As a dentist, one of your biggest goals is to have your own dental practice. If you’ve already achieved this goal, your practice is one of the over 186,000 dental practices across the United States.
Is your practice meeting its revenue targets? If yes, you’re certainly looking to pull in even more revenues. The only way to achieve this is to get more dental patients.
The question is: how do you get these patients?
There are probably a couple of dental practices in your location, meaning competition for patients is strong.
Worry not, though. We’re here to help.
Continue reading to learn how to attract more patients to your practice.
Choose an Ideal Location
Location, location, location… so goes the popular phrase. Although it’s mostly used in the context of residential real estate, it also applies when it comes to choosing a location for a new business.
The location of your dental practice will play a big role in its success.
You see, if you locate it in a place where there is quite a handful of other practices, there’ll be strong competition for dental patients. If these other practices are well-established and hold a dominant position in the market, your new practice might not be able to shake off the competition.
As such, attracting more patients to your practice starts before you even open up. Focus on finding a location where the demand for dental services outstrips the supply. If you don’t, you’ll only be setting up your practice for failure.
If you have already set up your dental practice and you think the reason you’re not pulling in enough patients is strong competition, it’s not too late to move. Continuing to operate in an overly competitive market will only make it harder for your business to succeed.
Offer Quality Dental Care Services
As a dentist, your primary responsibility is to offer dental care services to your patients. Running the practice comes second.
If you want to retain and attract dental patients, ensure your practice builds a reputation for offer quality services. This means giving complete attention to each of your patients and ensuring they leave the practice feeling satisfied.
When you offer quality dental care services, your patients will easily refer your practice to their friends and relatives. Because word-of-mouth marketing is one of the most powerful forms of marketing, the referrals won’t hesitate to come to your practice. This is how you get more dental patients without spending a dollar on marketing.
In addition to offering quality dental care services, you also wat your practice to offer excellent customer care services. These are those services that don’t directly involve diagnoses and treatment of dental conditions.
For example, how long are wait times in your practice? If it takes ages before a patient sees the dentist, you’re giving your patients a negative experience.
Things like reducing wait times, offering patients multiple channels to contact your practice, and hiring super-friendly front-office personnel will go a long way in making your practice stand out from the competition.
Hire a Dental Office Manager
A mistake most dentists who have recently opened a practice make is failing to hire a full-time office manager.
Yes, it’s understandable that you might not have the money to hire a full-time manager right away, but if you want your practice to start attracting patients sooner after startup, make the hire.
As a dentist, you don’t want to juggle between treating your patients and handling administrative tasks. It leaves a bad impression on your patients.
An office manager takes administrative tasks out of your plate, so your sole focus remains on patients. The manager will ensure your practice is running as efficiently as possible.
Implement an Effective Marketing Strategy
Likes most businesses, dental practices must have a marketing strategy. However, the marketing approach for dental practices is different from those of other types of business.
The first thing you should do is learn the basics of how to market a dental practice, especially if you want to wear the marketing hat. There are lots of online dental marketing you can utilize.
You’ll learn about claiming your practice’s Google My Business page, dental web design and search engine optimization, social media marketing, and paid advertising.
Sounds like something you can pull off?
If you’re anything like most dentists, the answer is no. Marketing is a different ballgame.
This is why the best thing to do is to hire a digital marketing agency that offers specialized services to dental practices. These professionals will do everything from building a professional website for your practice to implementing a search engine optimization strategy.
Hiring a digital marketing agency can cost a lot of money, especially if you need a wide range of digital marketing services. Don’t shy away from spending, though. The return on investment is worth it.
Offer Financial Incentives to Patients
Did you know 28 percent of Americans don’t have dental insurance at all? Or that 56 percent of Americans don’t get basic dental care because they can’t afford it?
What does this tell you?
If dental services were cheap, most dental practices would get more patients. Unfortunately, professional dental care doesn’t come cheap. You have to price your services accordingly.
That being said, offering attractive financial incentives can help your practice get more patients. An example of a good incentive is offering discounts to first-time patients.
You can also introduce a loyalty program. Patients get the opportunity to accumulate points, which can then be redeemed at the practice.
More Dental Patients Are Coming to Your Practice
Your dental practice needs patients to survive. To grow, it needs more and more dental patients. If you were wondering how to get these patients, you now have all the necessary information. Your job is to implement it.
Good luck and keep reading our blog for more helpful tips and insights.
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