When I present on marketing to dentists that don’t know me there is often quite a barrier to start off with… and that barrier is currently held Marketing Assumptions by dentists – see if any of these assumptions are held by you:
- Marketing doesn’t work
- Marketing is about special offers
- Marketing is the same as selling
- I’ve never done any marketing in my practice
- Marketing is telling people about new products
I want you now to hand over all those assumptions to me, to park them, to accept for one moment in time that you have no assumptions at all…and that we are working on a clean slate…
For me, dentistry is about the exquisite relationship that you have with your patient, it is built on trust and that trust is built over a period of time.
And this is what I believe marketing is, building relationships.
Modern dental practice marketing should be about building those relationships and allowing patients to relax with you knowing that YOU are the best dentist in town, so these are the assumptions I have about marketing:
- Marketing is about building a relationship, great relationships lead to a profitable business – so build relationships well and marketing will work
- Special Offers are what is known as ‘transactional marketing’, this certainly has its place, but comes AFTER the ‘relationship marketing’ to engender trust first.
- Relationship Marketing is about allowing people to ‘buy from’ you, rather than ‘sell to’ them.
- You are constantly marketing, every time you speak to a patient you are marketing as you are building relationships
- When you talk to your patients you find out what they genuinely WANT, this allows you to mention products and services to them and they will ‘buy from you’ because they trust you
So, now you see that relationship marketing is effective, how do you go about this relationship building process?
There are many ways, but one of the most successful and efficient ways is online. Online marketing allows you to build relationships with many people at the same time. Online marketing should also be permission based… if a patient ‘likes’ your Facebook fan page, they have given you unique permission to demand a small amount of attention from them in their own personal space each day.
This ‘permission’ to talk to them in their personal space (their Facebook friend stream) is uniquely powerful and can be used to gently and slowly build trust with potential patients whilst setting you up as THE expert in your local area.
Email works in the same way, if a prospective patient ‘allows’ you to send them an email, this is a unique opportunity to communicate with them in their own space (their computer) at convenient intervals… but it’s a fine balance… too much information and you’ll be accused of spam…. too little and you’ll have no impact.
To find help you with your own relationship building process I’ve set up a new Social Media Kickstart course for dentists – I expect this to fill up fast, so please do book early to avoid feeling left behind.
