Dental Marketing Ideas - How to Attract New Patients to Your Dental Practice

If you're looking for proven dental marketing strategies on how to attract new patients to your dental practice, then one great dental marketing idea is to create a successful referral program for your practice.

Although this strategy does not focus on dental internet marketing, it is among the best dental marketing ideas you can think of and it is possible to see amazing results if correctly implemented.

When it comes to successfully implementing a new patient referral program, there are three key components you must have. Patient referral program key #1 is to start by focusing on internal referrals.

The first step in this dental patient marketing strategy is to focus on generating internal referrals. Although this might seem obvious, if you’ve yet to implement your patient referral program or have a program in place that is not generating results, then likely lack of focus and intention is the issue.

In every business, referrals will be your best source of growth. This holds true for your dental practice. At least 40-50% of your patients should come from internal referrals if you own an established practice.

If that’s not currently the case for your dental practice, then the first thing you should do is figure out how to attract new patients to your dental practice by implementing a system that will help foster these referrals.

As you’re creating your dental practice marketing program, be aware that your patients do not necessarily view your practice as a growing business in search of more patients to serve. Thus, the way in which you present your referral program to happy patients will prove essential to your success.

Key #2 in seeing success with marketing your dental practice through a referral program is to script the introduction or presentation of your program.

The presentation of your referral program will prove to be a major sticking point for your practice. Even with a straightforward referral system where the motivation for patients is simple, you’ll need a scripted way of presenting your program.

If your staff has an aversion to sales and doesn’t like the idea of scripting their conversations with patients, then you’ll need to convince them of the importance of having a standard way of presenting your referral program.

Otherwise, you’ll notice a consistent inconsistency in your ability to generate patient referrals. In creating your script, follow this script which one dentist uses to generate 35+ patient referrals per month: At the end of an appointment, have your hygienist smile and give their full attention to the patient.

They should then thank the patient for coming and follow-up by saying, “We really love having you as one of our patients.” Usually, the patient will respond with something like, “Thank you. You always do a great job and I love being a patient here!” This sort of response provides your hygienist with an ideal opportunity to introduce your referral program and give a few cards to your patients.

They could intro by saying something like, “That’s our favorite thing to hear from our patients. Did you know that one of the major ways our office is growing is by patients telling their friends about us? Have you heard about our awesome referral program?”

Key #3 is to fine tune your presentation until it works. Regardless of what dental marketing method you create to present your dental patient referral program, you’ll need to fine tune and refine your methods. The way in which your presentation is made will decide your success rate at generating new patients. I hope you will take these 3 keys and implement a dental referral program that brings in 35+ new patients for your practice per month.

As an Australian dental marketing Agency and dental marketing experts, we specialize in dental marketing. From offering essential dental marketing services to creating custom dental internet marketing solutions for your practice.