Marketing Strategy

To establish and maintain a successful, thriving dental implant practice in a down economy will not happen by chance.  This requires having a well defined marketing strategy in place.  Some very key elements of a marketing strategy are as follows.

Your Goals—If you presently place as little as 20 dental implants per year, but desire to place 60 over the next 12 months it can be done.  Maybe your goal is to go from 200 to 600 each year.  This is also achievable.  Anything’s possible with the right game plan and ability to execute.  But you must  first establish well rounded  goals for the year in all related areas.  This is the heart of your plan and the measuring stick of its effectiveness.  The pool of adults that are both missing multiple teeth and can afford dental implants is tremendous.  In 2009 the baby-boomers were worth more than 2 trillion dollars.  But this is where most offices fall short.  Most offices have no marketing road map for reaching their ultimate goal.

Your Company Identity—This is where you will must project a unique value proposition.  In other words what can prospective patients, referral sources, and employees ALWAYS expect from your practice when it comes to implant dentistry?  We’ll help you to develop a clear and concise description of your practice’s identity, including 25, 50, and 100 word positioning statements, your one key brand promise to the patient (and referral base), and your key personality traits.

Your Services—How’s your dental implant practice any different from your competitors?  Look at how your dental implant services are packaged and categorized.  Development of a detailed features and benefits statement of each service (bone grafting, sinus lifts, esthetic zone implants, immediate occlusal loading, etc.) is critical.  In these tough economic times you must concentrate on differentiating features and not the “me-too” implant dentistry syndrome.  We’ll help you to separate your implant business from the competition so that by the time they figure out what it is you are doing, the momentum will be too great for competitors to catch up, much less keep up.

Your Target Market—Do you have a we’ll defined target market?  Have you ranked your target market in relation to their ability to achieve your company goals?  For instance, young adults with congenitally missing lateral incisors, patients between the ages of 55 and 64 that’s missing an average of 10 teeth, or patients in the market for immediate occlusal loading.  We’ll help you define which services have the highest profit potential, the least amount of competition, patients that most need your expertise and can afford your services.

Your Competition—Using the information gathered earlier in your market research, we’ll help you describe each of your competitors, how their pricing structure compares with yours, their competitive strengths and weaknesses, and how you plan to compete with them and separate your practice in the eyes of patients and your professional referral base.

Your Patient Education Model—Outline how your practice communicates (to the patient) their dental implant needs.   We’ll help you to understand what specific tools, aids and verbal skills will be necessary for your staff to best support this objectives.

Your Marketing Mix—Once we’ve helped you to develop a mix of marketing activities (social media marketing, direct mail, internal marketing, etc.) that will support your practice’s goals and marketing strategy we will detail an action plan so that we can assist you with the implementation process over the next six to 12 months period.

Your Marketing Organization—We’ll help you document the organizational structure, with brief descriptions of the responsibilities of the key positions required to implement your plan including any outsourcing resources you plan to use.  Should you promote a staff member to handle these duties or are you better off hiring an experienced individual for this position?  We’ll help position you to make the best decision.

Your Marketing Budget—Finally, we’ll use your Marketing Mix implementation calendar and your Marketing Organization decisions to develop an itemized monthly budget designed around producing results that nets more dental implants placed and/or restored each year!