Five Simple Strategies to Effectively Grow Your Dental Practice
Jan 10, 2020
10 min read
Findings ways to grow your dental practice? Check out these five strategies that can take your practice to new heights! Starting and growing your dental practice can be overwhelming, as well as exhilarating. It requires great skill to build up a business and taking it to new heights, especially when it is dental marketing where people are not at all interested in visiting a dentist until it becomes a necessity.
Fortunately, we have brought you a variety of strategies that can help make a successful marketing plan. Don’t forget to read them all with a healthy smile!
Strategies to grow your dental practice:
Build up a powerful team:
Whether you are thinking of expanding or acquire, you cannot do it alone. If you are already managing all the patients by yourself, then consider forming a team that can help you in counseling as well as in making big business decisions. More the brains greater the ideas!
Your team may require some key players, such as:
A financial advisor:
A financial advisor can be a suitable person that can help you in managing finances by making a better financial plan that would make sure that you are clear on the returns and investments.
A legal advisor:
An advice from a legal expert can be very crucial in case of expansion and acquisition. Several dental associations throughout the world seek help from legal advisors to navigate them regarding any legal issues and questions.
Trustful lending partners:
It is always advised to keep your finances separate from the business finances. Whether a company needs debt consolidation , business loan, or working capital, they always need a trustful lending partner that understands their needs and industry.
Marketing is the key:
Marketing plays a crucial part in the growth of any business. You can start with small yet successful marketing plans such as email marketing, social media marketing and can go ahead with big plans such as advertisements and more. You can even launch a new website that can help you in the long run.
Hopefully, we are blessed with a social world i.e., is the largest online platform to grow your business. You might have heard about Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc. They are recognized as a potential platform to connect with partners, clients and more. These three social media platforms are completely free of cost to join. Additionally, they are so easy to operate that even a layperson with a little bit of knowledge of computers can operate them. Simply visit their website and set up your account and take full advantage of their business-related services.
Expansion is the necessity:
If you have decided to grow your business by adding more pages to your portfolio, you can either start a new office or can acquire an existing one.
Both of these ideas have their own pros and cons. Your well-qualified team can help you in detecting these pros and cons and making better strategies to overcome the risk factors associated with your new step.
The acquisition offers you the benefit of purchasing a recognized establishment that already has an existing reputation, staff, cash flow, and patient base. In this, you can buy a part of shares of the business (typically 25% to 50%) and then acquire the whole establishment when the owner gets retired.
Whereas starting a new dental practice from scratch provides you the freedom and allows you to mold everything according to your mindset and plan. However, this freedom can be costly than acquisition and requires great planning and effort.
Upgrade your office:
Dentist practice requires up to date facilities, types of equipment, and technology. Up to date, office and facilities have a direct impact on the patient base. Think about it precisely. You never want to seek a doctor that uses old technology and would always consult the one having high tech machinery and equipment.
Additionally, you need to work on the outlook of your office and staff. Providing a clean and hygienic environment with efficient staff that not only looks good but knows how to behave well with patients turns out to be a plus point in the growth of your dentist practice. Polite behavior and homely environment improve the experience of the patient and will considerably improve the reputation of the establishment in the market.
Maintain a good online reputation:
In the world of surfing and searching, you need to maintain a positive online reputation. Whenever a person wants to take any facility or services, the first thing they do is, search about it on Google. Similarly, a lot of people would be searching for a good dentist online. Having a positive online reputation can help you a lot in the growth of your dentist practice.
People usually make their minds regarding any establishment after reading the reviews, comments, and ratings from past patients. Therefore, it becomes very important to maintain a good reputation to attract new patients and to grow your dental practice. Poor ratings and reviews can potentially affect your patient base as no one wants to consult a dentist with negative comments and ratings.
You can preferably ask your past and present patients to leave a review regarding their experience, or the least they can do is rate your practice and facilities online. Website development also plays a big role in maintaining an online reputation. A well-designed website is always praised and visited by millions of surfers that would love to take your services. So, work on your website and make it as presentable as much as you can. Add new features that are easy and takes lesser time. Make sure to add an online chat feature where the patients can directly chat with your team and book their appointments.
So, these were the five strategies that can help you in the growth of your dentist practice. Whether you are planning or ready to grow your business, these strategies will be helpful to you in the long run.
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Hire a VMO to Manage your Marketing Problems and Customer Expectations!
There are small, big problems that every organization has - could be related to competition, market, or even internal, and in most cases, marketing managers and CMO know what they are. The first thing that comes to their mind is the impact of this particular problem on our overall marketing strategy and will hamper our short-term progress. While solving these problems is much more challenging than what we think, how an external person can help tackle them. A tough nut to crack, or an interesting one? What do you do in such cases, especially when your attribution model pulls back your upper-funnel campaigns? What would be your next step when you need to focus on long-term profitability instead of short-term revenue? The answer is often dubious. Hard to swallow, but honestly, people go defensive as they aren't too sure of the solution. And then procrastination enters the picture when the problems are shifted to months, next quarter, or even a year - and much to the expectations, time, resources, and money comes in the picture. We continue our focus on short-term gains, however efficient they are, maybe to make them "more efficient!" It is high time that marketers should start focusing their problems on "Big Problems" as sustainability is the prime element in marketing, and all the more due to the pandemic and shift in marketing trends for 2021. Nothing will magically transform your growth unless you're just beginning or expecting a disruption. Real change comes from rolling up your sleeves and facing those problems, making actionable plans and actions that look unconquerable. But, Where to start? The following are different ways to venture out and effectively tackle problems: First of all, reset your thinking and ponder over the root cause of the problem. Chances are there that it might not be as big as you are thinking. Relax, look for the tiny bridges linked to the solution. Sooner, you will reach depth, learn more, and start to think of the necessary steps. Note all the accessible ways to take action. You just can't solve in one go, and it is completely fine. Develop strategies to discover the most effective way, out of all you have researched and formulated. Start going through the similar industry campaign to figure out best practices. We all know that external and internal factors play a critical role in defining the brand's ROI . Start tracking performance with meaningful KPIs and thoughtfully evaluating the impact. Once you figure out the various ways, campaign results, competition mapping, industry standards, and factors affecting your organization, you will get the crux of the marketing problem. Believe us, even if you can't get through the solution straight away, you will figure out a lot just by scrutinizing one problem - you will know what medium didn't work, your right target group and buyer personas, your way of measuring campaigns, and above all, your future ways to address it. At Saffron, we realized how VMO shapes your business like no other. With the power of an agency and a focus of a marketer, he/she works vigilantly and monitors every campaign, and this is the prime reason we introduced him/ her to you. Having years of expertise and experience of working on multiple brands, he/she brings an additional element to your existing marketing team or your marketing set-up, and that is tenacity. And yes, not to forget the cost-effectiveness and efficiency in driving plans and actions, keeping in mind your business goals and revenue. We live in a business scenario where the customer and consumer expectations have touched the sky. Brands are leaving no stones unturned to fulfil them. According to Salesforce, 76% of consumers expect companies to understand their needs and expectations. They even mentioned the following four expectations that are changing the game for companies: Customers expect connected journeys: break down your business silos. Customers expect personalization: customize everything. Customers expect innovation: Keep pushing the limits. Customers expect data protection: Make trust your priority. How to manage your customer expectations? So we all have the websites, right? I want to know the new channel; I want to create disruption; I want to drive trendy marketing plans and actions; I want a growth-driven strategy - all these are common words we get to hear often but without a high-quality website, what’s the point? When driving and mapping digital success, your website is your most significant component, in all senses. A workable website must be fast (speed), optimized for search, visually engaging, and backed with relevant content. These are simple non-negotiable if you want to transform your brand digitally, or even to reach the masses. Once your website is aligned with all these pointers, you should start working on prioritizing your website goals. Depending on your resources and technical know-how you would even consider hiring an expert in conversion rate optimization, but what if we tell you that our VMO will help you with those services too. A VMO knows that if your site is letting you down, your marketing budget will not serve its purpose well. What about your brand communication and messaging? The visible part of any marketing activity is communication. Along with you, or as an Individual contributor, your VMO will help you to align your communications with your brand goals and bring them into line with your marketing campaigns. He/She makes sure your company speaks with a perceptible and recognizable voice across all mediums and platforms. Some of the essential brand driver VMO can help you out with: Creating your brand guidelines that define your story and USP. Creating a communication road map Making sure your communication tone is easy to understand. Making sure the brand story is spread out across all digital assets, i.e., social, email, content, blogs, and videos. Driving your Video communication plan. Driving your Online Reputation Management Compelling Stories need to be communicated, and all the more during the pandemic when people are more watchful. Customer-focused, great, what about Buyer Persona? A buyer persona is a research-based profile that depicts a target customer. Buyer personas describe who your ideal customers are, their behaviour, their attributes, their regular days, the challenges they face, and how they make decisions. It helps you create content and campaigns that are more focused and engaging. Our VMOs' are inbound marketing experts and are an ideal choice to help you create to define your Buyer Persona. The following are the questions you should consider before creating your Buyer Persona Profiles: What causes buyers to invest in solutions like yours? What are the various reasons for buyers to be content with your products? What operational or individual results does your buyer persona expect to accomplish by acquiring your solution? What bothers your buyer to believe that your solution/products or company is not their most suitable option? Who and what affects/influences your buyer as they evaluate their possibilities and select one? Which features of the competing products, services, solutions, or company does your buyer perceive as most significant, and what are their expectations for each? The resulting buyer personas are unique and represent your most important customer types and segments. They form the basis for your communication planning, marketing strategy, and personalization of your content. As a marketer, we will continue building brands, but to earn the trust of the customer and consumer are far more crucial than anything else, especially in the world we live in now. We all have the power to focus on the things that matter. Sometimes we are surrounded by tonnes of marketing plans and actions that we miss out on a few elements and put our brand into an unwanted situation. Here, a VMO comes in the pictures as he/she will execute in the right direction, keeping in mind your customer expectations and attributes. VMO offers you an entire marketing set-up or can work on short-term or individual projects. He/she helps you to find solutions to your problems, to draw the right outcomes from these results, and to propagate them across different mediums to provide the best in class user experience. Reach out to us now to set a call to discuss your marketing and communication plan, digital transformation, or any particular projects. Our VMOs' will work on all these to drive your revenue and growth, aligned with your brand goals. At Saffron Edge, we believe in doing the kind of marketing that performs for your business. ...
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Why Facebook Ads Are Perfect For Raising Awareness Of Your Dental Practice
Facebook is a social media platform that needs no introduction. With over 2 billion monthly active users , it’s a no-brainer that you absolutely need to market your dental practice on the platform to gain new patients. Imagine being able to reach new patients on the platform they trust and are already spending their time on… yeah, that’s Facebook. Since trying to get new patients is the number one problem modern day dentists face, Facebook Ads can be a powerful tool and an untapped resource for dental practitioners in search for new patients, if used correctly. Now, the traditional methods of media advertising for dentists induced a lot of cost with minimal results. But Facebook has turned the digital marketing sphere for dentists upside down. How? With Facebook Ads, dentists can choose their specific target audience and it’s size according to their own budget. Also, as your ad is shown only to a relevant audience, you get improved results. A win-win, for both dental practitioners all over the world and Facebook itself. But what is a Facebook Ad? Facebook offers two forms of advertising: Ad Campaigns and boosted posts. Facebook Ad campaign is where the gold is! You can run your ad campaign as long as your budget allows and the people clicking on your ad will go straight to your website. But the best part about a Facebook ad campaign is the varied audience targeting options it has, which I don’t think any other social media provides at such a depth as Facebook. Facebook lets you target your audience on the basis of demographics, interests, your connections, user behavior and you can also create your own custom audience using mobile numbers, email addresses or Facebook IDs A boosted post, on the other hand, is something entirely different as it focuses only on your current following and their family and friends. Facebook lets you ‘boost’ your status update to make sure it is viewed by your followers and their friends and family so its best to use this form of advertisement to push an offer to your existing followers. And it’s cheap, you can boost a post for a day for as low as $1. When advertising through a Facebook Ad, it’s important to make sure that your ad contains a nice copy, stunning visuals and an irresistible offer to get results. But the real power of Facebook Ads for dentists is your ability to showcase your ad in front of a highly relevant audience selected by you. Optimizing your Facebook Ads You can target whoever your heart wants with Facebook Ads with its intelligent, data-backed targeting options. Here are some of the targeting options you can use to unleash its full potential for your dental practice Target your current patient list Targeting your Facebook ads to the people who already like and trust you is a great way to begin with your marketing efforts on the platform. The engagement you’ll receive on this form of targeting will be the highest as you’re targeting patients who already trust you with your services. Target your email subscribers Use the custom targeting option on your Facebook Ads and add all the email addresses you have in your database to target these people on Facebook as well. You’ll get high engagement rates on this type of targeting as well because people who already have taken the action to submit their email addresses to you will have no problem in taking action again. So, start targeting your email subscribers on Facebook as well along with your regular email campaigns to raise awareness of your dental practice. Target your site visitors Using Facebook Ads to target your site visitors is another great way to gain some traction as they’ve already connected with you before through your website and Facebook Ads is a great way to connect with them again. Use the custom audience targeting option to target people who’ve already visited your website in the past. Target people who have relevant interests on Facebook A simple way to increase your audience and raise awareness for your dental practice is to target people who aren’t already your patients, are not on your email list and are not your Facebook fans by using a combination of demographics, interests, or behaviors. There are unlimited combinations of interests that you can make for your target audience, depending on your dental practice specialty or goal for your Facebook ad. The possibilities are endless. To get an idea of how setting audiences on Facebook Ads work, here’s a quick summary of the targeted audience of a Facebook Ad campaign we did for our dental client in New Jersey - Once you click ‘Edit’ under ‘Audience Details’ of your campaign, you can customize almost every aspect of your targeted audience including their gender, age, location, connections or you can explore some detail targeting options, here’s how it looks like - Facebook also very conveniently displays a summary of your selected audience preferences in the top right corner to give you a quick idea of where your audience targeting efforts is heading towards. When you run a Facebook Ad Campaign, you have full control of choosing your own audience which you think will bring the best results to your Facebook Ad Campaign. Facebook and its advertising platform have opened a whole new world for dentists where they control who they market themselves to, completely unheard of in the dental industry before. So, using Facebook Ads to unlock the true potential of Facebook by targeting the right people for your posts based on their demographics, interests and user behavior is highly recommended for dental practitioners. ...
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Healthcare Marketing Strategy - A Comprehensive Guide
A healthcare marketing strategy involves inbound marketing techniques to facilitate the attainment of better healthcare business objectives over a while, say twelve months or more. With an organized blueprint of your stick-to plan, your business organization puts in efforts, required resources- monetary and human both, lays down the procedural steps to perform better and much more efficiently than the last annual estimate. If you are associated with a healthcare business, you may be indulged in exceeding your present-day productivity to expand your operational territory. Just like any other business, you may also have to deal with the potential opportunities and threats coming your way, have to design the plan of action for an effective operational framework, run marketing campaigns supported by field expertise and tactics, and emerge with an approach to increase patient base leading to rapid increment in ROI graphs. The healthcare industry has turned up to be dynamic and vigorous since the medical needs of people have gradually increased and they now expect the best of service, that too with prompt action to their inquiry. This has only been possible because of the technological progress we see today that makes our lives easy and helps people resolve their medical issues with just one click over the Internet. According to many online portals and reports, most of the general public look for medical concerns over these web portals and explore to get home remedies. The need for introducing marketing strategies in the healthcare sector emerged when chronic problems took over and the average patient handling ratio of a particular healthcare business organization went down. The effectiveness of marketing techniques can only be measured by reflecting a healthy society, where the majority of people are irrelative to sickness and disease. An impactful healthcare marketing strategy calls for an extensive probing of a patient’s requirements and what he needs, these needs can be tangible (medicinal support) and intangible (emotional and psychological support), basis which its success could be computed. Why Do You Need A Marketing Strategy? Enhance Customer Service In the recent past, the idea of patient delight at the time of any medical activity has evolved from just providing medical assistance to giving a pleasant experience, though the provision of necessary medical treatment is a priority. A marketing strategy helps a healthcare business to expand its customer service base along with giving the required remedial cure, which ensures brand loyalty by transforming them into frequent customers rather than occasional patients. The frequently visiting patients would expect the value to their concern, like you to deliver as per their assumptions, providing superior client services that make their lives easy and less challenging. Improve Brand Awareness An effective and promising healthcare marketing strategy should help your business to expand your loyal customer base, where you deliver as per their expectations, boost the customer inflow, and keep the cycle running. Since your business needs brand awareness, you may begin with glorifying your online reach on social media platforms, so they are viewed by a greater population. Word-of-mouth referrals and online participation bring your brand a sense of recognition and service inquiries, thus inviting the masses briskly. Add Value To Your Brand You can shape your brand’s ethical value by creating a powerful platform for customers to reach out for medical support. The more comforting and secure their experience is, the longer they’ll stick to your brand. From a patient’s perspective, a satisfactory experience, especially related to remedial activity, allows them to trust the brand’s credibility and associate with it for the long-term. Source: Unsplash Root Benefits Of Having A Healthcare Marketing Strategy Once your healthcare marketing strategy comes into effect, your business can observe numerous advantages coming its way. For keeping that inflow alive, a tried and tested plan should be extensively used to ensure ongoing marketing success. The following are some of the benefits of the healthcare marketing strategy your business might opt for Meeting Goals And Objectives- Once you plan out to expand the functional boundaries of your business, you tend to follow an organized series of actions that helps you achieve the anticipated goals and business objectives. Operational Efficiency- Streamlining your business functionalities refrains you to allocate abundant resources into any particular activity and ensure that everything is going as per the plan, thus boosting operational efficiency. If your healthcare business adopts an efficient marketing plan for its daily operations, you may be able to clutch in more opportunities than your competitors in no time. Risk Management- It refers to the practice of extenuating the possibilities of financial risk for an organization. In reference to a healthcare business, risk management adds itself as an advantage via the marketing strategy it adopts, since a strategized plan includes classified patient records and monitors the anticipated process malfunctions which may arise in the near future. Effective Service Line Decisions- In the healthcare field, a service-line refers to a particular group of similar patients, classified on the basis of inpatient and outpatient procedures. While you manage your healthcare business’s daily functions, deal with patients, and provide services with the help of comprehensive marketing plans, service-line decisions communicate the purpose of your marketing plans and showcase your image as a brand to the general public. Develop A Marketing Strategy For Your Healthcare Brand An effective healthcare marketing strategy is an asset for medical practitioners, hospital staff, and their network. For that entire process to work in harmony, there are several ways to plan that marketing strategy. Every healthcare business offers a similar remedy to any medical issue, what sets you apart is your expertise and service level you provide to the patient, because he/she may consider your white coat as the same as they may find someplace else. Therefore, there should be something unique in your assistance that creates your brand image and attracts patients in the long run. Presenting your healthcare business over the web invites many inquiries and appointments, given that the information you put there seems promising and impressive to prospective patients. Websites have turned to be gateways for every business and healthcare is no longer away from this fact. If you consider yourself as a patient, observe your business website and look over the pages for those details that quickly help you resolve your concern, maybe an optimized procedure to book an appointment, getting primary location guidance in a few moments, these minute attributes of the website makes your prospect’s online journey quick and trouble-free. Create chatbots and fill-in forms for the patient’s to send out responses against their concerns so they feel responsive when they visit your website. Your healthcare marketing strategy shall allow you to take over these concepts conveniently. A thriving healthcare marketing strategy allows you to retain your current patient base and increase potential engagement if you bring forward all the necessary resources at the right time. Even with the possible threats coming your way, you can take your healthcare business to great heights with this comprehensive marketing guide that helps you to engage with your loyal patients constructively. Connect with us to market your healthcare business the right way. We have an expertise of over 12 years dealing with healthcare clients and know exactly what it takes to scale your business. ...
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Grow Your Dental Practice Online
Attract more patients with customized strategies for your dental clinic’s online presence.
Talk to Experts