The Best Way to Attract New Patients
Remal Patel (DMD) is a dentist and can be found spreading brighter smiles at Modern Day Smiles St. Petersburg. He loves to share marketing insights to help dentists enhance their outreach.
How your dentistry attracts patients plays a role in how many patients it attracts. If you solely rely on a technique such as word of mouth, there will come a point when your “patient funnel” will run dry and you will have to rely heavily on the same patients coming in. In the digital age, you need to leverage technology along with old tried and tested methods to attract new patients. The following techniques will help you do that.
Create a presence online
Gone are the days when people would flip through the White Pages to look for a dentist. Instead, they use the internet now and more specifically Google. You need to make sure your clinic pops up on search results and the first step to that is creating a website.
Your dentistry’s website should highlight everything about the clinic from your team to the services offered. You can even include an appointment booking form, making it easier for new patients to book an appointment. Once you’ve established an online presence, you can work on search engine optimization (SEO) and social media marketing to ensure you constantly have an influx of new patients.
Ensure quality dental care
The quality of dental service offered plays a vital role in not just retaining patients but also attracting new ones. How do you ask? Well, it's simple, to attract patients through word of mouth, the individual referring you to a family member or friend would only do so if they received exceptional dental care.
To ensure quality dental care at your clinic, you need to take the following steps:
- Communicate with your patients: Communication is key in any relationship, you want to make sure that you thoroughly discuss every detail with your patient, even more so when they come in for a procedure. This will help build trust between you and the patient, so they will be more comfortable with you.
- Be compassionate: Everyone on your staff should be compassionate to each one of your patients. Many patients are afraid of going to the dentist which makes them tense up, your compassion can help calm their nerves and make them more comfortable. Something they will likely rave about to their family and friends.
Word of mouth
Dentists have relied on word of mouth as a means to new patients for centuries and it still works well today. A clinic that is known to provide quality dental care is likely to get more patients because those that have been there will recommend them to others. It is as simple as that.
In the digital age, you need to slightly revamp your word of mouth approach. Instead of just relying on patients to send referrals your way on their own, you can ask them to write online reviews. When people look for services online, they don’t just look at the provider's website but also read up on reviews about them on platforms such as Google and Yelp. This helps them get an idea of what type of service they can expect. Having satisfied patients review your clinic will help boost its online rating. Studies have shown that a whopping 84% of people trust online reviews almost as much as a friend.
Final thought
You don’t have to be a marketing wiz to attract new patients, you just need to be in touch with the latest marketing techniques and know how to apply them. As the world goes digital, the first step for any dentistry would be to establish an online presence. This will ensure that your clinic is prepared to attract new clients for years to come. All that is left then is to ensure quality dental care to retain patients and ask them for referrals.