What’s the most strategic thing you do in your dental practice (besides patient treatment)? Dental marketing! But what is the best dental marketing tactic and approach?
Before you answer and take the next step, your success could rely on a shift in thinking about your overall approach to dental marketing.
Is It Really About “Tactics?”
That’s an even more important question to this discussion. Thinking tactically about your marketing is an advantage with one caveat:
Assuring that your marketing tactics still create a connection with your audience rather than a feeling of being “conquered.”
Perhaps that’s the deeper issue with a marketing narrative that borrows from battle-worn language (e.g tactics, strategy, etc).
But not to overthink the language you use (another common misstep in marketing). You could probably use a kick-start however you approach finding the best dental marketing strategy to acquire (and keep) dental patients.
Lifetime Patient Value
The best start to any marketing effort is understanding what Phil Bressler discovered. Bressler was a top Domino’s Pizza franchisee in Baltimore, Maryland.
He calculated that a loyal pizza customer was worth approximately $4,000 to his franchise. Those figures were based on the math that the average pizza customer would purchase 50 $8 pizzas on average annually.
That’s $4,000 over a ten-year span!
Consider how that insight could transform your patient experience – beginning with your dental marketing. Thinking in terms of lifetime patient value (LPV) could change much about how you approach not just marketing but every aspect of your practice.
- Front-desk conversations
- Treatment planning, scheduling, and clinical conversations
- Your marketing initiatives
An LPV (Lifetime Patient Value) perspective sees your dental marketing strategies not as an isolated, one-time encounter…but as a series of encounters that creates ongoing engagement for “life!”
- Compel more inquiries
- Build your patient list
- Solve problems with informative, useful content
USE CONTENT AS THE BEST DENTAL MARKETING TACTIC FOR CREATING LOYAL, LIFETIME PATIENTS
Solve Problems with Solution-focused Content
Patients value services that ultimately solve their problems. The path to a specific solution often involves creating awareness of a problem or highlighting a desired result.
Pain is a common problem-solution motivator. Another could be perceptions about being healthy or achieving a certain appearance.
Your dental services provide solutions to those and more. And the best dental marketing helps highlight the core motivation for your services as solutions.
Answer Questions with Informative, Useful Content
Marketing often defaults to a “selling” narrative. And that understanding is what sets content apart as a best dental marketing strategy.
Ultimately, the value of content is that it answers the questions the public and your patients are asking. Dental content marketing creates a bond that leads to trust between you and your “audience.”
In essence, their questions allow you to educate/inform them via intentional content with answers to their questions about a particular issue or service.
- Use your blog content to answer specific questions being asked by your patients/families.
- Create and deliver email content containing links to your informative blog content or other on-topic content.
- Curate and share content on your social media “channels” that answers patient/family questions.
Listen to Patient Interactions and Reviews to Create Patient-centric Content
Every patient conversation – face-to-face or online – contains something of value. The more intuitively you and your team listen the more patient-focused your content will become.
- Listen beneath the surface and between-the-lines of what a patient/family is saying or asking.
- Mine patient reviews (positive and negative) for nuggets of insight that can improve your dental marketing via a content-based strategy.
- Get to know your patient’s/families’ emotional connections to dentistry.
Content that connects will ultimately be the result of leveraging your patient conversations and communication.
And remember, it’s not about a one-and-done tactical approach. The best dental marketing strategy is a commitment to creating lifetime patient value: loyal patients who trust you for solutions to problems and answers to questions.
Maximize the best dental marketing strategy and create lifetime patient loyalty.
An effective dental marketing strategy starts with the patient-persona. And getting acquainted with each patient’s persona can improve your marketing success.
Check out these related resources to generate ideas and create a best dental marketing strategy for your practice:
How to Get More Patients in Your Dental Office (And Create Long-Term Loyalty)
5 Dental Marketing Ideas (and Strategies) for Increased Patient Recall
Key Strategies to Jump-Start Your Dental Marketing
Contact Imagination Design Studios (IDS) to get started transforming your office from a mundane to magical patient experience.
Want more tips for marketing your office? Download the free guide to learn about branding basics, social media tips, ways to improve your online efforts, plus event and promotional ideas.