The Dental Marketing Nine-Step Process

The purpose of ‘Fully Booked’ is to take the hard work out of dental marketing. It uses a nine-step dental marketing process that will work for any dental professional who wants grow their practice.

This nine-step process is suitable for practice owners, practice managers, or marketing consultants working with a dental practice.

STEP 1. Get back to basics

The first step addresses the basics of identifying your ‘why’ and what your core values are. Understanding your patients and knowing your competition are key to success.

STEP 2. Start with a plan

It is incredibly important that you have a marketing plan for your practice and step two addresses this point. If you don’t plan then you are very likely courting failure, because you don’t know where you’re heading and can’t evaluate whether your marketing attempts have been successful.

STEP 3. Build the right foundation

This step focuses on having the right foundation on which to build your practice. Your team and your brand are your keystones, an understanding of patient touch points and the different types of marketing your launch pad.

STEP 4. Attract the right patients

Now that you have the right foundation, you can then go out and target your ideal patient. This step is where you understand the right dental marketing tools, channels, and techniques to attract the right kind of patients to your practice.

STEP 5. Nurture relationships with your existing patients

Attracting patients to your practice is only the beginning. You now need to understand how to build on the relationships with your existing patients by using the correct marketing tools and techniques to turn them into long-term patients.

STEP 6. Maximising your patient referrals

Long-term patients will always refer people to you. Developing referral programs maximises the benefits of word of mouth. In this step, you learn what makes a great referral program and how you can deliver this in your practice.

STEP 7. Foster partnerships and raise your profile

Once you are building great relationships with your patients, it is time to look outside of your practice and see what other businesses you can create partnerships and referral programs with.

STEP 8. Learn to listen

To understand what you are doing, both right and wrong, in your relationships with your patients, you need to learn to really listen and respond to them. With the advent of social media and online review sites, it is now easier then ever before to listen to your patients and learn from what they are saying. In this step, you will learn the best techniques and tools to enable you to listen well.

STEP 9. Review, revise, retry

As with everything in your practice, it is imperative to review your dental marketing. This step guides you through reflecting on what is and isn’t working, revising anything that needs changing, and then retrying.