By Dr. Bill Williams
Maintaining a healthy new patient influx is paramount to being consistently productive. Some new practices are averaging over 100 new patients per dentist. Our practice has averaged over 100 new patients a month for the past 15 years as we grew from one, to two, three then four dentists. There needs to be a fully integrated marketing action plan (MAP) which includes “the social six” (specific social media platforms) and local community “walkabout” by the dentist and the team to sustain new patient flow with a WebCentric focus.
A dentist must establish him or herself as the expert in their area and provide social proof that they can do what the patient wants, both visually with before and after photos, video interviews and testimonials, and with written online reviews and print ads. Social proof and evidence of authority are major reputation needs for every practice and every doctor in the practices. Reputation management has become a major factor in practice success in this socially enlightened, Googlized, Facebooked world.
In my Seven Mountains of Marketing articles on LinkedIn, I explain how a dental practice can become the leading influencer in a community in seven areas so that they dominate their competition. Those seven areas are education, government, economy, family, celebration, media and religion. As a dentist works to become involved in the community in each of these areas, their future influence will double or triple. As influence grows, authority increases. As a result, referrals increase. You become the “go to” dentist in town.
Marketing the $10,000 a day dentist becomes many times easier when the high-end niche patient funnel formula is used to draw in scores of patients who want dental implants, cosmetic makeovers, Invisalign, reconstructions, sedation dentistry, neuromuscular dentistry and biologic dentistry. The funnel formula is a series of web site landing pages, Facebook or Google ads, autoresponders, email series, videos, tracking software and information delivery systems that are customized for each practice and each dental service niche of the practice. Specifically, using Predictive Behavioral Response techniques in directing our marketing message to ears that are ready to hear is what enables us to have a 95% better result than any other method of marketing. It is the wave of the future.
Bill Williams DMD, MAGD, MICCMO
Founder: SuwaneeDental.com
Founder: SolsticeDentalAdvisors.com
Director: 5M Masters Academy
Author: Marketing The Million Dollar Practice