Every year, WPI Communications, Inc., issues its Dental Marketing Barometer Survey, which compiles a wealth of information about dental trends and projections. Dental practices use these data to understand where specialists are spending their marketing dollars, as well as to obtain a clearer picture of spending projections for the coming year. We are currently compiling data gathered during the month of January. We invite you to return to this site on or after February 15 for full results and analysis.

Print will never be dead, but marketers are increasingly using the Internet to market their practices. This includes not only Web sites, YouTube and social media but also electronic newsletters. The following are eight reasons you should consider sending an electronic dental newsletter:

As our reliance on computers has increased over the last two decades, many people have talked of an eventual paperless society, where people rely exclusively on digital communication. True, a Web site should be an important part of your dental marketing plan, and you may engage your patients with e-mail or social media. But the power of paper lives, too. Print media is easier to read, more visible and more environmentally friendly than you might think.

When potential patients search online for your orthodontic practice, what are they likely to find? Your Web site or the Web site of a competing practice? Like it or not, those who receive recommendations for or referrals to your practice are likely to check you out on the Internet before picking up the telephone to make an appointment. And there’s a good chance they could land on the Web site of a neighboring practice.

Increasing the flow of new patients is critical to the success of your dental practice. Most endodontists, periodontists and other dental specialists agree that referrals from other dentists and physicians represent the single most significant source of new patients.

Endodontists around the country tell us that dentists are making fewer referrals than ever before. Too often, the only cases referred are either very difficult to treat or ones that have “gone wrong.”

Having a complete list of every dentist and physician who could make patient referrals is essential if you want to grow your dental specialty practice.

We are in the process of collecting data for the all-new 2011 Dental Marketing Barometer for Dental Specialists and plan to have full survey results and analysis available by February 1, 2011.

For more than 30 years, Dr. Irv Lubis developed a successful periodontal practice and now wants to give back by helping other dental specialists grow their practices. We recently had the opportunity to speak with Dr. Lubis about some of the ways dental specialists can grow their practices during difficult economic times.

Dr. Anthony Rassouli, a general dentist from Huntington Beach, Calif., found it increasingly difficult to make referrals to dental specialists. His patients were moving all over California and even out of state. When he received a call, for example, on a Friday from a patient who seemed to need an immediate root canal but was travelling, Dr. Rassouli was at a loss to refer the patient to an endodontist whose office was open that day.