by William M. Dorfman, DDS, and William Horrocks

In this series, Dr. William Dorfman has outlined a variety of marketing approaches that can be used to attract more fee-for-service patients. In this article, he and William (Howie) Horrocks integrate those approaches with specific tips to form a plan of action, providing steps that can be implemented to make a practice`s marketing strategy more effective.

Start With Internal Marketing

1. Talk to your mailing list & it will talk back. Your first, most cost-efficient action is to start with your own patients. Marketing to those who are familiar with you is easier and more profitable than marketing to strangers.

Internet marketing is about “upselling,” that is, selling more dentistry to those who are already buying dentistry from you. The idea is to take those who are happy with your product and to sell them more of it or to sell it to them more often. They (and you) will benefit tremendously.

Bottom line: You must develop regular communications with your patient base. This could be a practice newsletter or even a personal letter that you send quarterly or, preferably, monthly. If your patient list is not yet computerized, make this a priority project. Most word-processing software allows you to write a single form letter to your patients and then to personalize it by “mail merging” your patients’ names and addresses on the letter. (For the rest of the article, click here.)