Robert Lowther
President
Susan Tibbles
Executive Vice President
Are you looking to ensure the success of your new start dental practice? Comprehensive dental practice marketing is essential for any new start practice. Creating a dental practice marketing checklist will bring you the right patients, track the most effective marketing avenues, and get the highest return on your marketing spending. In this blog post, we will discuss the benefits of having a comprehensive marketing checklist, the essential elements of a dental new start practice marketing checklist, and how to create a dental new start practice marketing checklist. Keep reading to learn more!
When creating a dental practice marketing checklist, it is important to consider the essential elements that should be included:
Once the essential elements of the dental new start practice marketing checklist have been identified, it’s time to create a plan for implementation. This includes setting deadlines for each task, assigning tasks to team members, and tracking progress. It’s essential that the team is aware of the goals and objectives of the practice. Regular review of the tasks during morning huddles will ensure completion. When a new start practice opens, it’s easy for things to fall through the cracks. Be proactive to stay on track. Another benefit of having a comprehensive marketing checklist is that it will help organize the practice.
Ideas of how to implement essential elements of a dental new start practice marketing checklist, that need to be included are:
- Engaging and informative website with ability for patients to schedule online.
- Social media accounts and plan
- Marketing plan
- Marketing budget (for reconciliation of marketing spending)
- Marketing mediums Google, Face Book, Instagram, direct mail, SEO, Website
- Diversified online content that can be used to engage potential patients, such as blog posts, videos, and photos of before and after treatments.
- Training Team Members
- Tracking infrastructure with production over first two appointments tie back.
Once the essential elements of the dental new start practice marketing checklist have been identified, it’s time to create a plan for implementation. This includes setting deadlines for each task, assigning tasks to team members, and tracking progress. It’s essential that the team is aware of the goals and objectives of the practice. Regular review of the tasks during morning huddles will ensure completion. When a new start practice opens, it’s easy for things to fall through the cracks. Be proactive to stay on track. Another benefit of having a comprehensive marketing checklist is that it will help organize the practice.
Ideas of how to implement essential elements of a dental new start practice marketing checklist, that need to be included are:
- Investigating the tapestry profiles of the population on how, when, where, what and why people spend in a given area can really help identify marketing mediums to target, such as SEO, Ad Words, direct mail and the like.
- Research the dental spending and dental service utilization to set the proper goals for success in your practice
- Complete a competition inventory of other dentists (not dental practices) to truly know your competition and set up your competitive advantages to draw patients to your practice
- Everyone on your team must understand the defined goals and how they can help achieve them. Role play helps with learning how to take control of initial patient interactions and getting patients scheduled
- Build the infrastructure to track every interaction regardless of the first point of contact. Meaning, if you send direct mail, use a unique link and a unique whisper call number. Your unique weblink should also have a unique number. Tracking reveals your return on investment and how to spend your marketing budget.
- Create and integrate technology and training of your team to ensure you can track production back to the first point of contact so you can measure what is bringing in your most profitable patients.
- Patient Feedback. Always ask for referrals, always reappoint before a patient leaves when possible and always ask for online reviews.
When creating a dental new start practice marketing checklist, consider the various demographics that can be used to target potential patients. Dental Demographics is key. They are always changing. Make sure you know your market. This includes things like age, gender, location and income level which will help identify marketing mediums for your target audience. Tapestry profiles will give you insight into how, where, when, why and what the population’s spending habits are. When leveraged properly, this can go a long way in hyper-targeting your marketing budget.
Dental spending and dental service utilization rates will guide how much to spend to get your ideal patient as well as how many you will need to have success. Knowing the competition in the surrounding area will help guide new patient discounts, extra services to provide, hours to be open, and even insurances to accept.
Training of your front desk or phone service is also a critical component to the success of your dental practice. Randomly auditing the calls ensures that your front desk team remains focused on qualifying your new patients, getting them scheduled for their first appointments, and obtaining referrals. Every new patient scheduled should be asked if there are other family members that can be scheduled on the same day. Making sure that your CRM (Customer Resource Management) such as Constant Contact and the like is updated and completed for each and every patient will also help with reactivation and additional targeting.
Finally, review the small stuff. For example, if you are a PPO practice, make sure that every listing for each in network insurance company has your website, phone number, address and other identifying information accurately reflected on their websites. This can be a great method of passive advertising for the practice.
Creating a comprehensive dental practice marketing checklist is essential for every new-start practice. A comprehensive marketing checklist addresses the necessary steps taken to ensure the long-term success of the practice. By considering all these essential elements, the practice will be able to create a comprehensive marketing checklist that will help to ensure its long-term success.
