8 Steps to Building a Marketing Plan for Your Dental Practice

According to WPI Communications’ Dental Marketing Barometer Survey 91% of dental specialists report that having a marketing plan or program is “very important” or “somewhat important.” That’s not surprising. A solid and actionable marketing plan is an essential blueprint for successful execution.

The plan contains all of your marketing activities, usually for a 12-month period. By doing some research and understanding what marketing methods will work best for your target audience, you’ll confidently and accurately make decisions to grow your practice. And you’ll be spending your marketing dollars most efficiently.

Follow these eight tips to build a revenue-focused marketing plan for your dental practice.

1. Make a commitment

Too many dental marketing “plans” really aren’t plans at all. They contain ideas for activities like print ads, updating the website and doing direct mail. But they often aren’t grounded in industry research. And they don’t contain objectives or measurement standards. Often these “plans” are simply based on what the practice did last year and the year before that.

But things change. If your practice is going to be successful at dental marketing, you need to adapt to the shifting landscape. Begin by committing to doing the research, dedicating the resources and budget, and following through.

2. Know your audience

You probably have a good overall understanding of your current patients. But have you really thought about your audience for the purpose of targeting it? Review your patient database and make some conclusions about who you serve. This will include age, geographic location, common dental problems, occupation category, income level and more.

Only when you have this data can you make the best decisions about marketing. If you have three options for print advertising, and one best reaches your practice’s demographic, this is the clear choice.

You also need to think aggressively about who you want to be your patients. If your demographic consists heavily of a base that will decline in profitability, such as residents of a geographic area on the decline, you will need to shift your marketing tactics to reach the audience you want.

3. Know your competition

An important part of any dental marketing plan is evaluating your competitors and what they’re doing. Keep tabs on their marketing efforts, including patient newsletters, direct mail, website marketing, search engine optimization and pay-per-click management. You don’t need to mirror their spending dollar for dollar on each activity. But a little bit of research will tell you how they’re using their marketing budget. You can then analyze the activities your most successful competitors use for your own practice.

Don’t just look at your own specialty. You may not be competing with pediatric dentists, endodontists or periodontists, but keep up to date with what these specialists are doing in your region. You may be able to borrow from some of their best efforts. If any of these professionals are partners, ask them what works for them.

4. Measure what has worked

What marketing activities have been most responsible for building your patient base over recent years? Has it been referrals from other healthcare providers? The yellow pages? Your website? Events in the community?

You should be asking your patients how they heard about you. You should then capture that data in your patient database. Too many dental specialists neglect this important and meaningful step. Don’t be one of them.

Be honest in your assessment of what worked. If you were getting 25% of your business from your yellow page ad five years ago, but last year you only got 4% for the same investment, your marketing dollars should shift to reflect this.

5. Know your strategic objectives

It’s also essential to understand your specific marketing challenges. Some dental specialists face an education problem in ensuring new patients understand how their services will help. Other specialists don’t receive as many qualified referrals from other professionals as they would like. For others, their awareness in their community is too low for them to grow their business.

What are you challenges? By identifying these, you’ll determine what’s standing in your way to successful practice growth. You can then accomplish your strategic objectives through targeted marketing tactics that will work for your practice.

6. Determine the best marketing tactics

By this step, you should know who you’re reaching and who you want to reach, how your competitors and partners are marketing, and what has worked for you.

You’ll be positioned to make sound decisions about tactics that should be in your arsenal. The Dental Marketing Barometer Survey provided useful data about the most widely used marketing methods by dental specialty. Do you know the most popular and least popular activities for your specialty?

If your audience is younger and internet savvy, email marketing, social media and pay-per-click advertising may be viable options.

If most of your business comes from referrals from other healthcare providers, you may want to broaden the breadth and sophistication of your outreach to these centers of influence.

Maybe your practice isn’t well known in your region and you want to build your brand and shape credibility. In that case, consider public relations and participation in community events.

Be sure to select tactics with a purpose, based on step five.

7. Set your budget

Some dental practices start building their marketing plan based on a budget. Then they build their plan, only to find out the dollars they allocated were off target.

A better approach is to first understand what a successful and pragmatic marketing strategy will look like. Then determine what it will cost. While you should have some budget parameters set in advance, don’t make any hard dollar commitments until you understand costs.

The activities you pursue should work together to drive growth. This way, you’ll maximize your marketing spend. Don’t view direct marketing as one area over here, public relations as a silo over there and your patient newsletter as a separate entity. Your patients and prospects should receive multiple meaningful impressions from you on an ongoing basis.

8. Measure success!

Measure the results of each marketing activity. The only way to do that is to ask new patients how they heard about you. You can also measure success of outreach to existing patients. Accurately and consistently enter the results into your patient database. Compare these activities against recent years. Then use that information to modify your plan as you go forward that year. But be sure to give each marketing method enough time to succeed.