In an earlier blog post, I suggested the following 5 strategies to grow your practice in a soft economy:
- Make whitening a core element of your practice
- Develop a comprehensive marketing plan
- Use photography for patient education
- Get Serious about diagnosing and treating perio disease
- Design an effective new patient experience
Let’s talk about marketing. Today, marketing is a crucial skill set that you must develop! It is important that the Dentist and the entire team adopt a marketing mindset. The best way to adopt this mindset is to read an incredible book written by my friend, Fred Joyal. His book is titled, Everything is Marketing: The Ultimate Strategy for Dental Practice Growth. I suggest that you and your entire team read this book as part of your Office Book Club.
Here’s how that works. Buy a copy of the book for each person. Pick a day of the week where you have a working lunch meeting to discuss a section of the book. Make the reading assignments manageable. It could be a chapter or just 15-20 pages. During your lunch meeting, you discuss the segment of the book and how that information applies to your practice. Conclude the meeting by deciding on specific action steps your office will take, who will be responsible for the project, and agree on a completion date. These are the 3 W’s necessary for productive meetings (What, Who, When). Below is a link for Fred’s Book. Enter Gary in promo code and get special pricing. NOTE: Fred’s book is available on audio if you prefer to listen to books and Fred actually reads the audio version himself, so you get the tone of the book.
http://www.goaskfred.com/Store
Before you develop your comprehensive marketing plan, if you have not already done so, let me strongly encourage you to invest in professional design services to create a practice logo or practice identity. This is a very important ‘Branding’ exercise that is often overlooked. Think about how your logo or practice identity represents your office. Consider how you would like to be perceived by potential patients. Your logo or practice identity will be prominently placed on all of your marketing materials and you want to ensure that the image of your marketing materials matches your practice. Consider the role of color and how these colors communicate a message. Below is the logo of my own dental practice. I am sharing this simply to demonstrate how a logo or practice identity can communicate meaning. We like it:
Just like they say in the X-Games, don’t try this at home! While you may have an artistic eye or consider yourself design-savvy, I would strongly encourage you to use the services of a seasoned, design professional to help you create a practice logo or practice identity. A good firm will welcome your input and will take your ideas and turn them into a logo or practice identity you love! Also, if it has been more than a few years since you have created your logo, consider it a wise investment to ‘freshen’ your look to represent you today. Here is the resource I recommend when our clients need a logo or practice identity:
Having a marketing mindset by the Dentist and the entire team and a logo or practice identity that represents you are the first steps to marketing success. In future blog posts, I will discuss specific marketing strategies. Keep smiling!
