DTUK1710

June 28-July 4, 2010United Kingdom Edition D o you tend to treat eve- ryone who wanders through your door, or do you have a dynamic growth strat- egy which moves your practice in the direction that you want to take it? When I decided to take time out to work ON my business in- stead of IN my business I found it had profound effects on my prac- tice and my work/life balance. There have always been two ways to achieve a pleasing bot- tom line - increase revenues or reduce costs. With the rising costs of rents in Docklands, my insist- ence on highly trained staff to im- plement my vision, and the costs of compliance brought about by the growing raft of regulations in dentistry, I have always found cost control quite a challenge, and have tended therefore to con- centrate on revenue growth. I have three mantras which have worked wonders for my practices over the years - market something different; market differently; market to different people. Marketing something different Routine dentistry has a routine hourly rate, so for ‘in-hours’ growth, the challenge became to balance this with higher value services to make a differ- ence to the average hourly rate. Over the years we have intro- duced orthodontics, Invisalign, Clearstep, specialist oral surgery, implants, endodontics and of course aesthetic dentistry, and pushed our average hourly rate up by 50 per cent. Marketing differently Having spent years produc- ing paper leaflets, I am now completely indebted to my web designer for the fantastic mar- keting tools my websites have become, and the direct and in- direct costs we have saved. We built a layered website – sim- ple visual information for those who just glance, depth for those who wanted more and com- prehensive patient information leaflets which encourage treat- ment plan acceptance. All the text we used followed the FAB (Feature, Advantage, Benefit) approach - less about the fea- tures (treatments), more about the advantages and benefits of our services. We then trained our team to use the website as a treatment planning tool in the surgeries and show patients the benefits of our services and how to download information leaf- lets. As a result, my treatment coordinator’s job has become easier and our treatment plan acceptance flew up, accompa- nied by a huge reduction in the amount of time, paper and ink that we had to expend on adver- tising and production of printed patient information. Marketing to different people A stream of new patients is the lifeblood of any practice and our marketing team set about attracting new patients with vigour by: a) Giving us visibility on the net - With more practices mov- ing onto the web, when we were not online we did not stand a chance of being heard so we had to embrace the net. Rome wasn’t built in a day so when we decided to go online we se- cured the capability to create a site which could evolve. This was not expensive – I was lucky to find experienced, dedicated professionals who provided real value for money. b) Shouting as loud as we could - We did this through directory list- ings and link-building activity- a listing is anything that brings your URL up in a search. There are thousands to choose from but picking the right ones was the trick. This was an essential for maintaining position. Keywords are shared but prevalence comes in degrees and we wanted to be at the higher end of the scale for sustained presence. c) Encouraging our patients to shout for us - The best growth strategy is one of referrals and recommendations - delivering the patient care and service that drives someone to talk about us at a dinner table is one of our key drivers. These days social net- working is incredibly powerful – so getting patients to shout online for us is another growth strategy. Conversion rates! You could be found a thousand times a day but if you don’t give the patient compelling reasons to come to you, optimisation work is all lost. Building our low cost marketing proposition was key and should be the cornerstone of marketing activity for all practic- es, whether it is online or offline. Goodbye search engine opti- misation, hello conversion rate optimisation! Say it, ensure your patients want it and then make it easy for them to act on it. To browse Seema’s practice web- site, visit www.smileimpressions. com. For more information email marketing@dentabyte.co.uk. DT A website is a dynamic low cost marketing tool for your practice Says Seema Sharma of Smile Impressions and Dentabyte Websites can be fantastic marketing tools