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The Pillars of Attraction by Dentaltown Staff and SmartBox Web Marketing

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Header: The Pillars of Attraction
by Dentaltown staff and SmartBox Web Marketing

The internet is inescapably woven into the fabric of our daily lives. More than ever before, patients begin searching for new dentists online, which means your potential new patients are likely to see marketing from your competitors and corporate dental chains.

The increased competition often makes dentists feel pressured to market their practices based on price and availability, even as reimbursements continue to decline. Yet, dentists who market on price get viewed as interchangeable commodities. Instead, they should be working to attract new, better patients over time, rather than low-return patients who are lured by discount prices.

Base your integrated marketing approach on four steady pillars—the components of a patient attraction system that are essential for practice success.

The team at SmartBox Web Marketing incorporates these pillars when they work with dental practices to help them maximize returns and get more patients, profits and freedom. Here, SmartBox CEO Colin Receveur shares his insights about each step of the way.

Pillar 1:
Attraction
How can you differentiate yourself from your competitors and get out of the "commodity" category? Position yourself as the only logical choice to solve your prospects' dental problems.

Dentists in 2016 are assumed to be clinically competent, so people are looking for a dentist they feel they can trust, who has their best interests at heart. Dentistry is a trust-based business, but that trust won't be earned the first time patients visit your website. If you want trust, you must first attract those new patients into your practice.

Attraction starts with online visibility, of which your website is the linchpin. All your other marketing should influence prospects to visit your website, which is the single greatest source of content that new patients are looking for.

Attraction is a content-heavy proposition. It means producing social media posts, e-newsletters, blogs, videos, downloadable white papers and e-books, and more. Your website content must be fresh (or at least regularly updated), expert, authoritative and trustworthy.

Google is by far the dominant search engine, and where the vast majority of your prospects will search. Google favors "great" content, but defines "great" by its own rules. Your website content—in fact, all of your online content—has to be great to be found.

Even with great content, search engine optimization (SEO) is necessary to avoid being shunted off to internet limbo. But dentists make money by actually treating patients, not by doing SEO, so unless you've got huge amounts of free time and industry knowledge, the wiser choice is to contract this work to a professional.

Pillar 2:
Conversion
Now it's time to provide the social proof that you're the dentist your prospects should choose.
  • Your own "doctor" videos help prospects know and begin to trust you, and patient testimonial videos can provide powerful social proof—as long as they're done well. Videos should be professionally produced and kept brief to accommodate today's shortened attention spans—1 to 2 minutes, at most. (Some dental-condition-specific videos could run up to 3 minutes.)
  • Web pages with video are 53 times more likely to make the first page of Google's search results than pages with only text and graphics. Make sure your videos are on your website, as well as YouTube.
  • Online reviews, whether on your website or other review sites, are the new word-of-mouth advertising. Making sure that reviews work for you requires constant online reputation management.
Pillar 3:
Follow-up
It's important to stay top-of-mind with prospects until they're ready to choose you. Nurture the relationships by dripping relevant and useful information to them at regular intervals. You do not want to overwhelm—or drown—prospects with information.

That requires segmenting your prospects by dental problem or concern. Why send denture information to many millennial or younger patients? Send the edentulous patients information on whole-mouth reconstruction, and gingivitis sufferers a brief piece written by you about treatment options and benefits. Because it's email-based, follow-up can include articles and information produced by other people, with proper attribution.

People want their questions answered, and patients need a high level of trust to move forward on large elective cases. You gain that trust by educating, nurturing and building it over time.

Follow-up also has to be frequent enough to maintain patients' awareness of you—but not to where it becomes annoying.

Pillar 4:
Tracking
Tracking helps dentists manage their marketing return on interest (ROI). The vast majority of new patients still schedule their first appointment over the phone, but patients aren't always reliable about recalling how they found your practice.

Tracking allows you to see at a glance which parts of your marketing are working best to attract more new patients. With that information, you can fine-tune your marketing investment for maximum return. Nothing is more important to a dental practice than phone calls and new patients in the chairs.

Header: The Pillars of Attraction

Header: The Pillars of Attraction

Dr. Raleigh Pioch Case Study 1: Dr. Raleigh Pioch, Oregon
Dr. Raleigh Pioch, a dentist in the Salem, Oregon, area, faced more than four times the normal level of competition for that city's size. He was introduced to SmartBox by Dr. Michael Abernathy of Summit Practice Solutions, who had been working with Pioch on internal practice issues.

Pioch cheerfully turned his marketing over to SmartBox, then got back to the business of treating patients. Over the next six years, his practice grew from $800,000 to $3.4 million. Pioch sold that practice and opened one in another part of town, still using the Patient Attraction System. In his first month, he brought in 120 new patients.

"The level of competition we have is astronomical," Pioch says. "The odds are against us, so I needed SmartBox to put everything in my favor. I wanted to cover all my bases, which is why I picked the Elite package. I had faith from what I'd seen from the other websites. I was confident that I was doing the right thing and was excited about doing it."

Dr. James Kiehl Case Study 2: Dr. James Kiehl, New Hampshire
Dr. James Kiehl had tried a number of tactics over the years to increase the new-patient flow for his four-dentist office in Nashua, New Hampshire. When direct mail resulted in a decline in the number and quality of new patients, Kiehl, who'd seen some emails from Receveur, enlisted SmartBox and became an Elite client—then got back to treating patients.

"Our Patient Attraction System went live in mid-December, and we are seeing the results now," he says. His new patient numbers from just his web marketing: 37 in December, 29 in January, 47 in February, 29 in March, 47 in April and 31 in May.



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April 2024
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