High Tech Bonding for Patient Adhesion...
High Tech Bonding for Patient Adhesion and Replication
By Mark Curtis
President, Curtis Marketing Group
What are the three keys to success? That's easy! Location! Location! Location! A location on Main Street coupled with decent signage identifying your profession for every passerby to see, plus a few people spreading your name around town, could create a dynasty. Okay, maybe not a dynasty, but it will communicate your message quickly and effectively. Today's marketing landscape has changed. Competitive messages and images have increased in number, some studies cite that we are exposed to 36,000 messages a day. While their complexity strains the quotient of understandability, let alone acceptance.
Today, if you say, "I'm a good, friendly, nice, conscientious, and full-service dentist," you have pigeonholed yourself into a consumer category that is not effective if you pursue patients interested in high-end, elective dentistry. If you say, "cosmetic dentist," few people understand that you mean a dentist who uses advanced restorative materials that are healthy, exceptional, long lasting, and amazingly lifelike in function. Basically, cosmetic advances are the greatest development that has ever come from dentistry. Plus, your practice offers enhanced comfort for patients beyond comparison!
Of course, you could use another moniker, but what? Would it help make your market position any easier to understand? A forty-word tagline alone won't bridge this value-appreciation gap. So, what is a cosmetic dentist to do? Today, the three keys to success are: Communication! Communication! Communication! This edition of the Academy Connection is a perfect example of how the explosion of electronic communication has increased the speed at which people receive and understand the latest concepts. Let us take a look at how the marketing landscape has changed and how your practice can benefit from it.
If I look back just six years ago, only 1 out of every 10 of our clients had a fax machine. Just two years ago, approximately 20% of AACD dentists listed an e-mail address. In this year's directory, about 70-80% listed an e-mail address, and the numbers approach 100% for those AACD members living in the USA.
In his 1000 Gems seminars, Dr. Tom Orent always asks how many in the audience of general dentists maintain Web sites for their practice. His results, as reported to me two years ago, stood at approximately 4%. His current reading have increased to about 8%, however; approximately 25% of AACD members list a Web site address in the current AACD International Membership Directory.
Different kinds of electronic presentations have enhanced the patient experience. For example, DVDs have become common in reception areas, and now, individually customized DVDs complete with morphing patient before & after photos interspersed with informational segments about the practice, are readily available.
Many doctors used to lug multiple slide trays off to community presentations, and many used slides in their consultation rooms. Now, doctors routinely use Microsoft ® PowerPoint in their presentations, based entirely from a laptop computer.
Within the past 3 years, the AACD created an e-mail notification system, complete with a link to an online presentation, as the preferred method of delivering this newsletter. Prior to this change, all issues were printed and mailed. Now, many members of the AACD deliver a portion of their patient recall notices by e-mail, while some e-mail patients their practice's newsletter, rather than printing one.
So, what's to be made of all of this?
As dentists move closer towards electronic communication and marketing, they must create and communicate personal relationships with their current and prospective patients. While technology itself will blur the lines between the perceived services that individual practices offer, the unique product that each dentist and his or her team can offer is "themselves." By using electronic information, you can provide a richer and more dynamic experience for your patients. While the "letter in the envelope" is not totally obsolete, it is moving very close to being relegated to the bottom of the marketing list.
The need to establish a perceived and incomparable patient-practice relationship is especially critical for AACD members because their practices concentrate on offering high-investment, elective dental services to their patients. Now more than ever, patients need to comprehend and appreciate the value of cosmetic services. Since many AACD members have bemoaned to me, "Every dentist up and down the street says they do cosmetic dentistry," the market differentiation of your practice must rely on more than a listing of services. It will need solid credibility, a high profile reputation, a somewhat mythical "mystique," and the ability to communicate to the public that your mission is to love, protect, and serve your patients better than any of their other dental choices.
The same technology that helped create this situation can assist us. Technology means more than just information transfer. It is, in fact, an advanced way to communicate feelings. For those who make that paradigm leap, the future will be more secure than ever.