your practice marketing requirements<\/a> in full and leave you, as dentists, to get on with your clinical role. However if I did, I’d be doing you a disservice.<\/p>\nLike all businesses, dentists need to understand which elements of marketing can be outsourced but also which elements need overview and input from within the practice team.<\/p>\n
In this blog we will explore the relationship between the practice and 3rd party marketing companies in more detail. But first, a little bit of history….<\/p>\n
How it used to be done<\/h3>\n
Before dentistry became increasingly competitive, even just 4 or 5 years back, a decent website with a good search engine position was really all you needed. This, coupled with some decent practice signage and a reasonable reputation for service, would stand you in good stead. Dental marketing companies could build you a decent site, throw a few hundred cheap back-links at it and off you went. However, these days, things are somewhat different and a more sophisticated approach is needed.<\/p>\n
So what changed?<\/h3>\n
<\/p>\n
First off, the number of dentists trying to advertise their services, in particular more complex, “high end” treatments such as implants has increased markedly. Everyone now understands the power of the internet leading to a proliferation in websites (not all good!) as dental practices attempt to broadcast their services. This is an increasingly crowded space but still extremely important.<\/p>\n
Additionally, the newer generations of dental graduates appear to be increasingly commercially “savvy” and many look to build their own personal brand as soon as they become established.<\/p>\n
We also see the increasing “commoditisation” of dentistry where the general public shop around for treatment via easy access to the web and social media recommendations.<\/p>\n
Underlying all of this is are the dramatic changes which have been made by the search engines, particularly Google, over the last couple of years. These changes have made it very difficult to gain prominent search positions without putting in a lot more effort than was needed historically.<\/p>\n
The upshot of all of this is that more dentists are competing in an increasingly crowded space and where the prominent platforms e.g. Google, have made it much harder to succeed.<\/p>\n
But success is still possible if you go about it correctly.<\/p>\n
So what needs to be done to succeed?<\/h3>\n
Earlier in the article, we mentioned the need for a more sophisticated approach, with the dental marketer and practice team members playing a part. This multifaceted approach will yield much better results than if you try to completely outsource every aspect of your marketing.<\/p>\n
How does this approach work and who does what?<\/h3>\n
Let’s take a look at the main elements of the “marketing package” and how responsibilities are assigned:<\/p>\n
Getting the practice team “on message”<\/h3>\n
In an earlier life, I always remember my old boss telling me that “we are all sales people” whether we hold a technical back-office role or if we are directly customer facing. What he meant of course, is that we can all have a huge influence on company success (or otherwise) via the behaviours we exhibit.<\/p>\n
The key point here is to ensure that the whole dental team are on board with what you are trying to achieve and that their values and behaviours are tuned accordingly. The most sophisticated marketing machine in the world won’t deliver if the new patient comes up against Mrs or Mr Grumpy on reception when they first call in.<\/p>\n
So a top priority is to ensure that your team are up-to-speed and a trained and effective part of your marketing mechanism. This is a primary responsibility for practice management and ultimately the business owner.<\/p>\n
Internal marketing<\/h3>\n
Whilst not entirely accurate, “internal marketing” is often used in the dental world to describe all of those elements which are used “in-house” to promote the business. This ranges from processes and procedures for the team, through to signage, literature, video on the reception flat screen and more. Most marketing companies can assist with recommendations and implementation but the responsibility for getting it done and keeping it updated lies primarily with practice management. Some companies now offer a service whereby they deliver new marketing materials every month, but whether this is worthwhile and delivers, you would need to evaluate and decide.<\/p>\n
They key here is that your internal marketing is fresh, relevant and that your team work with it consistently and effectively as part of their daily activities.<\/p>\n
The practice website<\/h3>\n
This is an extremely important tool and after word-of-mouth referral, delivers way more new patient enquiries than any other mechanism. It is important to keep the website current and professional, not just for your patients but because Google likes fresh information too. Modern dental websites often come equipped with a content management system (CMS) which allows in-house updates. However, many dentists prefer their web designer to handle this for them, particularly where a “polished” presentation is required.<\/p>\n
So updating the practice website is often a joint effort between the original designer and the practice team. A good dental marketer will also proactively update you about changes in legislation so the the website can be upgraded accordingly.<\/p>\n
The practice blog<\/h3>\n
This is a great example of where collaboration between the practice and the marketer can really score. Whilst your dental marketing guy can write accurate articles about dentistry with SEO in mind, it’s highly unlikely that they will be able to introduce the personal touch that patients will appreciate and engage with. Consequently we recommend that a member of the team is trained to make occasional blog contributions with practice related topics in mind.<\/p>\n
Social media<\/h3>\n
Like blogging, this is best served with a collaborative effort – your marketer and the practice working together. Tools such as HootSuite can really help to streamline the process and reduce the impact on core time. A good dental marketing agency will be able to offer advice, training and remote mentoring to keep your team on track and also in line with GDC guidelines.<\/p>\n
The power of internet reviews<\/h3>\n
Patient reviews are incredibly important, not just transferring the positive experience of existing patients to potential new ones, but also for helping the practice to appear on page one of Google in the local (map) search results. The marketing company should be able to guide you on how to do this, (at Dental Media, we even provide a guide for your patients) but it’s incumbent on the practice team to keep the process moving.<\/p>\n
Email marketing<\/h3>\n
This could be considered as a sub-set of internal marketing and is a primary way of keeping your business “front of mind” with existing patients. With the increasing competition and commoditisation of dental services mentioned earlier, it is essential to stay in touch with existing patients and try to prevent them from straying to those easily accessible competitor services. This activity is best managed from within the practice team with the dental marketer facilitating and recommending as part of the monthly marketing programme. Tools such as MailChimp make this process relatively easy to manage.<\/p>\n
Measuring, monitoring and reviewing<\/h3>\n
Your marketing spend is likely to be a fairly substantial part of your cost account and any good business owner will want to see that it is yielding results. A diligent marketer will be working in conjunction with practice management to review results and re-direct the campaign and resources accordingly.<\/p>\n
Summary<\/h3>\n
is no longer a case of paying a third party hundreds of pounds and month and saying “get on with it”.<\/p>\n
Increased competition, commoditisation of services and huge changes on the Google playing field now dictate a more sophisticated and collaborative approach between the practice and the marketing company.<\/p>\n
To see how Dental Media make this work with clients and to hear more about how you can benefit too, please call our team on 01332 672548.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Are the days of fully outsourced marketing over? I would love to say that we, as dental marketers, could handle 100% of your practice marketing requirements in full and leave you, as dentists, to get on with your clinical role. …<\/p>\n
Dental Marketing – How The Practice Team Can Help<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-advice"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dental-media.co.uk\/marketing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dental-media.co.uk\/marketing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dental-media.co.uk\/marketing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dental-media.co.uk\/marketing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dental-media.co.uk\/marketing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5320"}],"version-history":[{"count":32,"href":"https:\/\/www.dental-media.co.uk\/marketing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5320\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6873,"href":"https:\/\/www.dental-media.co.uk\/marketing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5320\/revisions\/6873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dental-media.co.uk\/marketing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dental-media.co.uk\/marketing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dental-media.co.uk\/marketing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}