Grow Your Practice

Most dental specialists would like their practices to always be in a state of growth. If you’re like most, you experienced significant growth during your early years. But that growth was difficult to maintain and eventually leveled off. The recession hasn’t helped, either.

Reignite the fire

Remember how excited you were when your dental practice was booming? You could see the results of your efforts, and you were energized to help patients and build your business. The new patients kept rolling in and so did the referrals.

Reigniting your stagnant practice begins with you. The first step is to go to your source of motivation. That may be a mentor, networking with peers, motivational books or diving into the latest research in your dental specialty.

Make a commitment

Once you have that spark back, you’ll need a game plan. Develop a sound dental marketing plan for the next 12 months that will create growth—and stick with it. Incorporate marketing activities that worked best when your practice was most successful.

But adapt to change. If the Yellow Pages worked well for you 10 years ago, it probably won’t work as well today. Be sure your plan suits the current landscape. To find the top dental marketing activities in 2009 and the top projected activities for 2010, read WPI Communications’ Dental Marketing Barometer Survey.

Be ready for success

Make sure your dental office is ready for growth. Your database must be current. Your office staff must ask the right questions of new patients to identify what marketing activity drove them to your office.

Take these steps and watch your practice grow.