Can You Spot These 5 Common Mistakes in Dental Marketing for Young Families?

Many new doctors beginning their careers take a broad approach to marketing; often casting a wide net to attract “families”. This type of generalized marketing can often backfire without guidelines for succes. There are five common mistakes most dentists make in marketing to young families:

• Fail to track success
• Advertise convenience, yet have traditional hours
• Limited financial options
• Provide too many offers and options in one ad
• Use stock photography

Fail to Track Success: Savvy marketers use call tracking systems to help refine their marketing efforts. A robust system will help you discover key values of your customers. Our favorite system My Dentist Calls has a user-friendly dashboard that provides information on most popular time of day, zip codes of callers, and most requested procedures. It is critical that you discover why patients are calling your practice.

Providing Traditional Hours? When it comes to convience, drive a mile in a busy suburban Mom’s mini van. Marketing to young families means scheduling appointments at times that are outside the 8-5 norm. Keys to success? Provide late afternoons, multiple family member scheduling, increase opportunities during non-traditional school holidays. Think about teacher furlo days, or holidays where families typically don’t travel. Busy Mom’s are looking for activities for their children during that time.

Financial Options: Young familes typically hold jobs that provide dental benefits. This is high value to that person. When expenses exceed insurance coverage, which it often does, having finanical options that fit into the monthly budget will be the key to providing comprehensive care. Using tools like Compassionate Finance allows dental practices to extend credit, earn interest, and take the burden of collections off the dental team.

Confused Message: Oftentimes dentists will take a shotgun approach to marketing. In an attempt to “get the most” out of a direct mail piece or newspaper ad will send mixed messages. Can you pick up the mixed messages in this list of offers?

• Children Welcome
• Free Denture Consult
• $99 Whitening
• Convenient Hours (Mon-Thur 8-5)

The goal of marketing is to create a connection between yourself and your patients. Over use of stock photography and templates reduces the authencity of your business. Don’t allow marketing companies to dilute your brand. Provide them with photographs of yourself, your team, your patients, your community. Adding this realistic photography boosts your credibility.

Taking your marketing to the next level oftentimes is a matter of managing the small details. Boost your effectiveness by avoiding the top five mistakes: track your success, provide convenience, expand financial options, create congruen offers, and use authentic photography.