Everyone, wants to have a booming business with new patients flowing in, but if i'm constantly bringing you in new patients and you can't seem to retain them or multiply new patients from existing patients then what sense does that make?

You have no excuse to have an empty schedule or a tough time filling up your schedule, unless your making marketing mistakes. And to be honest, 8 out of 10 dentist I see are always making marketing mistakes. Which is understandable! Your job isn't to market and sale, your job is to change peoples lives and create a better lifestyle worth smiling about (don't take that slogan lol just kidding you can take it).

Let's start with the three main internal marketing mistakes I ALWAYS happen to see and let's identify it and fix them to make sure  your dental office marketing is effective to these patients and attracting them constantly.

First Mistake

In anything you do with your practice, as far as portraying your message or vision for your dentistry, BE TRANSPARENT and let your whole staff know your vision for your practice and get them excited about it!

If I walk into your practice for the first time and ask the lady at the front desk what her job title is and she says “I’m the receptionist” or “I am the main Support Representative for the company”, who do you think will talk more about their job and place of work when they’re not at work? They both have the same duties but one title seems to have much more value! It even makes me want to ask, “Oh, what’s that mean”? This leaves an impression not only on the patient who walks in for the first time but especially the employee. If the employee feels important they will expose importance in the work place, they will expose importance to the new potential patient walking in for the first time. However do NOT intimidate the new patients. Make sure you are ALWAYS, and I mean ALWAYS kind and helpful. You feel important when the CEO or main manager handles a specific problem for you, right? Therefore the “Support Representative of the company” should portray the exact same feeling to the potential patient; actually everyone in your dental office should.

Attracting patients begins with your staff first. They will be attracting more patients then your marketer believe it or not. Have them think of it this way: Imagine if your dentistry is located on Wall Street, would your staff talk, dress, answer the phones, handle treatment the way they are doing it now? Your staff has to be elite, always professional, building rapport with absolutely everyone they come in contact with in the office, and handle treatment coordination aggressively!

Once your staff begins this process then you need to look at your practice.

No, I mean really look at it.

Second Mistake

Do you think someone is going to drop $40,000.00 down for a full mouth reconstruction on a place with 20 year old wall paper, three chairs in the waiting room, two year old magazines, and table somewhere in there? It may happen a couple times just because you’re a great dentist but wouldn’t you rather have someone drop that type of money down constantly in a month from different satisfied patients?

Of course you would!

I’m not saying do a full office make-over of your dental practice but start somewhere and make sure absolutely everything you buy to upgrade your office is set for marketing purposes (paint, commodities, furniture, etc.) we will discuss how to build your practice to market in another blog post.

Another thing is pricing your treatment.

Third Mistake

Discounting your beautiful work only discounts your value. Understand that just because 20 patients are going to “Family Dentist” down the street because they’re prices are lower does not mean you have to make your prices lower! This just means there is a whole different market out there that you need to attract and bring in.

Why is LA Fitness opening up more chains and 24 Hour Fitness is slowly declining? Lets look at the facts:

• LA Fitness is NOT open for 24 hours a day seven days a week.
• LA Fitness closes even earlier on the weekends and Fridays.
• LA Fitness is more expensive than 24 Hour Fitness.
• LA Fitness is smaller than the SUPER SPORT 24 Hour Fitness.

Yet, LA Fitness just bought all the 24 Hour Fitness gyms in Arizona! Why is that?

QUALITY.

LA Fitness saw a different market out there and attacked. And don’t you dare tell me “but Michael they are in different locations, I have 2 dentist right down the street from me"!

Do you think LA Fitness thought about every other gym and their market? I live 5 minutes away from 24 Hour Fitness and 3 minutes away from LA Fitness and in that 3-5 minute time frame you pass 3 cross fit gyms, four personal 24 hour small gyms, and 2 group boot camp gyms. Do you think they said “there is no way we can win when our location is so saturated”?

NOPE. They provided something that has always been there but has yet to be implemented. A cleaner and more organized environment…. and raised their prices for it too.

Don’t discount your work just because everyone in the neighborhood is doing it. Understand that your market of people or new patients that you want is out there, all you need to do now is just learn on how to bring them in.

So these are just the first few steps to market and attract new patients.

Let's work together (c'mon at least work on 1 of these)

So to summarize what we need to work on this week is:

Staff. Treat your staff as if they are the absolute best in any dental business and they will feel like it. This means from job titles, research or ask me what awesome new job titles you can give your front office staff and make it seem like it's a promotion for their great work or try even taking them out to lunch each time they close an Invisalign case!

Your dentistry. Make sure you get feedback from friends who aren’t dentist, staff, and patients that you may have now on how to continue to elevate the image of your practice. Do not expect to do this all at once. Bringing up your image as a dentist takes time and bringing up your image as a dentistry takes money. So maybe get a small TV and put it in 1 operatory each month or have a mini aquarium for the patients in the waiting room and have them name their "pet fish".

Last is don't immediately de-value your work. Ask yourself does my work really need to be discounted? Have you ever finished working on a patient and thought to yourself “man that was a lot of work, I should’ve charged more”. Be honest with yourself. I understand we all want to be nice but nice does not pay your staff and the bills. Your practice has to portray that whoever enters needs to understand you’re getting the latest and the greatest work done here and you know that every penny the patient pays you is more than worth it.

So lets do this! Let's start this week trying to implement these strategies and please give me feedback and let me know how this is going!