacts and leads does my website generate each month?

If you can measure this you can also estimate the value of ranking in search engines, whether or not you should try paid advertising (eg. google adwords). Remember someone who sees your website might decide to call rather than email or use your contact form so be sure ask your callers how they found you. At the very least you should know the total revenue generated by your website, the lifetime value of your clients and the cost-per-aquisition of the clients that come from your online marketing.

6. Have you registered my website and company in the ‘Local’ listings of search engines and social media?

Dentistry is essentially a local service and search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing all have listing services (free) to help highlight local providers to local searchers. Getting properly listed in these services is fairly straightforward and can result in really powerful exposure for your business, but it is competitive in most markets. Also worth checking out Facebook Places.

7. Have you checked for technical errors in Google and Bing Webmaster Services?

You want to know that everything is humming along nicely. These (free) services show diagnostics of your site including broken links, page load speed, sites that link to your site, duplicate content issues. There are several other settings and configurations on offer here that will help hone your website targeting. Google Webmaster, Bing Webmaster.

8. Is my site ranking high in search engines for the words and phrases used by people looking for dental services?

This is a big topic but there are two things to bear in mind. Rank for profitable keywords, not just the keywords popularly used in search engines related to dentistry. Use keyword research to identify which keywords to rank for then use a ranking tool or a manual check to see how you are faring. Also, observe keyword driven traffic trends in Google Analytics to monitor performance.

9. Is my content 100% original or copied from other websites?

Put yourself in the shoes of the people visiting your site. Would you contact a dentist if you felt the website content was stale, generic and impersonal. Probably not, particularly if the person searching the web for a dentist finds a competitor’s website that contains informative, persuasive, easy-to-read copy that imbues personality and expertise. Copy-editing is an important and frequently overlooked factor in online marketing. Check the originality of your copy here: http://www.copyscape.com/

10. What is causing my competitor’s websites to rank higher than mine for commonly used words and phrases?

There are tens if not hundreds of signals that search engines take into account for their ranking algorithm. Number of pages, level of SEO optimized content, site architecture, age, but most important of all is the number of quality of links pointing to a site. This is not an intuitive concept but a good starting point is to use open site explorer (free) to compare the link profile of your site with that of your competitors. In short you will not rank without links from other sites pointing to your site. For more competitive towns and regions your site will not be competitive unless you have quality links of the same (or better) quality and quantity as your competitors pointing to your website.

This is a quick post to get you thinking about your marketing efforts. Ask yourself these three questions to determine your readiness to launch a successful marketing campaign:

1. How is your phone being answered?

Once your marketing is effective, people will call to schedule appointments. Will they be as impressed with the verbal skills and competence of your employees as your marketing’s tone of professionalism?

2. What does your schedule look like?

Jameson coaches help teams all over the world schedule their days for maximum productivity and profitability. Is your schedule ready to run smoothly as you see an influx of accepted treatment and new patients?

3. Where do you really want to go?

If you have a clear vision and detailed goals for the direction of your practice, your marketing’s messages will be succinct and targeted so you get an efficient line of progress toward your goals. Looking for more cosmetic? Rather stay focused on family care? Know these answers BEFORE you begin crafting a single element of your external marketing!

Many dental practitioners today have started to realize that, in order to build a stronger connection to their patients, social media platforms may now be the place to be. More dentists and medical groups are now reaching out beyond the doors of their practice to connect with patients in the world of social networking.

Social Media Increasingly Popular With Dentists

A growing number of dentists are using Twitter and Facebook to connect with patients and distribute coupons, special offers or giveaways, and promote events. By incorporating a prominent Facebook “Like” button on their home page, dental practices are able to market themselves as a community of people who engage and interact with common interests. Now that Facebook has exceeded Google as the largest visited online portal, a non-presence or non-active presence on these social sites is definitely a missed opportunity.

Practical Ways Dentist Can Engage With Social Media

New Image Dental is a practice that specializes in dental implants in San Diego. New Image Dental features their Facebook page prominently on their web site, where regular updates are posted on the practice’s busy schedule: health seminars, promotional events for special dental services, and local charity efforts that the clinic sponsors. Blended with patient reviews, before-and-after pictures, slide shows, discount alerts, and a variety of articles to help patients learn about and improve their dental hygiene, it’s a thriving network that engages via social connections and “Word-of-Mouth” marketing. Being present in social media has helped New Image Dental bring in more patients each month, as well as strengthened their ties to local “fans” on Facebook and “followers” on Twitter and they can deliver timely, relevant news to their subscribers, while continuing to build their network and their reach online.

Social media may seem like an unlikely marketing tool for dental practices, but it’s the community feeling and connection to local people that can make this technique so effective. Dentists are now able to be (virtually) at the forefront of the community where most people now spend their time online.

Your Thoughts

Are you engaging your patients via social media channels? Do you have tips for those just beginning to engage with their patients via Social Media?

But what about businesses with little to no foot traffic? Places where people go maybe once or twice a year? Like your local dentist for example. How (and why) would you get someone to check in multiple times at a place like a dentist’s office? If you are brushing and flossing like you are supposed to, you are probably only visiting the dentist’s chair a couple of times a year, right?

Try SCVNGR

SCVNGR (Pronounced “Scavenger”) is a game very similar to Foursquare but geared specifically for places like a dentist’s office that want to get in on the social media marketing boom. Playing SCVNGR is simple; you go places, complete challenges along the way and then earn points to unlock real world rewards. Opposed to simple check-ins, challenges engage customers on an entirely new level and provide a way for businesses to get their name out through fun activities related to their location.

If you’re the owner of a business where check-ins are more infrequent or maybe even non-existent, then SCVNGR treks may be a great social media option for you. On treks, players visit multiple locations and complete challenges along the way, therefore earning points towards a free reward. An important aspect of SCVNGR is that treks are not limited to the physical location of a business.

How Dentists Can Use SCVNGR

This is where the dentist’s office comes into play. A trek can be set up with any kind of teeth-related or dental hygiene theme in mind, like “The Top Places in Los Angeles to Keep You Smiling”. All you have to do is incorporate the name of the dental business into the questions and challenges along the trek. Now you’ve gotten your name out there and the customer is thinking about your business without ever stepping inside the door!

SCVNGR is proving to be an invaluable marketing opportunity for businesses that have, until now, been unable to utilize location-based services. SCVNGR is more fun and engaging for customers than other location-based tools and is also more business-friendly because it allows customers and business owners, alike, to add content and customize the challenges. No business size or type is left behind with SCVNGR since all businesses can benefit from SCVNGR’s services.

So, download the free app for your iPhone (preview) or Android phone and start trekking with SCVNGR!

Your Thoughts

Are you currently using SCVNGR to reward your customers? Please share your tips and overall experiences with us in a comment below. Thanks!

What is Yelp?

In this post, we’re going to provide some quick tips for doing the same with another major player in the local search market, Yelp. If you’re not familiar, Yelp is similar to the online version of the Yellow Pages. However, it takes things a step further by allowing visitors to post reviews about local businesses. Businesses are encouraged to post photos, detailed business descriptions, company histories, specialties, upcoming events, etc. to provide an in-depth look at your business to potential customers.

With nearly 38 million visitors a month, you can see why Yelp is a great opportunity for you to take advantage of.

Yelp’s Features for business owners

• Communicate with your customers– privately and publicly
• Track how many people view your business page
• Add photos, a detailed business description, up-to-date information, history, and specialties
• Announce special offers and upcoming events
• Recommend other businesses

How to unlock your business page

Unlocking your business page on Yelp is easy. Watch the following video to claim your Yelp business page:

What to do once your business page is unlocked

Now that your practice page is unlocked, you have access to the business owner dashboard. Here you can update your business information, post announcements and upcoming events, communicate with your patients and more.

yelp-dashboard

Tips for making the most of Yelp

1. Let people know you’re on Yelp – Instead of soliciting reviews, simply let people know you’re on Yelp. As the reviews mount, you may very well notice that your Yelp profile is climbing in the search engines as a result.

2. Add your website URL – If you have a website make sure to include your url with your listing. This allows prospective patients to learn more about you than your Yelp page can provide.

3. Don’t skip the “Specialties” or “Business History” sections – These sections are often overlooked, but present you with a great opportunity to provide keyword-rich and compelling content for the search engines.

4. Show off – Trust is a critical component of the dentist-patient relationship. You can start to establish this trust by displaying professional and inviting photos of your practice for potential patients to see. Sometimes a photo alone is all it takes to bring a new patient through the door.

5. Advertise – If you live in a highly-competitive area, you may want to consider one of Yelp’s advertising options to appear higher in Yelps’ listings in your locale.

6. Handle negative reviews appropriately – Luther Lowe, Business Outreach Manager at Yelp provides some valuable tips for handling negative reviews in a professional manner in the following audio interview:

Handling Negative Reviews

Get started

You’re now armed with a handful of great tips for making the most out of Yelp. If done properly, you should start to see your Yelp profile rank higher in the search engines and a few new faces walking through the door.

Your Tips

What have your experiences been with Yelp? Do you have any tips for optimizing your business listing? Please share then in a comment below.

You invest a generous amount of time into furthering your continuing education so that you can provide the latest and greatest to your patients. But do your patients know this? Use your desire to enhance your skill set and knowledge base by educating your patients through internal marketing strategies. You can deploy a simple 5-step process each time you complete a course to leverage yourself. Doing so will make you stand apart from other dentists, show your patients that you are staying on top of the ever changing dental world, keep patients in your practice, and help them refer patients back to you.

5 steps you can follow today

1. Internal verbal skills
Make sure your team is aware of the course you completed and the benefits your patients will receive. Have your team (including you) mention it in conversation to your patients during your visit. For example, if the patient asks how you are doing, reply by saying, “Great. We are so excited that Dr. Jameson attended a course on whitening techniques. You know, she is always researching to find the best methods of whitening to offer you.”

2. Press release
Write a press release with factual information on the course. Many times the course will offer a pre-written press release into which you can insert your own information. Send this press release to local newspapers and publications. You can even include it in the hygiene bags for your patients to read, mail with statements, or include in a separate mailing.

3. Update your Web site
Add the new course to your Web site. The home page should have a mention of it with a link to learn more about CE event. This page should contain program details, the press release, benefits to the patient, logo (if relevant – i.e. Invisalign logo), and photos.

4. E-mail Marketing
Formulate an email to send to your patient base. The email should state the new benefits of the course that the patients and/or the practice will receive. The email should include a link to your Web site for more information. Be sure to invite your patient to call the office for more information or to utilize the new service.

5. Social media
Mention the course before, during and after the event on your Facebook and Twitter accounts. Do you have a flip camera? If so, use the flip camera to take video during the event. Or you can film yourself or a team member giving props to the course after the event. Post that footage on your social media sites and to your Web site.

Bonus

If your continuing education is in regards to a new piece of equipment, place signage around the office with the announcement. You can even have a “limited time only” special promoting the new technique or equipment. A great example is for CEREC. If you have just started using CEREC, post signs that introduce the new equipment and list a special for moving forward with treatment. The offer can be “Receive a complimentary Sonicare toothbrush when you have a CEREC crown placed—limited time only.”

The goal of continuing education is to bring more service offerings to your patients and to enhance what you do so that you are giving the best care possible. Why not let your patients know what you are doing for them? They will appreciate you for it and may even send more patients your way!

Your Thoughts

How has your practice increased referrals? What hasn’t worked well?

The key is to really have something that is newsworthy and then go all out to report that. You could be holding an awareness camp for gum disease, back to school sessions for kids on brushy their teeth daily and avoiding sweets or even doing something else for your community. If you think it is something that’s news worthy and others will be interested in it, then write a press release, and distribute it.

In this post I am going to give you a step by step guide to writing a press release for your dental practice and then tell you about some paid and free resources where you can promote your press release to be distributed over the internet.

A Step-by-Step Guide

1. Get the format right: You need to provide the date of the release or the words “For Immediate Release” at the beginning of the press release and then write the location of your business before getting to the actual press release itself. You also need to give in contact information where they can reach you for more information.

2. Write a Headline that hooks you in: Next up is writing a great catchy headline that hooks readers in. Ideally the headline should be some sort of question, provocative claim or something else that stirs up emotion.

Here’s a handful of great articles on writing effective headlines:

• 9 Proven Headline Formulas
• Don’t Do These 12 Things When Writing Headlines
• 10 Sure-Fire Headline Formulas That Work

3. Give them a compelling lead: The story should start with a really compelling lead that grabs their attention and has the gist of the whole story in a crisp manner that fires up the imagination and has the readers asking for more.

4. Remember the 5 W’s: After you have done the hard work of getting the readers engaged in your press release, the next step is to give them the necessary details. It is a good practice to address What, Why, When, Who and Where in your press release as that ensures that all aspects of your story are covered. This gives your readers a more holistic view of your message.

5. Include Quotes: Readers are really interested to hear what others have to say, and you should feed their curiosity by including a few choice quotes from yourself, as well as some of your patients.

6. Indicate the end of your release: If the end of your press release is clearly marked then the editors need not worry about whether they received the entire press release or not. So it is always helpful to indicate when your press release has ended.

What to do when you’re done writing

After you finish writing your press release you want to have an editor look it over to make sure all the spelling and grammar are correct before distributing it to the masses. You want to avoid having a press release with bad spelling and grammar because it can make your dental practice look unprofessional in the eyes of people reading it.

Where to submit your press releases

There are some great websites out there that you can submit your press release to and they will offer help with the distribution. These are the top free and paid distribution options:

1. PRWeb.com: (Paid – Best bang for your buck)
2. PRNewsWire: (Paid)
3. eReleases.com: (Paid)
4. PRLog: (Free)
5. i-newswire.com: (Free)
6. NewsWireToday.com: (Free)
7. OpenPR.com: (Free)
8. Free-Press-Release.com: (Free)

Summary

If done correctly, writing and distributing a press release can bring a significant amount of exposure to your dental practice. What you will start to notice first is the healthy amount of search engine traffic coming from the major search engines. It is a known fact search engines like Google love getting new news and has them indexed almost immediately.

It is also likely that some local TV or radio stations may find your press release worthy of an interview or guest appearance on a show. Or you may have people call into your dental practice after reading your press release and inquire about the services you offer.

The possibilities are endless to the amount of things that could happen as a result of creating and distributing a press release for your dental practice. Hopefully the information provided will help you get started so you can start promoting and creating awareness of your own dental practice.

Your Tips

Do you have any additional tips for writing or distributing effective press releases? Please leave them in a comment below.

Be sure to check out MaKenzie’s previous post post which is full of tips for setting up a postcard process targeted to retaining current patients.

Why Target New Movers?

New movers are an ideal audience to target in a dental postcard marketing campaign, since dentists are among the top services that people search for when relocating to a new area. Your postcard campaign can help those new movers check one more item off of their to-do list and bring you a new patient—or a whole family of new patients! In this post we’ll use our trusty Create-Target-Mail method to devise best practices for new mover mailings in a dental postcard marketing campaign.

Create

New movers are a different target audience than those mentioned in the first two posts in this series. Individuals and families that have recently moved are adjusting to a new environment, so make it easy for them by welcoming them into your office and your community with the following tips.

• Use “new mover” images to grab the recipients’ attention. This type of mailing has become widely practiced in many industries, and new movers look out for deals and discounts for new residents.
• Your copy should include a “welcome to the neighborhood” message. It may sound cliché, but a greeting that accepts someone new into the community is courtesy that is still appreciated.
• Consider an extended expiration date. If you typically set coupon or offer expiration dates for one month later, ponder giving a new mover six weeks from the mail date. They are still in transition mode, and it may take them a little longer to respond than normal.

Target

• Targeting a new mover list is relatively simple. If you are using an online, automated postcard marketing service, you can rent this list easily, but there are still strategies that should go into targeting this list.
• Choose a postcard service that has access to more detailed list options; you can sort by median income and even dwelling units if certain demographics are more relevant to your practice.
• Some New Mover lists include available phone numbers. You can utilize these to follow up on your mailing recipients should you choose to do so.
• If you live in a metropolitan area where commuting is common, target neighboring communities and zip codes. Today, busy people often squeeze dentist appointments between work and soccer games, so they choose a dentist based on proximity to the new office, school, or daycare.

Mail

The nice thing about online postcard marketing services is that you don’t have put much thought or work into your mailing process. Similar to our previous posts’ mail segments, here are some helpful tips:

• Consider your mailing date. If you’re considering direct mail campaigns for your future marketing plan, you may want to schedule New Mover mailings in the summer, when more families are likely to try and get settled before school starts—this will give you more candidates for your list! People are also less likely to move over the holidays.
• Use the tip in our first post again and use seed addresses. This gives you an additional alert to when your postcards have arrived to the new movers—if it is a day or two earlier or later than anticipated, you’ll be able to tie this to marketing results like leads through phone calls or website visits.
• The 250 minimum postcard discount should still always be considered. If your provider’s site does not pull a minimum of 250 addresses in its new mover data search, be sure it’s pulling data from as far back as possible—usually as much as 90 days. Even if someone moved 60 days ago or more, there’s a good chance they may still have not selected a regular dentist.

Final Thoughts

Thanks so much for checking out our guest post series for tips and best practices on your dental postcard marketing campaign! We’d love to hear your questions, comments, and past experiences with any acquisition, retention, or new mover postcard marketing.

To try designing your own dental postcard for free, visit Splash, the postcard marketing service powered by Bluewater.

Your thoughts

Have you created dental postcard campaigns targeted to new movers? Did you track your conversions? What were your experiences and results?

In case you missed it, check out MaKenzie’s previous post that highlighted the dental postcard marketing process.

When it comes to retention, some dentists think only of reminder postcard sent out to patients for their bi-annual cleaning. Though reminder cards are good, retention postcards with a broader strategy are more effective for keeping patients. Using a full service postcard marketing provider is becoming a more popular option for busy dentists that appreciate the quick Create-Target-Mail process. Let’s cover some great tips for retention postcards with this simple method.

Create

Retention cards are sent to your current patients, so make sure your card tells them you value their business by including the following elements.

• Retention postcards are a great place to use pictures of your own office or staff since they’re being sent to patients you’ve seen before. It can create and maintain a “familiar” feel about your office.
• Be sure to include and double check all your important contact information, but make your phone number the focus. For a busy individual, a phone number is easy to lose—it’s likely your card will be put on the refrigerator or office bulletin board for quick reference!
• Include an offer to boost response rates. We recommend coupons— the patient should bring the card back to redeem the offer, making your ROI more easily measurable!

Target

This target audience will be much more attentive to your message than the potential patients you mailed to in our last post. Your postcard will be seen as soon as it’s pulled from their mailboxes, so make every set of eyes count.

• To keep the best patient database possible, be sure that patients verify their contact information at every visit. The more accurate your address list is, the better your ROI on your direct marketing.
• Keep your offers specific to the demographic of patient you are mailing to. The offer you promote to senior patients will differ from younger patients. Verify that your list coincides with your offer.
• Try a mailing for lapsed patients that are overdue for their services. Offer a free product or service for those who make their appointment by a certain expiration date.

Mail

Save time and money on mailing your retention postcards by following a few simple tips that will make your campaign easier to execute.

• Choose your send date strategically. If the holidays are typically slow for your practice, mail your card in October, and include an end-of-the-month expiring offer.
• Again, consider the 250 minimum postage discount (Check out the previous post in this series for details). Don’t have 250 patients for your retention mailing? Go back to the “create” step and include a message that will work for both acquisition and retention, and add an acquisition list to your mailing.
• If you have more than 250 patients but want to be more selective with your list, implement a loyalty program for patients with that make frequent visits or are habitually punctual. Include a free gift offer to show your appreciation.

Regardless of the real statistics on the investment amount it takes to acquire a new patient versus retaining a new one, the bottom line is that investing in current patients is not only less expensive, but it builds value in your practice as you become known for being a very appreciative dentist. That reputation on its own is sure to build your practice a great patient base that appreciates you right back and will refer you to their family, friends, neighbors and co-workers.

Your Thoughts

Does your practice have a retention program? How has it worked, and what new tactics will you implement?

To try designing your own dental postcard for free, visit Splash, the postcard marketing service powered by Bluewater.

In this series of three separate guest blog posts, we’ll be discussing the different direct mail type options dentists can take advantage of with postcard marketing, as well as sharing best practices in execution with an easy Create-Target-Send process.

Whether your dental practice is still in its infancy, or you are simply looking to gain a larger patient base, dental postcard marketing can expand your reach. Using the simple Create-Target-Mail process, here are some of the best practices for your next dental patient acquisition campaign with direct mail:

Create

The starting point of creating an acquisition postcard for your dental practice can be daunting—because, well, you’re a dentist, not a marketing guru. The key, surprisingly, is to keep your postcard simple.

• Focus on unique strengths. Do you specialize in pediatric dentistry? Have you implemented a payment plan for patients without insurance? The little things like this set you apart and can make your candidate choose you over the dentist down the street. HINT: If you’ve received a great compliment from a patient, ask permission to use their testimonial on your mail piece!
• Be sure to include vital contact information. Double and triple check that you’ve included your phone number, website URL, e-mail address, your office location, and even logos of the social networking sites you participate in. On your fourth check, be sure you have no typographical errors and your messaging is clear.
• Do include images, as they are a great way to make an emotional connection to potential patients, but don’t crowd your card with too many. Another HINT: People-centered images are best received. Also, to calm recipients that may have dental phobias–stick with smiling people NOT in dental chairs.

Target

Your mailing list has a substantial hand in the effectiveness of your patient acquisition campaign. Luckily, this step has been made even simpler by full service direct mail providers that include list building tools for you to use right on their website. Here are the best methods for targeting your recipients:

• Target a radius of your office. Convenience is still a huge factor for any consumer, whether it’s going to the dentist or picking up groceries. Take advantage of your convenience factor by mailing within a 1 to 3 mile radius of your practice.
• Target your entire zip code. This works especially well for smaller cities or practices centrally located within a community—consider yourself fortunate if your location is convenient for nearly everyone!
• Target a particular demographic. If a list with more specific demographics such as age and income seems pertinent, explore your list building options with your direct mail services provider!

Send

Sometimes just getting to the post office with a personal letter or a bill can be a hassle. Take this part of your campaign execution off your shoulders with the following tips:

• Use a “one-stop-shop” online direct mail services provider. They will send the postcards out for you and can even get postal discounts (next tip).
• Order a minimum of 250 postcards. A post-office wide discount means you’ll pay less postage per card. Many direct mail providers have made this a standard minimum to ensure the discount.
• Ask that your home and business addresses (and maybe those of another family member or friend) be included as a “seed” in your mailing. This way you can tell when it’s arrived to your recipients.

Bluewater Postcard Marketing Services

So there you have it, your best practices for acquiring new patients with dental postcard marketing. We’d love to hear your comments about what works for your dental office. To try designing your own dental postcard for free, visit Splash, the postcard marketing service powered by Bluewater.

Stay Tuned

In Part II of our dental postcard marketing series later this week, Bluewater is going to discuss the importance of retention postcards…you don’t want to miss their great tips, so sign up now to receive updates via e-mail or our Twitter for free!

Add or Claim Your Listing

Google Places provides an easy way for you to drive targeted traffic to both your website and your physical practice locations. If you haven’t already set up your Google Places’ listing(s), then set aside 15-20 minutes to do so – you’ll be glad you did.

If you need help adding or claiming your listing, check out these step-by-step instructions for doing so or view this comprehensive how-to video produced by google.

Why Ranking in Google Places is Important

Ranking in Google Places is vitally important for your practice. With a Google Places listing your practice can appear near the top of the search results in your area for terms like “dentist” and “dentist in XXXX”.

Secondly, with a Google Places listing, you can look forward to much more targeted traffic than organic (non-Google Places) search results. Search engine optimization experts will tell you that targeted traffic means higher converting traffic, and higher converting traffic means more customers for you.

Major Google Places Ranking Factors

There are a number of factors that determine where your listing will be ranked within Google Places. Here are the biggies (in no particular order):

• 100% Complete Business Profile
• Claiming your listing
• Citations

Tips Your Competition Doesn’t Know About

The following tips will help you to maximize your ranking from within Google Places in local searches (in no particular order). Naturally, the more of these tips you implement the better.

1. Complete your business profile – Make sure that your Google Places profile is completely filled out. Simply provide as much information as you possibly can.

2. Claim your listing – In some cases, Google has already created a basic listing for your business within Google Places. Google does this by pulling your business information from various business directories and websites around the web. If Google automatically generated your Google Places listing, then be sure to claim it. To do this, be sure that you’ve set up a Google Account and login to Google Places.

3.Add your business to online business directories – Add your practice’s contact information in as many local business directories as possible. If you aren’t sure what I’m talking about, take a look at a post I wrote a while back listing the top 10 free places to list your practice online. Start with this list and add your practice to as many additional business directories as possible for maximum effect. Just remember, consistency is key. Add your contact information exactly the same way in each listing. For example, if you spell out the word “street” in one directory, make sure you spell it out in the others as well.

4. Add Video or Pictures – Add pictures and/or videos of your practice to your profile page. Google loves this, and your customers will appreciate the transparency that only video or pictures can provide.

5. Coupons – This may or may not apply to your practice. However, if your practice offers coupons or specials – be sure to list them in the space provided.

6. Organic rankings – Your rankings in the organic (regular, non-Google Places) search results for your top keywords does appear to influence at least to some degree where you’re ranked within Google Places. However, Google Places aside, its critically important that your site is optimized for the search engines. You can do this yourself, or hire an SEO expert to do this for you.

7. Add contact details to your website – This is a no-brainer. Luckily, the vast majority of you have already done this. I’d take this a step further, however, and advise you to add your address along with your business name and phone number on every page of your site.

8. Review, Reviews, Reviews – Request that satisfied patients add reviews to your Google Places page.

9. Separate location pages – Create a separate page on your website for each location. Then link your Google Places’ listings to their appropriate location page within your website.

10. Buy Your Way to the Top – For a flat $25/month fee you can enhance your listing (include additional information other listings can’t) and potentially its ranking as well

Further Reading

- How Dentists Can Improve Google Places Listings by The Visible Dentist
- Ranking in Google Place: A Definitive Guide by Seo Factor
- 10 Quick Google Places Tips by Lucidica
- Google Places Help for Business Owners by Google
- Google Places No-No’s by Daily SEO Tip

Final Thoughts

Some of these tips can be implemented today, while others will take some time. Either way, do what you can as time permits. I can’t guarantee that these tips will enhance your listing’s ranking within the Google Places’ search results – nobody can. However, it is likely that you can expect at least some positive effect.

If you would like to add a tip to this list, or have seen positive results from the usage of these tips please share with other Dental Heroes’ readers in a comment below.

Social media allows for something that’s never been available to businesses using traditional marketing in the past. Social media allows you to connect…to talk…to create…an ongoing dialogue with your target audience!

Unlike print ads and direct mail outs that are static and limited in their information or even networking events that are one time meetings…social media allows you to “talk” with your audience…24/7.

This creates incredible opportunities to be visible and responsive to your market! But if you’re not careful, social media can be very overwhelming and distracting. There’s the social platforms, the tools (applications, widgets, plugins, etc), social media etiquette, connecting and engaging with viewers, and the time involved…time can be a big factor!

One of the biggest mistakes practices make when starting in social media is they just jump in with no clear objectives or strategy. They aren’t sure about what they what to do and how they’re going to do it.

They’ll set up their social sites, Twitter – Facebook – LinkedIn, and maybe even a blog, but they don’t know how to connect, how to listen, and more importantly…how to engage effectively. Then after a few posts, their sites just sit there and begin gathering virtual dust (I’ve been to many dental sites on twitter and noticed the date of their last tweet was months ago).

In using social media, to be effective in attracting and engaging quality followers, you must have these elements in place:

Know your target market and which social networks they are using the most.
Let’s put this into perspective: If you work out of 3 Treatment Rooms and your patient is seated in TR 3 and you’re seated in TR 2 waiting for that patient, you aren’t going to get anything accomplished, you’re not where your patient is.

So if you’re on Twitter and your target is on Facebook…see the importance? Go where the “eyeballs” are…know and be seen where your target market is.

Know and be clear about your objectives – goals – or outcome you want from social media
What are you wanting social media to accomplish? Do you want to gain your targeted audience’s attention? Drive traffic to your practice, blog, or website? Enhance your practice’s patient services? Maybe you want to grow your practice’s email list

What are your objectives – what is it you want to accomplish with social media?

Create an engagement plan for using social media
Once you’ve determined and joined the social network sites your target uses, you’ll need to determine how you are going to connect, engage, and communicate with your viewers. How often will you “tweet”, post, or update. What are your core messages you will deliver?

Create a social media policy for your practice
How will you and or your employees handle social media in your practice? What’s the right way and wrong way for your employees to use social media? Who is going to be responsible for managing and overseeing your overall social media marketing?

Whether handling in-house or outsourcing to a third party, you need a social media policy in place.

One last point to bring is Safety Online: Remember:
Once you’ve said it on the Internet, there’s no taking it back. A few good rules to follow:

• Never post anything you don’t want your Grandmother or children to read
• Never give out sensitive information like account numbers or social security numbers
• Never spam – you’ll be un-followed and dropped like a hot dental instrument

By creating and having your social media strategy in place first, you’ll know:

• Your social media objectives
• How you’re going to achieve your objectives
• An overall plan for implementing your social media strategy

Your Thoughts

These are the top elements needed in creating a winning social media strategy. What additional elements have you used in your strategy?

Why the rebrand? There are a couple of motivations as I see it: A) Google wants to dominate the local search wars, and B) Google is attempting to position their local search service to take advantage of ad revenue.

Regardless of their motivations for the name change, you need to take advantage of a number of really cool features Google introduced with Google Places.

Google Places: New Features

1) Service areas: Most dental practices won’t be interested in this feature, but if you travel to your customers for any reason, you can now list your service areas.

2) Simple Advertising: For just $25 per month, you can highlight your listing on Google.com and Google Maps with what they’re calling “Tags”. Tags are essentially yellow markers that allow you to promote important aspects of your businesses. Keep in mind that tags will not help your business listing to appear higher in the search results. However, tags do allow you to list more information about your business than those businesses who did not purchase tags.

3) Business photo shoots – In addition to uploading photos of your business, you can now sign up to have Google create a virtual photoshoot of the interior of your business. Oh, and the best part is that they’ll do this for free. This sort of transparency speaks volumes to customers – so if you live in the following cities – I’d sign up ASAP:

Atlanta, GA
Boston, MA
Chicago
Denver, CO
Detroit, MI
Houston, TX
Indianapolis, IN
Jersey City, NJ – Hoboken, NJ
Kansas City, KS
Las Vegas, NV
Los Angeles
Miami, FL
Minneapolis, MN
Nashville, TN
New York
Philadelphia
Pittsburgh, PA
Portland, OR
San Antonio, TX
San Diego, CA
San Francisco, CA
San Jose, CA
Seattle, WA
St. Louis, MO
Washington D.C.

If you live in one of these cities and would like to sign up for a free photo shoot you can Sign up here.

4) Customized QR (two-dimensional) barcodes – From the Google Places dashboard, you now have the opportunity to download a QR code that’s unique to your business. QR codes can be placed on business cards or other marketing materials, and customers can scan them with certain smartphones to be taken directly to the mobile version of the Place Page for your business.

5) Favorite Places – Google is mailing window decals to 50,000 businesses around the US. These decals include a QR code that can be scanned with a smartphone to directly view the mobile Place Page for the business to learn more about their great offerings.

6) Real-time Updates – You might want to promote a sale, a special event happening today or anything else that you want customers to know right now, and this feature lets you communicate that directly to your customers. You can also provide extra incentive by adding coupons, including ones specially formatted for mobile phones.

7) Analytics – To keep track of how your business listing is performing on Google, they’re now offering a personalized dashboard within Google Places that will show you how many times people have found your business on Google, what keywords they used to find it and even what areas people traveled from to visit your business. With the dashboard, you can see how your use of any of these new features affects interest in your business and make more informed decisions about how to be found on Google and interact with your customers.

Google Places: Official Video

Final Thoughts

If you run a dental practice, then you need to take advantage of Google Place’s powerful new features. Not only does your business stand to benefit from higher visibility in Google, but you may just see an increase in the number of patients coming through your doors as well.

Get Listed in Google Places Now (Free)

Stay Tuned

This is just the first post in a series of posts we’ll be dedicating to Google Places. In upcoming posts, we’ll break down the new features and provide some tips (that your competitors aren’t using) for maximizing your visibility in Google.

Your Thoughts

Have you already listed your business in Google Places? Have you seen an increase in the number of new patients walking through your doors as a result? Share your experiences in a comment below.

So, how do you successfully bring these new patients into your practice and retain them in your patient family? Here are a few steps to start working on NOW to prepare for the wave of business your marketing efforts are going to bring.

1. Have an effective New Patient Experience in place

The New Patient Experience is multifold. It involves several systems in your practice: excellent telephone technique, gathering of necessary data, scheduling the new patient appointment, sending out a beautiful and accurate new patient packet, and executing a good new patient appointment and a successful case presentation. This may take hours of time, practice and preparation on the part of you and your team members. But, remember, all of this work will protect the investment you have made in your marketing. Otherwise, you risk losing your investment the moment you answer the telephone.

2. Get your schedule in order

Make sure you have a schedule that is organized and ready to take on new patients in an expedient manner. If you are offering a special on whitening, for example, make sure you have places blocked off in your schedule to hold those appointments. If a prospective patient calls in and you can’t see them for three months, chances are it doesn’t matter what you’re offering, they will look elsewhere for someone that can see them in a more convenient fashion.

3. Put an efficient follow-up system in place

In the introductory calls, make sure you gather the prospective new patient’s contact information. This way you can follow- up on a regular basis through marketing and you can also place these people on a call list when you have cancellations.

Above all, make sure your business systems are streamlined and your customer service skills are sharp so that you make a great first impression. All the marketing dollars in the world won’t get you that final goal of a patient saying yes to treatment. The YES comes when the care and the service match the image. Here’s to successful marketing – and ultimately – successful case acceptance!

Your Thoughts

What have you done within your practice to handle the aftermath of successful marketing efforts?

Practices without Web sites are missing out on numerous opportunities to attract patients surfing on the Web in an effort to find a dentist. In addition, referrals from existing patients will often fall flat if the prospective patient goes to the Internet to find you and you are missing.

Now that you are moving forward and developing a practice Web site, here are 10 things we at Jameson believe you should consider when building your site:

10 Powerful Tips

1. Make the text “you” focused and action oriented instead of doctor oriented.

2. Use testimonials and photos of your own patients in lieu of stock photography.

3. Use non-retracted smile and portrait photos of your work.

4. Put your contact information on every page in an easy to find place.

5. Put photos of patients on the home page.

6. Place the doctor and team photos on the “Meet Your Team” page.

7. Showcase your practice with a photographic tour of your office. Create it so you can update it frequently.

8. Have a map to your location.

9. Develop the site so that it can be search engine optimized.

10. Have a tracking mechanism tied to your site so you can see the actual success of it.

Build, market, and track a great site so that you can take your practice to the next level! First focus on getting the site you want and need. Building an amazing site is an exciting experience and so rewarding when your patients rave about it. It will be even more rewarding when you see your new patient numbers and case acceptance rise because you have created the right message that you carry through your entire practice!

Welcome to 2010. Direct Mail, Newspaper Ads, and other traditional forms of advertising are continually becoming less effective. Gone are the ways of the past – consumers now have unlimited content available to them right at their fingertips, online.

A recent study found that 70% of internet users now search for local businesses online. So what are you doing to cash in on this rapidly increasing trend? Here is a quick guide on how to blow away your competition with local search, and tap into this all-important revenue stream.

You Need a Converting Website

The key to any powerful internet marketing campaign is having a website that turns online visitors into paying customers. The biggest trap most practice owners’ fall into is having a website that is nothing more than a digital practice brochure. It may be pretty to look at – have lots of content – but it fails to deliver a steady stream of high quality patients.

The only purpose of your website should be to get your visitor to schedule an appointment or request more information. One of the most effective methods for this is including a compelling, valuable offer that visitors can sign up for right on the spot – perhaps a “Free Consultation” or “Complimentary Exam”. Here is a great article with tips on how to create and promote a powerful offer: Lead Conversion

Making PPC Marketing Work

Pay-Per-Click marketing is a tricky area for many dental practices – some have tried and failed, others have just heard too many bad things, and many more simply have never heard of it or don’t know enough about it. What almost all of these practices have in common is that they are not aware they could be killing their online competition, instead of missing out on this golden opportunity.

For all of the internet users that now search for local business online, over 70% prefer using Google. If there is one search engine that you need to master when it comes to PPC, this is the one. If you do a search on Google for ‘(Your City) Dentist’, on the results page you will see a group of ‘Sponsored Links’ in yellow at the top, and another group of ‘Sponsored Links’ along the right. These links are PPC ads, and represent some of the first listings consumers find when searching for a new dentist online.

In order to run PPC ads for your practice on Google, you first need to make a Google AdWords account: Google Adwords

When first getting started, it is important to:

• Determine radius you want to geographically target (campaign settings)
• Identify relevant keywords to your practice (i.e. ‘Chicago Dentist’, or ‘Chicago Teeth Whitening’)
• Create well-organized structure with groupings for your keywords
• Create ads that tie in theme of their ad group’s keywords
• Install conversion tracking to track performance

This article has some more specific info for getting started and AdWords tips: Insanely Effective Adwords in Three Easy Steps

Tracking the performance of your AdWords account (with conversion tracking) is absolutely critical to being successful, and is where many practices fail to turn PPC into a profitable marketing channel. With conversion tracking, you have the ability to determine specific areas (goals) of your website that have a “perceived value” to your practice each time they are reached.

These values are so critical because they tie directly into the financial math of customer acquisition for your practice. For example – if you know your average patient is worth approximately $1,500 in lifetime value, and one of every five people that request a free consultation become a paying patient, then you can start to realize the value of these incoming online leads ($1,500 / 5 = $300). Now obviously there are a multitude of other factors that affect profitability (supplies, overhead expenses, etc.), but the key is to try to grasp the understanding of how much you can spend to profitably bring in a new patient. Armed with this information, you can optimize your PPC account to maximize profitability by slowing down or pausing parts of your account that are not working well, and spending more on areas of your account that have a great ROI and could use more volume.

Tying in Google Local Business Listings

The final step to dominating Google Local Search for your area is having a well-ranked Local Business Listing. These are the listings that show up on the results page for the same search as before (‘Your Area’ Dentist), next to the map with the pushpins in it. These listings are 100% free to create, and more importantly 100% free for clicks received. If you do not already have one for your practice, you can create it here: Google Local.

Just having a map listing is one thing, but the truly effective ones are those that rank well for the relevant terms in your area. There are quite a few factors that go into the ranking of these listings. Here are some great resources for the known factors, which can help you get to the top for all relevant listings:

Improve Google local listings through local SEO

Local search ranking factors

Final Thoughts

Dental practices are not immune to customer attrition. As with any localized business, people eventually move out of their area and can no longer be your patients. For some this is a harsh truth – but for others it presents an amazing opportunity, because there is also an ongoing flow of new potential patients moving into the area. By dominating Google local search now, you can move ahead your competition in the race to acquire these new patients, and cash in on the goldmine.

It will come as no surprise to dental professionals that people who have a good experience with a product or service will want to tell their friends and colleagues about it.

Word of Mouth is Critical

Word of mouth is a critical driver in generating new business, and the traditional methods of enabling this in the offline world are much slower than in the online world. The key is how to employ it in a way that can get the biggest bang for the buck.

A blend of social media and search engine optimization using free resources linked to your central online presence can work together to generate buzz, as well as drive curious or interested potential patients back to a central place where they can find out more and take action.

Twitter Works

During the first week of March, the word ‘dentist’ was tweeted on Twitter, the short-form blogging platform where people share everyday experiences and recommendations (or negative comments), nearly 4,000 times, according to Topsy. In the past month, the word ‘dentist’ was mentioned nearly 21,000 times. There’s something about going to the dentist that brings out the emotion in people! Twitter can be an incredible resource to both search for new patients and reach out to them cost-effectively, and also a brilliant platform to get existing clients to tweet about their experience, post pictures and engage with their peers. Ask your patients whether they’re on Twitter, get on there yourself, and don’t forget to research potential customers thinking about whether or not to make a visit in your area.

Other Social Media Tools to Consider…

In addition to Twitter, other social media tools such as Facebook fan pages (which now come with analytics tools), free listings in social recommendation sites such as Yelp and free blogging platforms that can be updated by email or text messaging (such as Posterous) can provide your practice with multiple cost-effective sources to get your messages out and crucially engage with your patients, even if they change home addresses or telephone numbers. Updating this content provides good material for search engines to index, and therefore drive results in search – the number one entry point for Americans on the Web.

Link it up with a .tel page

Optimizing search results can be achieved by simply cross-linking all of these places to one simple-to-manage domain that you own. Previously, this may have been tricky and time-consuming. But with the new .tel domain, you can have a simple presence online that links to all of the above resources, and enable people to quickly access information about your practice on the Web. Perhaps more importantly, the .tel page is optimized for use on smartphones, so new and existing patients can direct dial or email your office to book an appointment wherever they are. There’s no coding or Web site building involved, and it can be managed from an iPhone and costs from around $20 per year all-in.

As busy professionals, investing your teams’ time in the above will help you engage with clients without having to commit to time-consuming and costly ventures. Let your service do the talking through your patients.

Your thoughts?

Which online marketing tools have you seen results with? Do you have a .tel page?

For medical and dental professionals, new patients are the lifeblood that keeps their practice running smoothly. Returning patients are, of course, a tremendous asset as well, but without a steady flow of new patients, most practices can’t afford to stay afloat – especially in today’s competitive and frequently oversaturated marketplace. The solution lies in generating referrals.

But what are the best practices for generating effective referrals without compromising your marketing budget? For most dental professionals, the best way to generate referrals and bolster business for any practice is through positive word of mouth. The hope is that if your patients are happy with your services, they will recommend you to their friends, loved ones, coworkers and acquaintances – but it’s not always that simple. You can’t afford to just sit back and wait for word of mouth recommendations to pick up! Here are a few simple techniques for generating referrals that really work:

1. Send Handwritten postcards, greeting cards or thank you notes

Show patients you care by sending handwritten postcards, greeting cards or thank you notes. Coming from their dental professional, this level of personal commitment may take many people by surprise – and that’s a good thing! Try sending these personalized notes to new patients after their first visit, as well as patients who have just started or finished a significant treatment or procedure. You may also want to get into the habit of reaching out to all of your patients during the holidays, to thank them for their loyalty. Keep your notes short, and always send them as quickly as possible after an appointment or meeting.

2. Establish a referral program

Establish a referral program for your practice. Print small flyers or brochures and display them in your waiting area, and be sure to mention specific incentives that patients could stand to receive if they send referrals your way. These incentives could take the form of anything from a discount on dental services to an unrelated “fun” item, like a gift certificate to a local restaurant.

3. Ask for referrals

Ask for referrals. Even if you follow the previous tips to a T, many of your patients may not “take the hint” and start referring people to your practice. Be proactive and train your staff to ask every patient if they have anyone they would like to refer to your practice. Make sure they leave with one of the aforementioned flyers or brochures, and give them the option of filling out a referral card in the office. Emphasize that their referrals won’t be required to buy anything or make an appointment – you’ll simply be reaching out.

4. Include referral cards with all mailings

Always include referral cards with any direct mail marketing materials you do send out. For example, if you mail a brochure or a newsletter to patients or area residents, include several tear-out referral cards inside.

5. Give away freebies

Give away freebies, such as pens, toothbrushes or magnets, with the name, street address, phone number and web address of your practice printed on them. These items can usually be printed in bulk at an affordable rate, and they can be a surprisingly effective way to generate new interest in your services.

6. Include a referral link on your website

Include a referral link on your website, where visitors can simply type in the names and contact information of individuals who may be interested in your services. Remember, the easier you make the referral process, the more likely your patients are to participate! Don’t forget to mention any incentives you may offer via your referral program.

7. Respond to inquiries quickly

Finally, respond to any inquiries you receive from interested parties as quickly as possible. People will appreciate the personal care and attention, and it may make them inclined to start referring their friends and family immediately – perhaps even before their first appointment has been scheduled!

With these tips in mind, generating referrals can be one of the easiest ways to revitalize your practice without spending a fortune on advertising.

Your Thoughts

Are you utilizing some of these ideas in your practice? Which do you find to be particularly successful? Do you have any tips to add to this list?

Why? Because signage requires very little overhead. You determine the optimal signage placement around your building, design the sign(s), have the sign(s) constructed, install the signs and your done. Not only are signs largely a one-off expense, but they can effortlessly bring in new patients if done correctly. You can’t say that about most of the other things you’re doing to bring in new patients.

I thought it would be fun to show you some examples of the creative dental signage designs for your inspiration.

So, without further ado…here are the signs…

5 Inspirational Examples of Dental Practice Signage

1. Victoria Square Dental

Source: brandingblog.com

2. Ed Montgomery Dental Surgery

Source: danthonia.com.au

3. Beech Lake Pediatric Dentistry

Source: springvalleydesigns.com

4. Deerfield Family Dentistry

Source: springvalleydesigns.com

5. Big Smile Dental

Source: bigsmiledental.com

Your Favorite?

Which of these do you like best? Do you know of other inspirational examples of dental signage that we should know about? Point us to a photo if you can in a comment below.

Thankfully, there are a number of quick and simple ways to monitor what people are saying about your practice online. I’ll get to those a little later in the post. Let’s first talk about why it’s important to manage your reputation online.

Why Online Reputation Management Matters

Good reputations are not built overnight. Chances are it took you a number of years and a lot of money to establish your dental practice’s good name. The frightening reality is that it’s comparatively simple for someone to destroy your reputation permanently online. Just one comment or bad review on a blog or website by a disgruntled former employee, ex-patient, or competitor can be enough to drive your reputation into a ditch.

So, if your online reputation matters to you(and it should), then you need to actively engage in the marketing practice commonly referred to as, Online Reputation Management (ORM).

What is Online Reputation Management (ORM)

The relatively new marketing construct know as Online Reputation Management (ORM) is, in simple terms, monitoring the status of your brand (or name), evaluating the online conversation about your brand, and taking deliberate steps to mitigate potential damage to your brand. You can think of ORM as a three-step process:

1. Monitor – Maintain an ongoing system for researching and keeping track of public perception.
2. Analyze – Consider individual feedback, as well as the source, outlet, reach and timing, to come to a decision about the risk.
3. Influence – Comment, rebut, draft a formal response or simply ignore what has been said, based on your evaluation (Alyssa Gregory, Sitepoint.com)

5 Tips for Effective Online Reputation Management

1. Assume that everything will find its way online – Don’t assume that anything you say or do will be kept private. Simply assume that it will be published somewhere online and potentially available to billions of people. ORM expert, Andy Beal, says that “the message you share behind closed doors should match the one you share with employees, customers, and investors.”

2. Set up Automatic Alerts – Set up automatic alerts to notify you when your practice is mentioned on a review site, social network, blog, etc. Google Alerts is my favorite FREE tool for this purpose. Google Alerts will e-mail you (at a frequency determined by you) anytime your practice is mentioned online. I personally use Google Alerts and highly recommend it. Sign up for Google Alerts FREE. Duct Tape Marketing has a nice list of 34 monitoring tools that you may find useful as well.

3. Maximize positive references to your practice online – The idea here is simple. The more positive references to your practice online, the more insignificant the negative references will become. A few examples of how you might increase your positive references online include: Engaging with patients and potential patients on social networks, submitting press releases, running contests, working with charities, etc. Doing any of these things will naturally create new positive references to you online.

4. Respond to positive & negative feedback – Whenever possible, and wherever it makes sense, make it a point to respond to both negative and positive feedback online. The goal in doing this is to show your commitment to patient satisfaction. However, be particularly careful when responding to negative feedback. Do evaluate the situation before responding, but be prompt when the situation warrants it. Remain calm, be honest and always take the high ground in all interactions with the offender. This should help you to diffuse the situation before it gets out of hand. Check out Yelp! for more tips on responding to positive and negative feedback online.

5. Don’t Mix Business and Personal profiles – Avoid mixing personal and practice profiles on social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. Social networking sites like these are great for building relationships with people. However, relationships can sour, and you don’t want to run the risk that someone will maliciously attack your practice’s reputation, when their beef is really just with you.

Set Up an ORM Plan

Establishing an ORM plan is critically important. Like anything else, not having a plan is a plan for disaster. So, where should you start? Elixir Interactive provides a number of helpful hints for crafting your own ORM plan:

A well-planned brand reputation management program requires the identification of communities that have the largest and most vocal membership, ongoing monitoring, and active participation in these communities in order to promote a positive brand image and suppress negative sentiment. The following questions should be addressed during the planning session:

1. What is the purpose of the program? Are you looking to gather feedback? Promote a new service? Educate customers about a product’s functionality? Address customer questions and concerns?

2. Where are we going to focus our efforts? You need to identify the blogs, forums, newsgroups and websites that are most relevant to the brand, have the largest and most engaged audience and are seen as “authorities” by the search engines.

3. How often will we be monitoring? Depending on the purpose of the program, the amount of time spent monitoring, posting comments, creating content, answering questions and linking could require multiple resources.

4. Who is going to manage the program? Brand reputation management is not something to be assigned to the “intern that knows how to Google.” Depending on the objective of the program (i.e. feedback solicitation, customer service, awareness) the intensity of the effort will vary and require resources that are qualified to respond in an appropriate manner (Elixir Interactive).

Further Reading

1. Ten Tactics That Could Save Your Online Reputation
2. Fighting a Bad Online Reputation and Keeping a Good One
3. The 18 Immutable Laws of Corporate Reputation… (Paperback)
4. Radically Transparent: Monitoring and Managing Reputations Online (Paperback)

Recommended Reputation Management Service

Your Thoughts

Does your practice have an established Online Reputation Management Plan? If not, are you considering it? Why, or why not?

Imagine if you could create an experience that turns a patient into a raving fan, and the people she refers to the practice ask for the same experience. Now, you are creating a culture. The beauty of creating a culture of raving fans is that it is completely in your control, and for the most part – FREE!

Earn the Referral

I’ve always been kind of curious about the sign in dental offices that says something like, “We appreciate referrals.” I often wonder if a patient feels a disconnect between the sign and the experience. I’m usually asking myself, “What does this office do to earn the referral?” People typically are not out raving about their visit to the dentist over lunch with girlfriends, and if they are, it’s probably not positive. People are more
likely to complain than they are to brag. You may have heard that people don’t like going to the dentist, so to earn a patient referral, you have to be amazing.

Create Promoters

I did a little research into customer loyalty and a customer’s willingness to refer people to your practice. I found out about Net Promoter Scores (NPS) from Harvard Business Review. To get an NPS number for your office you would ask your patients one simple question, “From 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend this office to your friends and family?” NPS measures the difference between the percentage of customers who give high responses (“promoters”) and those who give low ones (“detractors”). Promoters are defined as customers who give the company 9 or 10, while detractors hand out “0″ through 6. Customers who log 7 or 8 are deemed “passively satisfied” and aren’t calculated in the final score.

More Promoters = More Revenue

For most of you, I would expect the majority of your patients to be in the 7-8 group. The article suggested there is a major connection between a company’s NPS score and revenue growth. A follow-up article debunks the hype around NPS because of people’s passiveness to brag or rave. Believers in the system argue there is a direct link. Once they started focusing on the scores, revenue grew. Why? It wasn’t the scores they were focused on; it was the customer. If they got anything less than a 9 on the review, they wanted to know why. Revenues grew because customer interaction improved, systems improved, and services were added. It was a new personal touch that made the difference.

How it’s Done

The big question is, how can we do this? I’ve spent some time on my blog talking about the first phone call. It’s critical to note that every member of your team has an impact on the culture of your practice, but it begins with you. I think creating a culture of raving fans starts with a mission statement, and a vision statement. To come up with these statements, think about who you are, and what you want to be. Once you are clear on your vision for the practice, focus on the patient’s experience. Make sure that these two parts are always in sync and up to date. If you are always looking for ways to get your 7′s and 8′s up to 9′s and 10′s, you will have a culture of raving fans.

Bonus: 5 points if you know what movie the title is from.

Your Thoughts

Are you creating a culture of raving fans within your dental practice? If yes, please elaborate in a comment below. Thanks.

The 8 jaw-dropping dental logos below stand out from the crowd and create a favorable first impression.

1. Country Living Dentistry

2. Robin Rutherford, DDS

3. Innovative Family Dental Health

4. Creative Dental Care, P.A.

5. City Dental

6. Huzur Oral & Dental Health Center

7. Garden City Dental

8. Dental Edge

Add to the List

Are you aware of any other jaw-dropping dental logos that should be added to the list? Let us know where we can see it in a comment below.

Don’t Employ the “Wait & See” Approach

Most dentists take the “wait-and-see” approach. That is, they develop a website, publish it to the web, and wait…and wait…and wait for new patients to line up outside their doors. Sadly, new patients never come. Why? Because your website is nowhere to be found in the search engine results pages (SERPS).

Thankfully, there are many techniques that you can employ to increase your position in the SERPS, and be found by patients seeking a new dentist.

Local Business Directories Are Effective

One highly effective technique for generating traffic, and the focus of this post, is submitting your dental practice website to local business directories. Submitting your site to local business directories requires very little time, but has significant upside potential.

Why? Because many of the local business directories that I’ve listed below appear on the first page of the SERPS for local searches.

Here’s Proof

To see what I mean, give this a try: go to Google.com. Once there, search using the following query: “saint louis dentists”(minus quotes). You’ll notice on the first page of the SERPS that several business directories came up, such as: Google local business, Superpages and Citysearch. You can see how a listing in any of these directories would improve your visibility with potential new patients.

I compiled a list below of my 10 favorite FREE local business directories that you should submit your site to in order to increase your online visibility and capture new patients. Without further ado, here’s the list…

Top 3

1. Google Local Business Center

Listing your website in the Google Local Business Center is a must. Your local business listing can include: your business address, website url, maps, location photos, business description, directions, business categories, etc. Your local search listing appears before regular(organic) search listings in the SERPS.

2. Yahoo Local

Submitting your site to Yahoo Local is also very important. Your listing options with Yahoo Local are similar to those in the Google Local Business Center. You shouldn’t expect as much traffic from Yahoo Local as with the Google Local Business Center, but it can be substantial nonetheless.

3. Bing Local Listing Center

Rounding out my top 3 recommendations is the Bing Local Listing Center. Although the Bing Local Listing Center is still in its infancy, people are already receiving significant traffic from it.

Also Recommended

4. Superpages.com

5. YellowPages.com

6. YellowBook.com

7. Yelp

8. Localeze

9. Local.com

10. Hotfrog.com

Stay tuned for future posts highlighting additional powerful tips for positioning your website in the search engines to capture new patients.

Add to the List

Have you found a great free business directory that’s not in my list? Please leave it in a comment below for everyone’s benefit

20 More Great Dental Pros I Follow on Twitter

1. WealthyDentist
2. DentistIdentity
3. VisibleDentist
4. Madowgroup
5. GetDentistJobs
6. DentalOffice
7. DentalCPAS
8. DLPlive
9. ADANews
10. JoeNeedsDental
11. Etukee
12. Top3dentists
13. DentalTools
14. AAOrthodontists
15. Twentist
16. Dental_News
17. dentistsos
18. Sherryblues
19. DDSBrand
20. edokeefe_2009
31. Oh yeah, don’t forget to follow Dental Heroes as well. dentalheroes

Add to the List

I know there are many more dental pros out there using Twitter. Please leave the Twitter username of any dental pros not on this list in a comment below.

However, the game has changed dramatically since then – in terms of consumer demands, web technologies, and search engine algorithms. No longer can you launch a website and simply hope for the best. You need to constantly evolve your web offering with the changing consumer demands, web technologies and search algorithms to beat out your competition.

Certainly we can’t cover everything that you need to know about dominating your competition online, but I thought it would be a good idea to start with a post highlighting 5 quick, yet powerful tips for improving your existing website.

So, lets get to the tips, shall we?

1. Install Google Analytics

Do you have a counter at the bottom of your website pages? Get rid of it. Sure, it counts the number of visitors to your site. However, this is rarely a good thing. Not only are counters an eyesore, but often the numbers on the counter are embarrassingly low. How do you think that looks to your potential customers? Not good.

So, I recommend installing Google Analytics. Google Analytics is a very powerful and stealthy(unseen to visitors) web-based analytics package that tracks the number of unique visitors to your site, search terms visitors used to find your site, how long they were on your site, and much much more. Best of all, Google Analytics is FREE. If you’re only going to act on one of these tips today, make it this one.

Sign up for Google Analytics

2. Ditch The Flash Intros

If your website greets visitors with a Flash intro, get rid of it.

On its face, I can see why dentists like flash intros. After all, if done well, they can be stylish and captivating. Unfortunately, they’re also expensive, highly irritating, slow loading and scare visitors away. Just get rid of it.

3. Include a Contact Form on your “Contact” Page

Include a contact form on your contact page. The idea here is to make it as easy as possible for your visitors to contact you – accessibility is key. If you’re simply posting your e-mail address and forcing your visitors to e-mail you in order to make contact, you’re probably losing potential patients. Make it easy with a contact form.

There are many places on the web to find contact form scripts. I really like the contact forms available at Woofoo.com. They’re highly customizable, brandable, stylish, and easy to integrate into your site (simple cut n’ paste).

4. Feature Contact Information Prominently

Also important for accessibility is featuring your contact information prominently. I recommend posting your address and phone number(s) both at the top and bottom of each page. This ensures that no matter what part of a particular page your visitor is viewing, they’ll be able to see your contact information. Prominent contact information is also a good idea because it enhances your trust value in the eyes of your visitors.

5. Check for Broken Links

This may seem like a no-brainer, but many people neglect to check their site for broken links. Broken links are bad for a number of reasons – they leave your visitors frustrated and they’re frowned upon by search engines.

Thankfully, you don’t have to click through each link on your site to clean up your broken links. Instead, I use a free program called Xenu’s Link Sleuth. The program crawls your site looking for broken links. Once this process is complete, you will be given a report listing all of the broken links that the program encountered. You can then run down the list and fix or remove the broken links on your site.

Final Thoughts

These tips are by no means comprehensive. However, they’re quick, they’re actionable, and they’re powerful. Do you have disagree with any of my tips? Are you already doing these things on your site? Let us know in a comment below.

The following are 5 mistakes dentists should avoid on Twitter:

1. Doing Nothing

Sounds obvious, right? Well, not to everyone. In fact, an estimated 20% of Twitter accounts held by dentists or other dental professionals are empty. This is clearly the most damaging mistake you can make if you want to use Twitter successfully. Beyond that, consider how this looks to your patients or potential patients. An empty Twitter account says to them, we’re lazy, uncommitted and unfocused. In short, if you’re not going to use Twitter, don’t sign up. Similarly, if you signed up already, and don’t tweet on a regular basis, you’re better off calling it quits and deleting your account.

2. Too Much Self-Promotion

A little self-promotion can go a long way. In fact, nothing will get you un-followed faster than constant self-promotion. Frankly, I don’t want to hear about your low pricing in every one of your tweets. I get it, you have good pricing. Now, tell me something I don’t know.

That’s the secret. If you truly want build a steady stream of new followers, focus on providing value. Engage with your followers by connecting with them on a personal level and providing them with information that can impact their lives in a positive way. Do this consistently, and you’re followers will return the favor many times over.

3. Failing to Connect with People

Many dentists perform a monologue instead of engaging in a dialogue with their followers. Get to know your followers. Show that you’re interested in what they have to say. Asking questions and utilizing the retweet function are great ways to do this.

4. Using One Twitter Account for Both Personal & Business Use

Do you want your friends and family to know when you’re brushing your teeth or bathing the dog? If so, then who am I to tell you to stop? But, do your patients or potential patients want to know about this? Probably not – wait, definitely not. I recommend creating separate Twitter accounts – one for personal use and one for business use.

5. Tweeting Too Much

Most dentists don’t have this problem, but enough do that it warrants mention. Tweeting too much, even if you’re following the above recommendations is not a good thing. Not only does too much tweeting dilute your message, but it’s downright annoying for your followers to see your avatar every time they sign into Twitter. Like most things in life, moderation is key.

Your Thoughts

Do you agree with these tips? What would you add to the list?

There is no doubt that today’s economy has had a profound effect on industries across the board. Consumer spending is way down due to heightened unemployment, salary cuts and the housing crisis. While the dental industry has proven to be recession-proof in the past, fears of losing jobs and/or insurance benefits have made many consumers reluctant to pay for dental treatments.

Don’t Cut Back

While common sense is telling many business owners to cut back during this time in order to manage costs, the recession actually presents a great opportunity for dental professionals to stand out from their competitors. Although things seem bleak now, everyone agrees that the economy is going to recover eventually and when it does, you want your practice to be in the best shape possible. By investing when your competitors are downsizing and cutting back, your money can go much further in improving your practice.

5 Recession-Busting Tips

There are several simple steps you can take not only to help your dental practice weather this economy, but also to move ahead of the competition:

1. Invest in New Equipment

Take advantage of the economy’s silver lining. Now is a great time to consider investing in new equipment or a bigger office. Interest rates are at an all-time low, making these types of investments much more affordable than they would have been a few years ago. Consider investing in the new dental imaging technology, which can help your procedures run much more quickly and efficiently. Moving to a new location can also help to improve your customers’ perception of your office.

2. Offer Flexible Financing Options

Losing health care benefits is just one problem facing consumers who have recently lost a job. But just because someone can’t afford a root canal, doesn’t mean they don’t need one. Offering customers a chance to finance procedures during this difficult time will not only help you retain business, but will also build customer loyalty when the economy turns around. Many dentists are working with local banks to develop payment plans and so far, these plans have a relatively low default rate.

3. Offer Referral Incentives

Now is a great time to rethink your office strategy, and looking at your customer base is the first step. Older customers, and those without children, are more likely to have discretionary income and view dental procedures as a necessary part of maintaining their health. Consider offering customers who fit this profile an incentive for new referrals. Not only will this help to stimulate your customer base and improve loyalty among existing customers, but it’s also likely that you’ll receive new customers who fit this profile.

4. Educate Patients

If patient bookings are down, use this as an opportunity to increase the business you are getting. Spend the extra open appointment time educating your current clients about their dental health. Really explain the benefit of the treatment plans you recommend for them. Your goal here is to help them see their oral health as a priority and understand that maintaining it is a necessity.

5. Market Your Practice Online

Pay attention to how your practice is marketing itself. Spending a little extra money here can go a long way to set you apart from your competition. The Internet is an excellent place to focus your efforts, because the majority of new potential clients use this route when looking for a dentist. Consider hiring an Internet marketing consultant to ensure your website looks professional and inviting. These consultants can also help push your practice’s page up in search results to increase the chances that new customers will find you. Investing in this area now can help to build a strong brand that will continue even as the economy climbs its way back up.

What do you think?

Are you employing any of these tips within your practice? Are you seeing significant results from doing so? Let us know in comment below.

Whatever the reason may be, Twitter’s reach is undeniable. Some companies have replaced their corporate website address with their Twitter address on advertising materials. Major news networks are engaging with viewers via Twitter live on the air. I’ve even had a number of people provide their Twitter username in their e-mail signatures. I could go on and on.

If you have not yet taken the leap to join Twitter, I would caution you to evaluate whether doing so will be beneficial for you. Many people reluctantly sign up because everyone else is doing it. That’s not a good reason to get involved. You’ll just end up frustrated and abandon the service within a couple of days. Why waste your time?

However, for those of you who are already actively engaging with other people on Twitter, I’ve compiled a list(in no particular order) of 30 great dental pros I’m following on Twitter (You should too).

30 Great Dental Pros I Follow on Twitter

1. drbicuspid
2. SteffanyMohan
3. OralHealthcare
4. jablow
5. AnastasiaRDH
6. DentalProducts
7. DentistryIQ
8. Dentrix
9. practiceworks
10. DPRlive
11. Identalhub
12. TheAACD
13. nicedentist
14. webdental
15. Dentra
16. GetDentistJobs
17. markoborn
18. dentalcompare
19. therabreath
20. Dentistnet
21. dentalinsider
22. AboutDentistry
23. DenTek
24. teresaduncan
25. PERI_Educates
26. top3dentists
27. jflucke
28. kgh23
29. 1800DENTIST
30. dentaladvisor
31. Oh yeah, don’t forget to follow Dental Heroes as well. dentalheroes

Add to the List

I know there are many more dental pros out there using Twitter. Please leave the Twitter username of any dental pros not on this list that you think should be in a comment below.

Most of you are probably familiar by now with the Oral Healthcare Can’t Wait™ Awareness Campaign spearheaded by the Dental Trade Alliance in early July. If you’re not yet familiar, the Oral Healthcare Can’t Wait™ Awareness Campaign is an industry-wide initiative to warn consumers about the risks of postponing regular checkups and neglecting recommended treatments in this down economy. Furthermore, the campaign aims to encourage dental professionals to proactively educate their patients about the potential overall health problems that can develop as a result of avoiding the dentist.

There’s no doubt that this is a tall, but necessary task as most dentists report a drop in patient visits over the past 6-12 months. I’m not going to go into a whole lot of detail about theOral Healthcare Can’t Wait™ Awareness Campaign because that information is already available on a number of sites. However, if you would like more information about the campaign, the sites/video listed below are great resources.

Website Resources
1. Official Oral Healthcare Can’t Wait™ Website for Dental Professionals
2. Official Oral Healthcare Can’t Wait™ Website for Dental Consumers
3. Dental Trade Alliance Website

Video Resource
Dental Economics managing editor Kevin Henry talks to Dental Trade Alliance CEO Gary Price about a new campaign aimed at dental teams, patients, and the dental trade.

Thank You Lanmark Group

The Lanmark Group, the dental industry’s largest advertising, marketing, and public relations agency, is graciously contributing their efforts to the campaign by developing the overall strategy, creative concepts, and tactical execution on a pro bono basis (dentaltradealliance.org).

One major benefit of the integrated marketing strategy employed by the Lanmark Group to promote this campaign is the number of marketing materials that they’ve made available for you to use in your own promotion of the Oral Healthcare Can’t Wait™ initiative. Below, I’ve listed a number of materials that you can and should download for FREE and integrate into your marketing plan.

Free Marketing Materials to Download Now

• Press Release
• Letter to the Editor
• Newsletter Article
• Public Service Announcement (15 Second Spot)
• E-mail Template
• Patient Education Brochure
• Patient Education Posters
• Local Newspaper Ads
• Patient Recall Card
• Mailing/Postcard
• Official Campaign Logos A) PDF 2) Zip File

How Can You Effectively Market the Oral Healthcare Can’t Wait™ Awareness Campaign?

1. Get your team on board.
You MUST get your team on board if you want to effectively promote this campaign. You not only need to introduce your team to the campaign, but you also need to underscore your commitment to the campaign as a collective unit. Finally, it’s imperative that you ensure your team understands how this commitment will effect their day-to-day responsibilities.

2. Use these materials in your correspondence with patients.
Chances are, you’re already sending out recall cards, regular mailings and perhaps even e-mails to your patients. Try substituting your regular marketing materials with these. The key is to repeatedly and consistently get this message in front of your patients. If you want to customize these materials for your business, the Dental Trade Alliance has teamed up with PrintingForLess.com to do this for you quickly and at a fair price.

3. Discuss this initiative with your patients.
When patients come in for their appointments ask them if they saw your mailing, e-mail, recall card, etc. Regardless of their response, educate them about the Oral Healthcare Can’t Wait™ campaign and reinforce your commitment to the initiative. No need to ram this down their throats. A short, informal discussion is all you can reasonably expect to have with most patients anyway.

4. Place patient education posters around your practice
Pick appropriate, highly trafficked spots to place patient education posters around your practice.

5. Embed the official Oral Healthcare Can’t Wait™ Youtube video on your site or blog.
You can find the embed code on this video’s Youtube page. Below is what the official video looks like.

6. Write about the campaign online
Publish a post on your blog if you have one, create a Facebook update, create a tweet on Twitter, discuss the initiative in online forums, etc. Again, don’t go overboard here. Doing so will effectively diminish the odds that you will captivate you audience.

7. Place the Oral Healthcare Can’t Wait™ logo on your site to show your support.
Download now:1)PDF 2) Zip File

8. Officially pledge your support to the campaign
To pledge your support, contact Dental Trade Alliance CEO Gary Price at 703-379-7755.

9. Engage with like-minded dental professionals on the campaign’s official Social Media sites

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Youtube

Final Thoughts

These 9 marketing tips cover the essentials for effectively marketing the Oral Healthcare Can’t Wait™ Awareness Campaign for your practice. However, as you’ve probably noticed, options are also available for those of you with larger budgets that seek greater involvement with the campaign. These options include: public service announcements, local newspaper ads, press releases, letters to the editor, etc. The marketing possibilities are really only bound by your creativity. See what you can come up with.

Your Tips

How is your practice marketing the Oral Healthcare Can’t Wait™ Awareness Campaign? Are you doing something unique that could benefit others? Please share in a comment below.

For those of you who aren’t sure what a podcast is, have a look at Wikipedia’s definition to get up to speed.

Note: The easiest way to download the following podcasts is to subscribe to them on itunes. If you don’t have iTunes installed, you can download it for free on the Apple Website. If you’re not sure how to proceed after downloading iTunes, check out this Youtube Video illustrating the process.

1. The Wealthy Dentist Podcast

Jim Du Molin, of The Wealthy Dentist, is known for his powerful, yet pragmatic methods of increasing dentists’ profitability. Jim has tapped into the power of podcasts to spread his message.

The Wealthy Dentist podcasts are free, and cover topics such as: dental practice management, dental continuing education, dental care issues, dental implants, cosmetic dentistry, dental marketing and several others.

Download The Wealthy Dentist Podcasts

2. American Dental Association(ADA) Podcast

The ADA has been developing podcasts since 2006. Since then, they’ve churned out 19 episodes focusing on topics ranging from reducing stress within your practice to identifying emerging trends in dental care.

Download ADA Podcasts

3. Dental Insider Podcast

DI and Associate Q(Speakers) boast 40+ years in the dental care industry and have worked in every facet of the industry from sales (wholesale and retail), marketing, dental equipment repair and consulting. Unfortunately, the pair made the tough decision to discontinue regular updates on The Dental Insider Blog, but don’t let that discourage you from checking out their timeless podcast episodes.

Download Dental Insider Podcasts

4. Henry Schein Podcast

Henry Schein podcasts feature “leading industry consultants and experts discussing the latest dental trends, clinical techniques and technologies. Current and future podcasts available through the Dental Podcast Center include Practice Design, Practice Marketing, Operatory Ergonomics, Cone Beam 3D Imaging, Laser Dentistry, Digital Radiography and more(dentalpodcastcenter.com).”

Download The Henry Schein Podcasts

5. DentalCast Podcast

The DentalCast Podcast strives to bring dental professionals the latest information about dental technology and clinical techniques.

Download The DentalCast Podcasts

Any Others We Should Know About?

I know there are a number of dental care podcasts out there that are not on this list, but the majority seem to be heavily promotional in nature and not as broadly applicable as those in this list.

However, if you know of a podcast that should be on this list, please leave the name and url where people can download episodes in a comment below.