CDS Member News and Articles

Professional News Articles : : ON PRACTICE MANAGEMENT by Janyce Hamilton : Marketing: The middle-class dentist’s lifeboat

Marketing: The middle-class dentist’s lifeboat

February 11, 2008

Middle-Class Lifeboat (published by Thomas Nelson, 2007) is a book written by Paul and Sarah Edwards. Its statistics show what I have long suspected: it feels harder than it should to make ends meet, retire comfortably, and live in way that feels anything but crazy-busy. Who reading this is not stressed out? Dentists—especially those with children—are on complicated professional and personal schedules. I mean, with your hands inside Mrs. Jaws, you cannot even access e-mail and need a dental assistant to manage your Blackberry.

It’s nuts.

And do you ever wish you had an economic lifeboat just in case you need to jump ship?

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports college tuition is up 289.5 percent from 1986-2006. The Federal Reserve Board’s Survey of Consumer Finances reports the typical American family earns more than $43,000 a year but cannot pay off its long-standing average credit card balance of $2,200.

Dentistry—a profession assumed to be a high-earning, upper-class profession—can feel for some more like a middle-class occupation. The gross income is decent, but after the expenses of school debt, home and office rent, insurance, salaries, equipment and supplies, and more, well, let’s just say clipping coupons for the groceries is not out of the question. Tell that to the staff, and they would balk, but show them the balance sheet, and they’d hand you a tissue!

Unless you are ready to chuck it all and move to a commune in Mexico, the only “lifeboat” is tweaking the dental ship you now captain.

Fortunately, several things are within your control.

For example, you can keep the practice thriving to earn a maximum living. For this, you need to bring in the greatest numbers of patients possible, and keep the ones you have whistling a happy tune about their “dental home.”
Say you are doing all you can and are maxed out? I hear you, but let us double-check by revisiting the basic marketing methods, adapted from the section on safeguarding your livelihood listed in “Middle-Class Lifeboat”:

Networking

If the dentist or a staff member can join or visit the luncheons of a local organization in the community, there is the chance for “face time” with important decision makers in the area. The organization can be Rotary, chamber, school foundations, religious, political, historic preservation clubs, you name it. At all these places, attendees can include school superintendents, park or county board members, chairs, presidents, mayors, ministers or rabbis, and the town’s PTA parents who are always playing the “my-dentist-, my-doctor-is-good/bad-because-(insert adjectives)” game with each other.  

Directories and referral agency listings

What about that publication for new or prospective residents - do you have listing on its pages? How about that visitor’s guide? Maybe try them all for a year, and sign-up again in those that brought patients in (you are asking new patients how they heard about you, right?). After a few years, try it again in case circulation has changed. Even some neighborhood associations (condo and townhouse) and subdivision newsletters have referral listings for dentists, plumbers and dog walkers. Call these the low-cost “marketing tests.” And, don’t forget getting to know the rental agent for the area’s large apartment complexes. They talk with people all day long, some who have relocated and might mention needing to find a dentist.

Posting flyers

In my memory a flyer stands out from a bulletin board at the local grocery store. It has a sweet photo of children and a puppy on it, and lots of gentle terms for its dental office. The name (which I’ll skip here) sticks in my mind because the flyer seemed as warm and fuzzy as Thanksgiving in Spring. I wanted to go there just to meet these people—they seemed so darn happy! If you wanted to put “$25 off first visit” and your phone number on tear-offs at the bottom of the flyer, people can pull them off and take them with. It sounds cheesy, but if the flyer is as professional as possible, this is just pennies-and-cents guerilla marketing. You can snicker, but if more phone calls come in from those little tear-offs, it’s no laughing matter.

Public speaking and appearances

You could book a room at the local library and give a talk on affordable cosmetic dentistry. Of course, you have to promote the talk by sending out press releases to the local paper, putting up fliers in the library, and dropping them off. Or maybe hold the talk at your office, and invite all your patients by mail. Get your best friends to show up and ask questions you know the attendees are too shy to ask. Show before and after photos of dental makeovers. Heck, mail those images out to promote the talk!

Sometimes elementary schools will let dentists give talks about good oral hygiene. If so, maybe a coupon can go home in the backpack in exchange for the free public health lesson?

Nervous about public speaking? That’s what Toastmasters International is for, and they probably have a meeting in a town near yours, if not in yours. Go to www.toastmasters.org and learn more. The people who practice public speaking at these meetings tend to be outgoing, fun-loving, and some are organizational leaders or salespeople who might refer to you if they get to know you.

Signage besides your practice sign

“Middle-Class Lifeboat” advises you (and your smiling face!) to get out in your community wearing your business name, phone and Web site on a shirt, jacket, hat and magnetic vehicle sign. Hey, the lady at the drugstore will always know you are Dr. Joe, the dentist. Make sure you smile, laugh and are always cleaned up if you are wearing your logo. (Save the exhausted, crabby, unkempt version of yourself for your relatives.) Even if that clerk cannot remember your last name when her fiancée breaks his molar, she can go through the phone book and look for all the dentists in town whose first names are Joseph. Then, she can look at the phone number and it might actually ring a bell.

To think that your phone could be ringing with an $800 gold onlay all because you wore your dental marketing t-shirt to buy a bar of soap!

Referrals from other dentists

This might be the norm if you are a specialist, but if you are a general practitioner, it is a little unusual. It is possible, however, to get all the other general dentists in town to refer to you. It is. Try this: call and ask to meet each of them, one on one, over the course of a year. Take them to lunch. Just say, “I always wanted to meet you.” At the end of lunch, tell them to stay in touch, and that you should think about having a two-way referral system in case one of you is out of town. Alternate sending patients to all of them (if you think they will do a decent job). Don’t worry about dentists stealing your patients. If you are a caring person, and lift your pinky to express it in the smallest way at each visit, your patient will notice and remain loyal (some of us don’t get any warm-fuzzies anywhere else).

Indirect testimonials

For a really big case, such as a full-mouth restoration, multiple implants or veneers, the out-of-pocket expense represents a tremendous amount of trust in you. Why should anyone take that risk? Because you look them in the eye and you gave them the name and phone of one or two patients who had similar procedures and are happy with how they turned out. Of course, you got permission ahead of time. Of course, you made sure they were, indeed, happy. You are sure to ask if they wouldn’t mind taking a phone call from a patient who is unsure of the procedure.

And if anything this “testimony” patient says works against you getting the treatment accepted, consider it good riddance. If someone is paying you more than $5,000, you don’t want them unhappy. They will never shut off their griping about it in the community: “Dr. Z took my $9,000 in 1998 and those implant-fixed dentures she made never did fit right!” That, my friend, is not worth $9,000, not even if you really, really need it.

Anytime a patient sends you a thank-you letter or note, you can write one in response. Why not include a gift certificate to a restaurant or a coupon for $25 off tooth whitening so say “thanks, back!”? Why not ask if the patient would mind if you put their letter on the bulletin board or share it in some other way (read: mass mailing) with patients? I mean, couldn’t you write a “hello, resident!” letter and use excerpts from the thank-you notes you’ve received in the last few years?

Internet search engine advertising

Wouldn’t it be helpful if your patients plugging in “Chicago” and “dentist” for Internet searching found your practice listed prominently? Google and other search engines do this for a fee. “Middle-Class Lifeboat” authors Paul and Sarah Edwards recommend checking into this form of net advertising. To see a list of search engines, go to www.localsearchguide.org/search_engine.htm.

Keep customer contact semi-frequent

If you collect your patients’ e-mail addresses, ask if they mind receiving e-mailed coupons, specials or dental tips from the office. If they don’t mind, every 2-3 months send a one-paragraph bit of fascinating news they can use, or a special that is good for 60 days, or a $25 off a custom mouth guard, etc. Did you know that many parents are not aware of the recommendation for mouthguards and in which sports and at what ages? With one e-mail blast, you can provide a valuable service and save anterior teeth! Don’t you want to be the first dentist with mouthguards for preschool ballerinas? (OK, just joking). But in my area, there is fairly competitive play in football teams beginning at age 6!

Conclusion

If this “slow economy” and the non-priority status of dental needs are keeping people from your dental office, maybe it is time for a marketing makeover. Some of the ideas from books such as “Middle-Class Lifeboat” can be pursued during those patient cancellations, so your time is never truly “wasted.” Bit by bit, some of these marketing ideas may buoy you from choppy middle-class into calmer, upper-class waters.

Somewhere, sometime this year, dental captain, may you toast a blazing sunset with a margarita so sweetly satisfying because you made it yourself.

Janyce Hamilton is an award-winning Chicagoland freelance dental writer and editor. Send suggestions for topics to be covered, or any comments on this column, to review@cds.org.

© 2008, Chicago Dental Society