5 Inexpensive Ways to Market Your Dental Practice

Want to expand your dental patient base and spread the word about your practice? Don’t have thousands of dollars to spend? Here are five high-impact,  inexpensive marketing tools you can use.

1. Talk to Your Dental Patients

There’s no patient like an existing patient. Choose a handful of patients for a phone interview and ask them what they expected from a dentist, what services solved their problem, what they like most, and any additional  services they thought might help them. Send a thank you letter to all those who participated and include any changes you plan to make.

2. Package Your Dental Marketing Campaigns Creatively

Everyone uses postcards. Be creative. Think outside the box and send out a coffee mug with an invitation to have a free gourmet cup of coffee. See what other people are doing and adapt that to your dental practice.

3. Do Some Basic Public Relations

There are a number of great public relations resources on the Internet that offer templates, tips and step-by-step instructions on how to prepare press releases and pitch stories that will get media attention. And don’t forget your website. Add a “What’s New” area on your home page.

4. Leverage Existing Contacts

Cultivate  your relationships with dental patients, colleagues, people you meet through professional networking organizations, friends and even family. Build relationships by being a source of information. Don’t oversell.

5. Exploit the Power of e-mail Marketing

E-mail marketing can easily drive traffic to your dental website, reach a broad geographic audience, and ensure you stay in contact with your patients and prospects. Most importantly, e-mails let you market your services and establish your expertise with your audience, inform and educate.