A good question to ask yourself before beginning any marketing plan is this:
Who am I trying to attract?
After all, there are a million different marketing tactics available and a million sales people waiting to sell you on each of them. If you aren’t clear on the type of patient that you want to see more of in your practice, it will be extremely difficult to determine which advertising will work well for your practice. Not only that, you will undoubtedly waste money on a haphazard marketing plan.
I recently published an article in Dental Products Report where I discuss three of the major patient demographic groups that most dentists like to target today, and I go into detail about what marketing tactics currently work well for each. Check it out to read the specifics, but here is a quick synopsis:
- Baby Boomers – Focus on your messaging with this group and discover the #1 thing you don’t want to avoid
- Millennials – Find out what you and your team should be doing in order to capitalize on word of mouth with this generation
- Moms – Get ideas on how to maximize convenience for this busy patient group, and the treatments you can promote to stay relevant
And while it is good to stay on top of the trends related to your ideal patient type, it’s important to remember the intangible customer service qualities (strong verbal skills, good customer service) that will always appeal to patients of all types.