Relationship-Focused Dental Marketing

Posts Tagged ‘dental referral marketing’

How much value do you derive from a referral?  If you’ve long dismissed relationship marketing, you may want to reconsider.  A few major shifts have occurred, creating the perfect recipe for referral and relationship marketing to deliver higher returns than ever before.

The first shift is how consumers are dissecting information.  A quote from a recent New York Times article entitled The End of Newspapers said, “Young people judge the validity of information by the network of friends which passed it on, rather than by which media outlet broadcast it.”  The power of relationships has always been strong, but who knew it would reach the strength to dissolve the power of traditional media.

The second shift is Facebook now surpassing Google to become the most visited website in the U.S.  Hitwise, a web analytics firm, also reported the market share of visits to Facebook.com increased 185% in 2010 from the same week in 2009. Google also grew, but only 9%. While most of us aren’t yet using Facebook as a search tool, it’s time to pause and consider if that is one of Facebook’s future goals …

The third (potential) shift is that Facebook may in fact surpass Google as a search tool.  Facebook has aggressively enhanced their search technology.  In fact, a recent post from a Facebook representative was entitled, “Delivering More Search Results as You Type”.  This move will essentially facilitate word of mouth among “friends” even more.  An excerpt of that post is shown below:

“Now as you’re typing in a query in the search bar, you will instantaneously see results not only of the people, events, groups and Pages you’re connected with but also the connections of your friends and globally relevant results.”

What this means is that if your patient is a fan of your practice and one of their Facebook friends types in a search for ie:  “Dentist” or “Orthodontist” they are likely to see your page as one of the top search results.

The ROR or return on relationships has become a more powerful force than ever before.  Expect the return you get from loyal fans, who are happy to share you with their network of friends, to become even more valuable.

What are you currently doing to increase your ROR (return on relationships) with your patients?

Your Facebook success is a reflection of how much you talk about it. It’s important to note that Facebook is not a “build it and they will come” marketing tactic—social media marketing is more like a garden that requires continuous nurturing.

With that said, the number of fans you get, and the testimonials and comments you receive on your Facebook page are often a direct result of invitations and promotion done within the dental practice …

One doctor recently said, “Asking patients to become my Facebook fan is just as hard as asking for referrals”.  (Over the years, asking for referrals is one of the most common roadblocks I hear practitioners and teams complain about).

Once the shiny newness of having a Facebook page wears off, it’s time to consider how you can keep the momentum going.  Here are a few tips to help boost your Facebook participation.

1. Will the doctor invite patients to join your Facebook community, or will it be another team member? Whoever is talking to patients about Facebook should be intimate with your page, and the page’s activity.  Discuss this with your team in advance and decide who is best to handle this.
2. Plan what to say when you talk about Facebook. I’m a fan of scripts. Many years ago, I resisted scripts and thought they’d make you sound like a robot.  However with personalization, scripts can be customized to your authentic voice and they can prove invaluable.
3. Determine what you want the “purpose” of your page to be. Will you put root canal videos in your patient’s newsfeeds every week? Or will you be sharing fun news about you and your team, such as the photos of your recent team outing.  When you feel good about your posts, it’s a lot easier to invite patients to join you.

An additional benefit of a Facebook page is to use it as a barometer to show how well you are promoting the page offline (talking about it with patients in your office).  If your page has no recent activity and the fan base is flat, chances are you need to step up the conversation in your practice.  Now, if only there were a tool to determine how often doctors and teams were inviting patients to refer as well: )

Every day I’m getting more and more invitations to join Facebook pages. People are jumping on board like the salmon’s rush … Will Facebook become the replacement for the yellow pages—or will it be more like email?

If it begins to seem more like email, you’ll want to remember how easy it was to get people to share their email with you. Now, patients (like all of us), are more leery about giving out their email address. People wonder if they’ll begin receiving emails from you every day or every week. Our email boxes have become inundated with virtual junk mail. Will patients wonder if they’ll get too much “junk mail” via your Facebook page as well? The answer is likely “yes”.

At the end of the day, it’s not whether Facebook will be more like yellow pages or email. What will matter is what people find when they land on your page. It will be less about the “dental information” you post, and more about how your practice personality translates online.

Most importantly, it’s you, your team, and your relationships with patients that will determine the success or failure of your social marketing efforts.

How can you begin planning today to make sure people will fan your page? (and if they fan you that they won’t hide you). First and foremost, make your page a reflection of your practice personality. Let your relationship skills spill over into your Facebook page.

Be cognizant of the amount you post and be highly cognizant of what you say in your posts.  Ensure your page is a long-term success by focusing on patients in a social way, not just a “here’s-some-dental-news” way. Remember relationships first and the benefits will follow!

Traditional dental marketing is dead.  It died in 2009. Yellow pages were listed in Wired magazine’s article, “100 Things Your Kids May Never Know About”.  Traditional marketing budgets for direct mail, newspapers, magazines, and television are being moved into online interactive segments, such as search, email and social media marketing (source: Forrester, March/April 2009).

While many tactics may never work again, several traditional marketing techniques will continue to live strong—those being word of mouth, relationship, and referral marketing.

In addition, the common elements that have made all marketing efforts succeed will never change.  Those common elements are planning, implementation, consistency, and tracking.

Marketing is not usually guaranteed, easy, or predictable.  There have always been new opportunities to explore … Remember when you first invested in a website and wondered if anyone would ever see it?

Whether you plan to explore social media marketing opportunities or not, it will still be important to be flexible, consistent, and to track your efforts.  The future will not change these core marketing principles. You will still need to test techniques and evaluate whether they are working—keep doing what is working and change what is not … Be consistent, be patient, and never stop.

Marketing opportunities will continue to evolve.  With new opportunities will be new challenges; however the key to success will be to keep marketing. Doing nothing has eliminated businesses in the past and it will continue to do so in the future.

This article was written as the fourth of my five 2010 dental marketing predictions for my friends at DentalPlanet.  What do you think? What are your marketing plans for 2010?

Without successful word of mouth strategies in place, social media marketing will fail.  This is the third of my 2010 dental marketing predictions.  Social marketing is not a “build it and they will come” tactic …

For example, a traditional magazine ad required you to build your ad, write the check to pay for it, and perhaps sit and wait for it to work.  Social media marketing requires ongoing effort—sort of like maintaining a yard.  You’ll always need to tend to it or it will die.

Practices well versed in referral marketing strategies, those who understand what it takes to make traditional word of mouth succeed, will likely find social media a remarkable opportunity. On the other hand, those practices looking for fast fixes, immediate floods of new patients or those who practice off-and-on “when we have time” marketing will be quickly disappointed in social media.

It’s happening already.  Check out Facebook, and you’ll find dozens of abandoned dental practice pages.  Pages were created, and for whatever reason were left ignored.  Most commonly I hear, “We just don’t have time”, “We don’t know what to say”, “It didn’t work”, etc.  Here are a few successful word of mouth marketing elements to keep in mind with social media:

• Communicate well and be responsive.
• Be personable (yet you don’t have to get personal).
• Be yourself, authenticity is in.
• Make one specific person in your office responsible for regularly maintaining and monitoring your efforts (it helps if they are people oriented, motivated—and for social media, have good web 2.0 skills).
• Be patient.

Social media marketing efforts will build results for the long term.  As with referral and word of mouth marketing, focus on building quality relationships and communities first—the benefits will follow.

What are your thoughts?

In 2010, consider patient relations as patient interactions during which many of their friends observe … My second 2010 dental marketing prediction is “The internet and social media will magnify patient relations – for better or worse”.

A report from Morgan Stanley revealed how many years it has taken each media industry to reach fifty million users. Radio took 38 years, followed by television at 13 years. The Internet seemed to win at 4 years, until Facebook added 100 million users in less than 9 months.

Never before has media accommodated social interaction at the level and speed we experience today. What that means for dental practices (and all businesses) is that patient relations (customer service) must be exemplary if you wish to attract new business online.  Bad word of mouth can spread at viral speed … read more at DentalPlanet.

Read the first of my five 2010 Dental Marketing Predictions, just released by my friends at DentalPlanet. Prediction #1 is “Relationship Marketing Will Dominate Traditional Marketing” …

Changing consumer behavior, the Internet and social media will continue to fuel a major shift in the direction of marketing and advertising. The internet will continue to squeeze out phonebook ads and newspaper subscriptions.  Television commercials will continue to be skipped—a result of the growing proliferation of DVR’s … and Pepsi is ending 23-years of super bowl ads, while shifting the budget to new media.

Social media such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, blogs, etc. will continue to capture the attention of your patients.  Add to this the fact that today, 6% of consumers say they believe marketers’ ad claims … which means 94% don’t (source: Forrester).

Read more, see what others think about the predictions, and enter to win cool Prize Packages, including BestBuy gift cards, Free Website, $500 off Equipment, Intraoral Camera, A Curing Light, a copy of my ebook “Referral Marketing How-To System For Dentists”  & more at DentalPlanet.com.

Join us!  We’re partnering up with Korey Korfiatis at DDSBrand to present a Social Media & Referral Marketing Seminar for Dentists …

Many dental practices are finding themselves pondering the question, “Can social networking tools like Facebook, Twitter and web video truly help me attract new patients and grow referrals?” “Is it all just a trend? or is new media truly being consumed more than traditional media?”

Learn about this and much more.  Rita will present with Korey on one day only, Friday, February 26, 2010 in lovely Seattle (The Meydenbauer Center, Bellevue, WA).  Register at DDSBrand.  We look forward to seeing you!

Social media marketing may prove difficult for some dentists—as well as many other businesses …  Seth Godin said, “Social media processes build results for the long haul“.  I agree, and would also add referral and relationship marketing to that point.

For example, you may not be able to immediately measure the value of your exceptional patient relations skills, however they’ll likely impact your referrals.  Focus on building communities on Facebook and acquiring quality followers on Twitter for relationship purposes first—and the benefits will follow.

Quality patient relations skills are key to successful relationship building, both in person and in online social networks …  Read why dental teams should assess their patient relations skills before implementing a social media marketing strategy in the Metropolitan Denver Dental Society’s Articulator Magazine, pg 1.