Women's Dentist Journal - September 2007
by Naomi Cooper Eckhardt, Vice President of Marketing, 1-800-DENTIST®

Marketing your practice can feel like a full-time job. Whether you want to find a way to consistently add new patients month after month, or are looking to grow from within by increasing your internal marketing efforts, promoting yourself and the services you offer is certainly a tall order. How can you get your patients - and your prospective patients - to value what you have to offer and to see you as the professional you are? It's an age-old question, and the most important thing is finding a place to start.

Traditionally, in marketing you always begin with two basic things: knowing yourself and knowing your audience. You can hire the most prestigious ad agency in town to create the highest-quality direct mail piece, the most dynamic website or most sophisticated TV ad, but if your message doesn't both represent you well and resonate with your audience, you might as well not be marketing at all.

Knowing Yourself
The first part of this process is to ask: what is different about my practice? In other words, what unique experiences do patients have in your office versus every other dental office? Those attributes are important to keep in mind in all of your marketing so that you can play to your strengths - and create appropriate expectations that correspond with the experience you actually provide.

So, does your practice have a friendly, welcoming office environment? Is your staff the most caring and wonderful dental team ever assembled? Is your office a modern facility with all the comforts of home? Then say so! Think carefully about who you are and make sure that you express that message clearly in every communication. Whether it's in a business card, a new patient brochure, or a patient's first call to the office, you should always be aiming to communicate what separates you from the pack.

It might help to jot down a list of positive adjectives that you think accurately describe your practice. Be careful not to describe the ideal practice you've built in your mind - describe the practice you already have! You can have the whole staff participate in this exercise, and you might even include some patients - you never know what you may learn by seeing things from another person's perspective.

The other part of knowing yourself is to understand your own strengths and weaknesses. While it's important for you to be able to understand and articulate what is special about your practice, taking on the responsibility of creating and implementing a consistent marketing campaign is something best left to professionals.

"It's important for doctors to manage their time well," says Christine Taxin, a consultant based in Westchester County, NY, with over 30 years of dental office management experience. "Surround yourself with the best of the best - experts who can help you reach your marketing goals and keep your vision on track - and you'll be much more likely to have consistent results from your marketing efforts than if you try to do it all on your own."

Knowing Your Team
A practice with an effective, friendly, well-trained front desk can see excellent results from a variety of marketing programs, from Yellow Pages advertising, to direct mail, to 1-800-DENTIST, almost immediately. But marketing is not a magic bullet for front desk dysfunction. On the contrary, if the front desk doesn't have the training, the ability and the desire to establish rapport with patients, the potential results from any marketing campaign will be lost, with callers being categorized as undesirable, scrapped as "shoppers," left on hold or simply never helped to appoint.

While many offices track the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns, few track the effectiveness of their team members in taking patient calls - especially new patient calls. When the phone rings, each of your team members must be able to answer the phone and answer it well.

"No matter how sophisticated your marketing becomes, never forget that good old-fashioned patient service is the glue that binds it all together, says Katherine Eitel, creator of The Lioness Principle and an experienced dental industry speaker and motivational coach. "Making a connection with a patient as a human being and appearing confident, professional, calm, helpful and genuinely interested is what consumers crave in this fast-pasted, high-volume world. More than anything else, patients want to be seen, heard, understood and made to feel that you really want their business."

If you even suspect that this may be a challenge in your office, invest in phone skills training for all of your team members - front office and clinical staff alike - before you plan your next marketing campaign. There are many highly regarded consultants in the dental industry who focus on this very topic, many of whom will engage your team in role-playing, customize scripts and even do "secret shopper" calls to ensure that your staff isn't turning patients away unintentionally.

Finally, the doctor's personal involvement in getting staff buy-in up front - and throughout the life of the marketing campaign - is absolutely essential. Show your entire staff what kind of marketing you are doing and when it is hitting the marketplace. Tell them how much it costs and what kind of return you expect. And above all, remember to reward your team members for helping to make the campaign a success.

Knowing Your Patients
As we've discussed, your marketing creates expectations, so you must be able to deliver on those promises when a patient comes in and experiences your office. But meeting expectations isn't always enough. "Patients judge the dentistry and total care by what they see and hear on their first visit," according to Linda Miles, CSP, CMC and CEO of Linda Miles and Associates, who has over 29 years of experience in dental consulting and lecturing worldwide. "Patients return to the practice if they get what they expected. They refer to the practice when their expectations are exceeded."

But in order to exceed expectations, you have to know who your patients are and what they want. Who are your most loyal patients? What do they have in common? Ask them what it is that makes them come back year after year. Find out what they think is special about you and your practice. Ask your front desk about the little touches patients seem to appreciate most.

Then find out what is unique about your patients by analyzing your patient database. What area does your practice draw from? Are most of your patients young singles or families? What percentage are aging baby boomers? What are your most popular procedures? And how are you communicating with all of your existing patients about what your practice has to offer?

Next, decide who you would like to target with your new patient marketing. Your best future patients may be nothing like the patients you already have. Are you looking for new movers or soccer moms? Do you cater to fearful patients, who may need a lot of work once you're able to gain their trust? Do you accept insurance or is your office fee-for-service only?

Once you've profiled your desired and current patients, think about how you can communicate that you uniquely meet their needs. The best way to think about this is in terms of the benefit you provide, not the feature you can offer.

For example, if you cater to seniors, rather than informing them that you have advanced training in implantology and offer the highest quality materials available, tell them that you can restore their ability to smile, chew and talk with confidence using natural-looking implants that will look and feel just like their natural teeth. Most patients assume that you are highly educated and skilled. What they don't know is how you can help them.

As female professionals, most of us already have full-time jobs, and if we count our families, many of us have two. In fact, I don't know one female dentist who needs more on her plate. So it's important to find practice management consultants and marketing partners who are experts in their field and can help you implement and realize your marketing goals - based on what you've learned about yourself, your team and your patients.

It all starts with you knowing exactly who you are. A little bit of introspection and investigation will lead you to that kind of self-awareness. It's the first step toward marketing success!

Naomi Cooper Eckhardt is the vice president of marketing at 1-800-DENTIST®. With over 10 years of marketing experience, she also has responsibility for the company's Patient Activator® brand and for industry and professional relations. She is the recipient of several awards for her work as the co-chair of the National Dental Association's Scholarship Committee. Naomi can be reached at 310-215-6400 or neckhardt@1800dentist.com.

To find a consultant who can help devise a marketing plan for your practice, visit Speaking Consulting Network at speakingconsultingnetwork.com or the Academy of Dental Management Consultants at admc.net.