What does marketing have to do with baking? Probably a great deal more than you realize!
One of the most common areas of assistance we find clients requesting is help with marketing. This is a multi-layered request with a different plan/recipe required for every practice. Great marketing, like great cooking, requires careful layering and careful planning. Too many offices, when faced with the task of marketing to grow the practice, employ the “throw everything at the wall and see what sticks” method. While this plan will get some patients in the door, for the most part it’s an overly expensive method, and like poorly measured baking, doesn’t work very well. Let’s look at the marketing layers that do work:
A good marketing plan is like the recipe. We here at Mosaic have created excellent marketing plans (as you should as well)… taking time and patience to model them, testing them at all altitudes (and in many locations), and have found that they work well every time. Now for the ingredients:
- First, an initial large scale marketing piece to get your name out and let the patients know where you are and who you are. Like the flour in the cake, this is the basis of good marketing.
- Second, getting out into the community to meet as many people as possible. Like the flavoring in the cake, this comes in many types:
- Meeting referring and/or neighboring dentists and bringing treats to them when you visit
- Going into schools and pre-schools with hygiene programs
- Delivering flyers with discounts to all your local businesses
- Participating in as many community events as possible, such as festivals, health fairs, charity races, etc.
- And don’t forget those special holiday flavors…..gifts to referring dentists and their staff at holidays. will go a long way towards leaving a good taste about your practice
- Third, social media marketing. Like the baking powder that makes everything rise, this is how you get your name and profile out to Google, Facebook, Yelp and all the other sites where patients will find you
- Fourth, signing up for as many insurance plans as are cost effective for your location and your practice. These are the eggs in the cake that get everything together….patients find you on these sites and come to you because you offer these insurance discounts.
- Finally, in-house marketing is the frosting on the cake! Asking for referrals, offering referral rewards, creating games and contests in the office and on Facebook, and generally treating everyone who walks through the door like solid gold creates the beautiful topping for everything else.
