5 Inexpensive Ways to Increase Awareness About Your Practice

When you are running a small dental practice, it can be very difficult for you to create awareness about your practice with little or no budget at all. In order for you to grow your practice and gain more patients, you need to factor in new competitors who may have a more aggressive campaign than you, lack of marketing, poor reputation and overall scarceness of resources. All of these things can hinder the growth of your practice and may even lead to the decline in the number of your patients.

As a dentist, being responsible for taking care of the dental health of your patients at the same time having to take care of your practice’s marketing campaign is a no non-sense job. In order to help you out with this daunting task, here are a few inexpensive ways for you to spread awareness regarding your practice.

1. Contribute to Local Homeowner’s Association

Tie up with local homeowners’ associations and offer to write articles or tips to them. These associations often have community bulletins or newsletters which are often running low on material. You can offer to write a couple of articles for them weekly or give talks regarding dental health. You’re not only creating awareness for your practice but you are also building trust and confidence among your prospective patients.

2. Contribute to Local Chamber of Commerce

You can also approach local chambers of commerce and offer to provide education information to the small businesses in your community. You can talk about occupational situations wherein these employees’ dental safety is at stake.

3. Run Inexpensive Local Paper Ads

Try running inexpensive advertisements in your local community paper. You can also offer to write articles or have advertorials, a mix between advertisements and editorials.

4. Befriend Local Realtors

Make friends with the realtors in your community and target new families who are moving into your community. Chances are that these newly transferred families do not have a dentist in their new area yet. You can ask realtors to refer you to these families and individuals when they are in the process of buying a new house. You can provide brochures or business cards for these realtors to give out.

5. Participate in an “Ask Dr. X” Column in Local Paper

Persuade your local newspaper to come up with a “health” section to their website. You can show your support by being available for interviews or questions should any healthcare related queries suddenly come up. You can also provide tips to readers who send in their questions or run a column.

Your Ideas

These ideas are just scratching the surface. Do you have additional low-cost methods of raising awareness for dental practices? Please share in a comment below.

Social Media Promotion for Your Dental Office

In a Biznik article, Sue Cartwright, Social Media Marketing Expert, tells us: “With 78% of consumers trusting peer reviews when only 14% trust advertisements, it is essential to be involved in your online community, to build a good reputation and know what people are saying about you. To do this effectively you need to engage in conversations, monitor the outcomes, join the debate, help others and show customers you care as a means to building a loyal network.”

Most dentists don’t have the staff or time to invest in an all-out social media marketing campaign. I do think, however, there are a few things your front office person can do to get your office engaged on Facebook. You can even hire your teenage daughter to do these things. Seriously, $10 an hour, 5 hours a week – not much of an investment. The return will show up, most likely, in patients being more loyal to you, giving you free word-of-mouth referrals, and remembering to keep up with recall visits and follow up with treatment. Why? Because you’ll be engaged, showing that you care!

You’ll need a human page and a fan page to make this work. Here’s how to do it:

1)      At least once a week, if not daily, post personal “happy birthdays” to Facebook friends. Their birthdays show up automatically on the right side of your wall. Your teen staff member will know exactly what to do.

2)      At least once a week, post a photo and caption about your office, a patient, or something in your town. Your teen can become a reporter and make this her weekly pet project.

3)      Comment on 3-5 fan and friend posts each day. Even brief comments like, “This is interesting,” “Congratulations,” or “Awww – how sweet!” are appropriate. Any teen can do this – just make sure she spell checks!

4)      Send messages to your fans and friends once a month with a special offer, such as everyone who comes by the office on St. Patrick’s Day will get a free red toothbrush and a whitening coupon – or kids can come in on Valentine’s Day to pick up a sweet tooth alternative goodie bag from our team! Your teen staff member can even purchase and prepare the giveaway items.

5)      Once a week, post a link to an informative health article or an article about your town. Simply subscribe to your favorite newsletters from health magazines and websites, as well as your city’s blog or newsletter. The ideas will be delivered to your teen’s office email box.

21 Tips for Marketing YOUR Dental Practice

21 Marketing Ideas for the Modern Dentist

1. Buy a mailing list of residents within a certain mile radius of your office and send out marketing postcards to announce your practice, your dental specialty, etc.
2. Send a direct mail postcard to your target area to announce a new procedure you are offering, or the type of dentistry you specialize in (pain-free, children's etc.).
3. Create a patient-referral program where current patients get some kind of reward for recommending new patients. The reward could be anything from a gift certificate to a half-price dental cleaning. Word of mouth can be powerful marketing for dentists!
4. Consider advertising in neighborhood / community newspapers. These newsletters are becoming more and more common, and they could be a perfect marketing option for your dental practice. Only one way to find out!
5. Add a dose of public relations (PR) to your dentist marketing program. If you're practice is new in town, or if you offer a new technique of some kind, send a press release to your local newspaper.
6. If you offer a new or unique type of dental technique, try to get your local TV news to cover it. Invite them over to witness the procedure. Most local news channels have a health segment where they cover such things. I recently saw a dentist on the news explaining a new tooth whitening procedure. What a great marketing idea for local exposure!
7. To coincide with the last marketing idea you could also distribute your press release online. You could use PRWeb - Distribute your news to consumers, journalists and bloggers. 
8. As an Internet marketing strategy, hire a search engine marketing consultant to improve your website's ranking in the major search engines like Google. This will increase the online exposure for your dental practice.
9. Another Internet marketing option: Advertise your website with Yahoo Sponsored Search or Google's AdWords. You could put yourself onto the first page of keyword search results almost instantly, if you bid wisely.
10. If your practice is small, you could create a patient follow-up system and send out holiday and birthday cards (in addition to those checkup reminders).
11. Create a marketing brochure for your practice. Include information about your training, qualifications, specialty, etc. Give it to patients so they can give it to others when recommending you.
12. For a less expensive twist on the marketing idea above, you could use a business card instead of a brochure, or a simple flyer about your business.
13. Publish articles online with topics related to your dental practice. This technique is known as "article marketing." It can help you increase your website traffic, and also your website's ranking in search engines. The key is to have all of the articles linking back to your website as the author / source.
14. List your dental website in a variety of web directories. This will increase the number of links coming in to your site, which has a direct (and positive) impact on your search engine rankings. This in turn means more traffic and more patients.
15. Create a dental marketing schedule for yourself. Try to do at least one thing each day to promote your practice. Experiment with new ideas on a regular basis by adding them to your schedule.
16. Do some research to find out what your competitors are doing, in terms of self-promotion. This can often be an excellent source of marketing ideas and inspiration. Ask yourself, "How can I adopt the same technique but make it even better?"
17. Join your local chamber of commerce or other business organizations. This can be useful for networking purposes.
18. Experiment with some of the online dental directories where you can list your website. Just be sure you're able to track where your website traffic is coming from, so you can determine if the listing fees are worthwhile.
19. Already have one website that ranks well in the search engines? Then why not launch website #2 for double the exposure? This is a dentist marketing idea for the more "advanced class," but it's worth considering. Imagine havingtwo sources for web-based inquiries!
20. Experiment with radio advertising on one of your local stations. If you pursue this kind of marketing option it will help to have a website address that's easy to remember. Repeat the web address several times during the ad spot, along with your unique skills and selling points.
21. Continue your dental marketing education by reading up on the ideas and options mentioned in this article, as well as the general concepts of business promotion. Read at least one book each year on the subject of small business marketing.