Dr. Lanette Sikes is the owner of Downtown Dental Excellence. She is an exceptional dentist and was kind enough to sit down and provide me with some info on how she has grown an amazing practice over the last 20 years. You can learn more about Dr. Sikes and her practice at http://drsikes.com/. I'm excited to share some of her strategies with you today.
Dr. Sikes, you have owned your practice for almost 20 years now, what are some of the major changes that you have seen in dentistry, and how have you adapted to those changes?
The main changes I have seen in dentistry include technology. Digital charts for example. When I started, everything was written down. I had extra storage in my building to hold the boxes and boxes of old charts. X-rays were processed in a dark room, now they are digital. Our whole office revolves around computers now. We used to have an appointment book to keep up with patients appointments! It's crazy now to think back to those days.
We have evolved with technology and try to stay on the cutting edge of any technology that will help us provide a better patient experience to our patients.
A lot of people bring up that aspect of dentistry changing when I ask that question. What changes have you seen by way of practice ownership over the years?
As far as practice ownership, a lot has changed there as well. There are so many corporate offices now. There is much more competition out there. My office is still fee for service. I do not take any insurance plans. It is getting harder and harder to compete with other offices that take every insurance under the sun. We have to be on our game much more these days! For years I have not done any marketing other than just word of mouth or sponsoring little league teams in our community. I've recently found the need to step up our game and market more!
So in the few years that you have been marketing, have you had anything that you were really excited about that just simply didn't work? If so, what was your reaction to the failed marketing attempt?
I recently completed a yearlong residency in surgery training for grafting and dental implants. At the end of the training, they offered to do some marketing for me to help me get more implant patients. I am pretty sure they were just trying the whole thing out and that I was one of their first clients because it just didn't seem they knew what they were doing. I started first with having them redo my website and make it more of a custom site. I paid $4700 for that. Then they started the "marketing" part. This was something along the lines of depending how many clicks I got an ad that would be how much I would pay each month. It would range from $900-1500 each month. The problem is I was getting non-quality patients. They were patients that were just shopping for the cheapest price and were not interested in quality at all. We were not happy with them at all. We didn't get any patients from that type of marketing at all. We tried this for maybe three months and I stopped it because it was just dumb to pay that much and not see any return. They mentioned that since it was a "pay per click" campaign we should see results right away, but this just was not the case.
What lesson did you learn as a result of this?
Being new to external marketing, it would have been easy to simply throw my hands up and say that it doesn't work, but clearly, others are succeeding at it, so I learned a valuable lesson in due diligence. Do your research! Ask around! Research the company and solicit feedback from those who have tried them. You can do this in online forums or in the Facebook groups full of other dentists. There is simply no reason to go into something blind anymore with the ease of communication.
What has been your most successful marketing strategy? Can you provide details of how long you have done it for, how long it took to start working and how much it cost, which companies you used and how many patients you got from it?
In December of last year, we started working with EOS Marketing. They printed a really nice brochure and are doing 6 mailing this year. We have done 2 so far and have seen really good results from this. We have gotten some really good patients from this type of marketing. The total cost of this marketing for the year will be around $15k. I am not sure of the exact numbers, but I bet we have gotten 15-20 really good patients from this. Several really large treatment plans. This is a great return if we see the same rate of success on the four additional mailings! Also, we just started working on our web marketing both growing our existing site structure and working on SEO. I'm very excited to see where this goes because I have heard great things about the company from colleagues.
What advice would you give a dentist, as far as marketing goes, who is just starting out in dental practice ownership?
Don't re-invent the wheel! Ask your peers! Don't choose the big companies that market for everyone. Try to pick companies that know your field. Pay more for a company that will spend more time with you and that works to get to know your practice. Find someone who is invested in your growth. The right companies are out there, just do your research!