1. Launch a referral program – It is and should be the number one strategy to use especially in healthcare related service as it is believed that 92% of people trust personal recommendations more than all other forms of market street catch. It is simple but extremely powerful and has the potential to significantly increase new patient generation to your dental practice. I have listed some ideas on how you can kickstart this program:
- Launch a Patient Loyalty Program – This is designed in a way where you would be able to collect email addresses & cell phone number for future marketing strategies like email marketing, social media campaign or mobile marketing. This is also letting your patients know that you are thankful for their business.
- Launch a Patient Review Program – This is designed to increase your online reputation. You can selectively hand out cards to patients so they can leave reviews on your social networking sites or other websites like yelp, your Google business page or on your website so that they can claim their rewards.
- Ask for a Patient Referral
Here is a 3 step guide on how to ask light-heartedly for a referral:
- Selectively asking – ask only those who you know and who you like, an example is a long-term patient whom you have developed a good rapport.
- When a patient has had a good experience – when a patient is being graceful in letting you know that they have had a great experience, you can tell them in a way that is not pressuring like, “It’s excellent to hear that you had a wonderful experience. When your friends or family tell you how bad their experience was, you can send them here.”
- Use a script – Thank you for your feedback! I am very proud of our team and It is part of our goal to give a positive experience for patients like you who appreciate what we do. We know that not everyone has a positive experience like this with their dentists. If you have any family or friends who might enjoy the same experience you’ve had, we would love for you to recommend them to us.
2. Turn your product or service into a challenge – What problem do your services solve? Do not go with the flow of explaining the services that you offer. Instead, make your product the focal point and create a challenge for that. For example, you can ask patients dental related questions or even better is make a quiz on who they think is following good dental hygiene. It forces them to engage and your business will be unique and top of mind.
3. Use popular hashtags on social media – Utilizing popular hash tags such as #FlashbackFriday or #ThrowbackThursday can increase the number of views you want for your business especially those that are in the millennial age group. You could also use this so that you could target person looking for a particular topic or service so you never know because it can also be a good source of how you can get new patients to check out your service.
When it comes to dental marketing there’s no shortage of good ways to start. Here are a few more suggestions for marketing your dental practice. Take a look and see what you think will work for your practice.
When people in your target area start searching online for a dentist do you show up? An easy way to check is to grab your phone, type in “Dentist near me” and see what comes up. If you’re not at the head of the pack you’re missing out on a lot of new patients and leads.
A goal for your dental marketing efforts is to rank on local search, like when you typed “Dentist near me”, and get found by people in your target market.
