Marketing in dentistry

Patients are getting fewer, and personal notes of anxiety can be heard in conversations and on social media. Doctors and managers are wondering how to respond to the decrease in demand, and what can be done to keep the utilization up. And the first thing they come across in their search for answers are articles about marketing in dentistry.

I will not repeat what is written in them, in my opinion, they contain 95% water about segmentation, customer focus - this information will not help you in any way.

The first place I would like to start is by suggesting that we discard words that mislead you. Let's replace the complicated word “marketing”, with the understandable “reputation”. There is a lot of talk about marketing in dentistry, discussing the effectiveness of advertising channels, but you know that something else has kept you and your clinic going all these years, and it's not marketing, it's reputation.

It is reputation that brings loyal patients who do not ask for discounts. It is reputation that triggers word of mouth, it is reputation that allows you to raise the cost of treatment. It is reputation that creates a queue of patients. If you ask yourself what we can do to increase our reputation and visibility, it turns out you don't need to find a marketer, you know what you need to do.

The main difference between these words is that if you think you need to work on marketing, you will start looking for a marketer. And if you decide to work on your reputation, it becomes clear that you have to work on your own. Because no marketer will make a good “before and after” case study. Beautifully total rehabilitation will not conduct and will not photograph. He will not talk to the patient about his problem comprehensively on video. He will not write a good professional article in a magazine. And this is the main difference between those who transfer responsibility to others and those who take their fate into their own hands.

Now I am going to say an idea that many people will not like, but it is read in a large number of calls. Quite often I hear directly or indirectly the following thought: “We don't want to do anything, you are a marketer, you make sure we have patients. “ Clinic directors are very comfortable shifting the responsibility for initial referrals to the marketer. If it works, then the director is good, if not, then bad marketer, failed. Indeed, it is much easier to change marketers than it is to make changes in the clinic, to become more open, to start taking pictures and publishing clinical cases, to talk to patients, to record videos, to respond to patient inquiries online.

To make it more obvious, let's draw a parallel. Imagine that you need to resolve an apartment dispute in court and you are looking for a good lawyer. The price of a mistake is great, go back and change the decision will not be able to, the cost of his work is high, what you will rely on choosing a lawyer? On advertising, or on the number of cases won?

I think dentistry and lawyering are similar in many ways. The price of a mistake is high, the time of a high-class professional is expensive, and the consequences of the work of a non-professional are irreversible. And that's why the reputation that spreads through the word of mouth plays a huge role. Therefore, people carefully read reviews and trust the recommendations of those who have already undergone treatment.

When a clinic owner calls me and asks about creating a website, I bring up two topics, the first is live photo shoots in the clinic and the second is the implementation of a photo protocol. I give a presentation where I show the best ideas that I have seen on dental clinic websites and try to incorporate into the website design that I offer to my clients. And I make sure to show the nonsense that clinics copy from each other. And I always dwell on the topic of publishing clinical cases “before and after” and a convenient and understandable price list. If you look in Yandex Metrics how a visitor's attention is distributed on the site, what they scrutinize, what place they focus their attention on for the longest time, you will see that it is these two blocks that patients study most carefully, prices and “before and after”.

We can beautifully and conveniently embed clinical examples performed and described in detail by the doctors of the clinic. The main mistake in this matter is to place all examples of work on one page. I am convinced that an example of caries treatment should be on the page about caries treatment. If the orthopedist has filmed veneers, they should be on the page about veneers. If the surgeon and orthopedist have completed a beautiful total rehab case, it should be located on the page about treating edentulous patients. When these cases are put together on one common page “before and after”, the patient looking for aesthetics, for example, will be flooded with photos of caries and edentulous patients, which are completely different queries, and after seeing a couple of cases of edentulous patients the person looking for veneers will simply close the site. This is very common, that's why I say it separately, you shouldn't put all the examples on one page, they should be distributed on the pages that illustrate the type of treatment they illustrate.

My point is simple. To gain the trust of a doubting person, you have to step into their shoes. When making a difficult choice, the patient is agitated, he realizes that he has little information, he has no point of reference, he is attacked by advertising, questionnaires, calls from clinics. Comparing multiples of different prices, he begins to doubt and cannot make a decision and ends up postponing treatment.

Show examples of how you have solved similar problems - this will close the question about the quality of treatment. Provide a clear, turnkey price list with a staggered payment option - this closes the question of whether he can afford it. Relieve the patient's anxiety by recording a video with words of encouragement, showing your understanding and disposition to psychologically help the anxious person. A video without medical terms and descriptions, aimed only at moral help and support - this will give him the strength to decide, he will know that he will not be left alone with a complication, he will be taken care of.