Congratulations on making it this far. You are in the top 5% of all practices that have decided to take action to make your business better. While there are many problems that every dental practice has, these three mistakes that we’ve identified make the biggest impact in terms of revenue.

1. Marketing Similar to Your Competitors

When was the last time you’ve looked at your competitor ads? Or have you ever done this? The truth is that the majority of dental practices have either set up their ads without looking at competitors or specifically based their ads on what the other practices are doing. Sounds crazy right?

In order for your advertising to work there are a few things that need to happen. Firstly, your ads need to be noticed. This means that they need to stand out with an offer or a strong unique selling point. Secondly, the ads need to be visible to your audience. Unfortunately there are many great ads that never get seen by the right people. Tragic! Finally, there needs to be a clear call to action within your ads. This is the part that gets the person to do something like calling you or booking their appointment.

Ads Review Example

Let’s take a look at an example of Google Ads

Which of these ads stand out the most?

The first and the one that takes the most real estate tends to grab your attention first (or does it?). Don’t be fooled by this! Once your ads are noticed you want your prospects to read it. When you read the first ad you can see that it’s fairly general. The second and the third ads aim at getting online bookings which is okay, but they look very similar. Now the last ad has a new patient offer and features that they are open 6 days a week and also do emergency services.

So, the first ad is likely to get the most clicks but is this really what you want? The second and the third ads would work very well if you are wanting to re-engage clients (eg. get them to book again), but I’ve never dealt with these practices before. Also, the ads with the phone numbers give customers an opportunity to call which in our opinion is still the best form of lead as you are able to apply a sales process to it.

Let’s re-evaluate these ads in terms of your goals. Now assuming that your practice is advertising to attract new clients, which of these ads makes more sense for new patients to come your way? Now the last ad may be way at the bottom, which actually makes it cheaper in terms of the cost per click but it’s a lot more aligned for someone (in terms of the offer) who needs service ASAP or in the near future. This is why…

Customer wants – ACUA Principle

There are usually four very distinct things that people are wanting for when people are looking for a dentist (please note that the order may vary depending on your sales process). Firstly, your availability is the one thing that will interest your prospects that are seeking emergency dental services. This will also be an important consideration for those wanting to book in advance (eg. mums booking their kids for school holidays). Secondly, the point of convenience is a big one. In our ad example above, the weekend appointments make it more convenient for some prospects. Also things like free parking, wheelchair access and other important aspects that create convenience. Thirdly, the point of utility is crucial as your customers will often choose you based on your authority or specialty. Besides the dentists themselves you can focus on things like charities your support, health funds you work with and products you use. Finally, affordability is the customer you don’t want to miss nor do you want to focus on it too much. People don’t buy on price, dental practices often sell on price. If the price is more important than quality to your patients you are either selling on price or dealing with the wrong audience. Instead of the price, focus on things like payment plans, health funds and offers that align with client needs (eg. get $50 off your next appointment).

The bottom line is that your marketing needs to be specific to your practice and your goals. If you are simply trying to do what others are doing, then get ready for average, price sensitive clients.

When was the last time you’ve reviewed your ads? Could you do better? We offer a free Sales & Marketing audit that allows us to show what works and what doesn’t.

2. Little or No Sales Training

When you hired your receptionist, did you train them to do sales? If yes, congratulations you are one of the very few dental practices that have done this. As for the majority this is often overlooked as there are just so many other tasks practice receptionists have to attend to.

In reality, sales does not need to be difficult. It’s really more to do with the conversations you have with your patients and how you help them arrive at the right outcome with your help. Here are some tips that may help you improve your sales.

Start tracking your stats

Get your receptionists to run a spreadsheet with everyone who is calling, why they are calling and outcome of their call. This may sound old school but this could be the easiest way to see where some of the problems are. You will quickly find that you are either getting the wrong type of calls, people focused on price or something else.

Price-focused callers

If conversations start with, “how much do you charge for…” and your receptionist is trying to give them the price, this is a big problem. If the caller persists with, “I just want the price” while your receptionist is trying to qualify them, this is another big problem. There are ways to solve these problems, but you need to make sure that firstly your marketing is attracting the right people. The issue could be caused by your ads saying “affordable dentist”. The solution to this is having a sales process that is aligned with your marketing strategy.

Wrong personality

You may have an excellent, super-organised receptionist who just doesn’t have the right personality to do sales. While this can be a big problem, usually this is about profiling your receptionist in terms of their strengths and weaknesses and making sure they can do sales in a way that works for them. There are a number of personality profiling systems like DiSC that can help.

If this is all too complicated, reach out to us about our free Sales & Marketing audit to see if we can help you improve your sales.

3. Neglecting or Automating Email Marketing

Sending Newsletters Instead of Focused Emails?

Most dental practices do things like newsletters because that’s what you need to do. As a result the results are very poor. The truth is email marketing is very different from newsletters. Once again, this needs to start with some goal setting. If the goal is to attract new clients, you would use an approach where an optin (name, email capture) on your website would be generating a list for you to start this. If you wanted to upsell other services, then the strategy would be different and should start with list segmentation based on your target audience.

A popular example of email marketing campaign is offering orthodontics to families targeting women. In case you are wondering, women make 80% of decisions when it comes to kids or husband’s health. Applying the ACUA Principle can help you create a powerful copy. This by the way needs to look personal rather than templated.

See example of a good email with high open and click-through rates on the right.

There are some key metrics you need to be mindful of when doing email marketing. Open rates is the first one as this is the top of your funnel. You want to make sure your emails are open as they won’t be read otherwise. A good way to get your emails to be opened is to include the recipient’s name in them and also have a subject that makes people curious. The next one is making sure email is read. The simplest way to do this is to include a link to find out more. This way you’ll have a metric of click through rate (CTR).

Click the image above to enlarge

If you are looking for someone to do this for your practice, please reach out to us as this is one of our key services. We love running email campaigns that help practices thrive. Our free Sales & Marketing audit covers this.

If you’ve found this information helpful, please feel free to share it with your colleagues or friends.