Taking dental referrals

Setting up your practice website and systems to encourage and manage patient referrals.

This article will not be of use to all dentists but it may serve to assist those who already take referrals or are considering doing so. This would typically be registered specialists, or dentists who have a great deal of experience in certain disciplines, for example placing implants. At Dental Media we provide a lot of services for this particular sector and consequently thought it would be useful to summarise some of the useful ethical marketing tools and techniques which are available.

A referral section for your website

Perhaps the most obvious technique is to implement a specific referral section for the practice website. There are a couple of ways to do this as follows:

The introductory “splash” page:

You may see the technique used whereby a splash page is presented as the website home page with a couple of links – “For Patients” and “For Dentists”, added there. However, data suggests that this isn’t the best way to go about it – bounce rates from splash pages set up like this tend to be quite high. They can be confusing to the general public and they also tend to fare quite badly in Google. So you can consider this method but it would not be our recommendation.

The dedicated referral section in the headline navigation structure:

This is the recommended way to proceed rather than trying to develop the “site within a site” concept. You should lead the referring dentists to a clear section which details your skills, services, testimonials, process etc but still as part of the overall website structure. This way, if a general user accidentally accesses the referral section, it’s a single click to get back to where they should be rather than being stuck in a world of clinical explanations etc. The referral section itself can incorporate all of the necessary information plus an encrypted contact form to submit information.

The dedicated website:

Where budget allows, this is perhaps the best way to reach your referral audience. The primary reason for this is that you can target a narrower niche of dental services rather than compete with all of the other practices offering general services too. A dedicated referral site can also be optimised for search engines more easily than a website which has a range of more general services on offer.

Referral platforms:

A referral platform is a shared, on-line environment where a GDP and referral clinician can share case notes, radiographs, images etc to streamline case management. Typically the systems are highly functional; for example when one party updates data, then the other party is automatically notified by email etc. Data is transferred, stored and backed-up in an encrypted form to ensure compliance with the usual confidentiality protocols. If you would like more information about referral platforms and perhaps a demonstration, please contact us.

E-newsletters

Use a system such as Mailchimp to send occasional e-newsletter updates to your referral partners. This ensures that you stay “front of mind” when they are considering who to refer to.

Traditional referral marketing:

Whilst the web is recognised as the the most efficient and effective channel for most dental marketing activities, you should also reach out to your potential referral partners via traditional methods i.e. introductory letter and details of your services. This can be done very effectively using a professionally produced referral pack within which you can include a cover letter, details of your services, fee structure, biography and referral forms. You should aim for a “high-spec” document in keeping with the professional services you are offering.

Your referral guarantee

As well as giving your referring partners absolute confidence in your clinical abilities you should also make clear the usual referral guarantee i.e. that any patients referred to you will be returned to the care of the referring GDP as soon as the treatment is completed. There is understandable concern about the potential for patient “poaching” within the dental community so it makes sense to allay these concerns with a prominent statement in all of your referral material, web and print.

Summary

To help your dental referral business flourish you need to implement suitable ethical ‘marketing’ and support systems to help. This means setting up your website correctly, implementing systems such as a referral platform to make the referral partnership as simple as possible, and building your relationship with local referring practices by distributing high quality referral literature. You should also seek to stay in touch with your partners with occasional e-newsletters.

If you are looking to grow your dental referral business and need assistance with setting up the various support systems, please call us on 01332 672548 to discuss how we can assist.