Dentist Marketing Success Requires That You MUST Understand The "New" New Patients... Introducing the Gen-C Patient. As I've mentioned in previous posts and In The Definitive Guide To Growth Hacking Your Dental Practice, the level of sophistication and specialization required to achieve sustainable growth in your dental practice is now at an all-time high.
Whether you’re aware of it or have given it much thought, your prospective (and existing) new patients have access to valuable information that is available on demand whenever and wherever they want a mouse-click away.
Conversations with sources they trust are taking place in real time, and as a result it has become much more difficult to attract these enterprising and elusive consumers into your practice.
Relying on Dentist SEO, social media engagement and marketing, dentist websites, landing pages, paid advertising on sites like dentists.com, manta.com, yp.com, etc., in-office promotion, and every form of traditional marketing in play is no longer enough to generate the number of quality new patients you need each month.
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INTRODUCING THE CONNECTED CONSUMER (The “New” New Patients of the Today)
After digging in to an incredible amount of (killer) research for the last 9 months, I have uncovered three different sets of new patient behavior patterns in the decision-making journey:
- Traditional
- Digital
- Gen-C (i.e., "connected consumer") - The "New" New Patients
If you’re wondering if these classifications are cut-and-dry, they are not. While there is some overlap between traditional and digital (digital is rapidly increasing) and connected, the latter (connected) is much more dynamic and has become the predominant pattern. This transformation towards connected consumerism is growing… exponentially.
As we focus on the “new” new patients (i.e., “the connected customer), I want to quickly skim over these three groups so that you’ll have a clear image of what you’re now facing below:
- Traditional – These individuals are influenced by traditional advertisements in print, online, and over the air/ cable. Reliant on word of mouth among people they know and trust in the real world.(This type of patient is aging rapidly)
- Email and websites form the bridge between traditional and digital.
- Digital – These folks live online, but they enjoy traditional media as well. Decisions begin by searching Google. Information is collected by visiting websites and reading reviews. The bridge shared between digital and connected is represented by Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and other social networks and mobile apps that are growing in popularity.
- Connected— This type of patient “Generation C (i.e., “the connected consumer”) is the fastest-growing psychographic of the three listed. Gen-C’ers are the most mobile of the bunch, living online through a portable device for the majority of the time.
To access The Definitive Guide To Successfully Attracting MORE Gen-C New Patients - Dentist Marketing Success via The Dynamic Patient Journey (100% FREE and NO EMAIL REQUIRED) - Click this link.
From smart phones to tablets to laptops, the tiny window into the world is ‘real-time’, providing them with what many experts (I concur) is not only a bigger picture… but a more relevant and accurate one.
The Gen-C’ers are the people in your office that read the shared experiences of your patients, read reviews and compare your fees to those of your competitors. The connected patient contributes actively to reviews (without being asked) on multiple sites and frequently share their experiences in a multitude of social networks.
Many of them will publish videos (and even blog) as they share every stage of their experience in your practice which includes pre-new patient appointment; new patient appointment; and post-treatment / transaction.
Gen-C patients are empowered, informed, and demanding (You see it daily!). They are comfortable sharing (more than you are aware of) online, and will even share information with you (which can be quite embarrassing sometimes) if they feel it may benefit them.
If they “Like you” on Facebook or “follow you” on Twitter, your biggest mistake is to drown them in editorial, entertaining and/or promotional content. By giving you their “social thumbs-up”, they expect a level of exclusivity, privilege, and access to special offers in your practice - not available anywhere else. Your Gen C’er patients are also driving social and mobile commerce. Their shopping habits are typically social (although it’s totally virtual), and they prefer to pay via mobile.
Here’s the key takeaway: They not only make decisions differently, they influence others and are influenced differently.
Every day there touch points are cropping up in each moment of truth. Your Gen-C patients aren’t simply becoming more demanding… they are also becoming much more discerning. The expectations of the Gen-C patient are forcing you (permanently) to change the way you engage and interact with them.
The SECRET to Connecting With and Attracting MORE Gen-C New Patients:
1. Listen
2. Learn
3. Engage
4. Adapt
If you’re foolish enough to ignore the evolution of patient behavior in the connected world we now live, you have ZERO change to design an experience they enjoy and desire. If you choose to ignore this trend choose not to learn more about them, how will you know what their expectations are, and how will you ever exceed them?
Knowing this, your next steps are to compare your Gen-C patient’s activity, apply it to one of these three groups, and then assess how your current dental marketing, case-presentation, service and treatment strategies optimize the experiences for each of these patient psychographics.
Do you know what the experience of your practice is for each group and do you know what it is about their experiences that they’re sharing? My guess is that you have no idea.
In the follow up to this post I'll discuss "How to improve your influence and generate more Gen-C new patients with online tools"
CONTACT DR. KEN NEWHOUSE:
EMAIL: ken@growthhackercentral.com
PHONE: 800-875-9066
WEBSITE: www.growthhackercentral.com
