Dental And Orthodontic Marketing Ideas: Your 3 Biggest Problems Right Now

Everyone is looking for good, fresh, innovative dental and orthodontic marketing ideas these days.  The reasons for the increased need for marketing are many and can be cut down to three main reasons or problems.

Let’s get the elephant in the room out of the way and agree that the first problem orthodontists and dentists are dealing with is the economy.  When people are not sure they will have a job in a few months, they are not very likely to start what they might consider elective treatments.  Are you finding that lot’s of people are hesitating to move forward with braces or veneers?

One thing you might consider is asking of their company offers a cafeteria or flex plan.  What most people don’t realize is that if you as an employee commit to putting say $5,000 in a flex plan over the next 12 months and you lose your job, the company has to fork over the rest of that money.   That’s the risk the company takes with those plans and the risk you take is that if you don’t use it you lose it.

The second problem dentists and orthodontists are facing is increased competition.  Here in Colorado there are areas with 11 orthodontists in a 10 mile radius.  So how do you keep your practice in front of the rest with this kind of competition?  My suggestion would be a consistent marketing campaign that combines offline direct response marketing with online direct response marketing.

That means you have to work out a budget to spend each month on your online and offline marketing efforts and don’t spend a dime on any marketing that doesn’t include some type of offer for people to respond to.  You should consider as part of your online marketing strategy getting your information in multiple places online so you have the opportunity to capture multiple listings on page one of Google.

That brings us to problem number three which is an over saturation of marketing in our daily lives.  Did you know that because we as consumers are so bombarded with sales messages that your message needs to be in front of a consumer 7 times to be noticed and has to be noticed about 9 times before they are likely to make a decision?  That means that if you don’t have a budget and a plan to keep your marketing in front of your prospective patients over a long period of time you are in trouble.

How do you get more bang for your marketing buck?  Have a great headline for all of your marketing is number one.  Make a terrific offer with clear steps to take in order to receive that offer is number two.  And make sure you have a way to capture the name and email address of anyone and everyone who comes to your website, gets your mailings, comes to your office and doesn’t start treatment so you can market specifically to them until they start treatment or ask you to stop.

That’s it for today.  Let me know what questions you have and how I can help.

Bye for now,

Brian