The Search For Your Ideal Dental Patient
Attract More of The Patients You Love to Serve
By Dr. Greg Grillo
When people think of dentistry, they often think of implants, crowns, and cleanings. But your practice is really built on relationships with the people behind the treatment. Those connections bring satisfaction at the end of a long day and pull you through the rough spots. COVID-19 has reminded many of us that we crave connections with real people.
The wrong patients can work against you, too. Like any bad relationship, your energy rapidly depletes when you’re doing procedures you don’t like, working with someone who “forgets the checkbook,” or never wants a complete exam.
Every provider has an ideal dental patient, and it may be different than the dentist down the street. Attracting your ideal patient adds satisfaction, revenue, and healthy growth. So, how do you move from just adding new patients to surrounding yourself with ideal patients?
Define Your Demographic
Know what procedures you want to do, and which ones you don’t. If you love kids, define it. If you’d rather see retirees, that’s ok, too. While your practice will represent a cross-section of your community, you can steer towards a specific demographic and procedure mix.
WHAT HELPS? You can review data from your practice management software to determine how close you are to your ideal patient vision. Then you can use key metrics in dental software like Legwork to measure responses to specific marketing efforts. By tying the two sets of data together, you fine-tune your attraction techniques.
Design To Attract
When you define what you want, it’s easier to draw ideal dental patients towards your practice. Ad campaigns move from offering general dental care to targeting with precision. A sales funnel can use strategic ads to bring visitors interested in the service you’re advertising into your operatory.
First, a curious online visitor responds to a digital ad while searching for information on Invisalign®, for example. Then, they end up on a landing page that provides more engaging content such as videos, assessments, and quizzes. By collecting their contact information in the process, you can follow up with additional information on the specific type of care they’re most interested in.
WHAT HELPS? Effective sales funnels involve a well-designed set of tools that seamlessly work together. Each component moves a patient towards a decision. Everything matters along the way, including ad placement, word choices, effective landing pages, and compelling engagement tools. Legwork Funnels and Legwork Campaigns are two systems designed to work together. Better yet, they integrate with every other piece of the digital arsenal to ensure you bring more of the right patients your direction.
Send The Right Vibes
Your messaging permeates everything you send into the digital realm. While you may offer over a hundred treatment codes, the ones you really want to see more should be front and center. Your website can include features that help patients see your preferred services first. Social media posts, email campaigns, and blog articles weighted towards your ideal dental patient profile can steadily pique interest.
WHAT HELPS? Make sure your website looks like it belongs to your brand and message. Legwork Websites give dental patients what they want: engaging content that you choose along with clean, eye-catching design. Our library of patient-friendly content gives you control over email campaigns and blogs. Want more implants? Make a couple of clicks and put the right material into the right hands.
Don’t Leave It To Chance
Walmart and Nordstrom attract the clientele that matches their brand, and they both have ideal customers. Your practice can do the same thing. Know what you want and use innovation to effortlessly filter people in your direction. You can get a head start on the coming year by taking some time to plan strategies for attracting more of your ideal dental patients. Download our free Dental Practice Planning Kit now to get started.
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