Internal Marketing For Your Dental Practice – What is it?

Internal marketing for your dental practice is what you and your staff do after a patient calls you – in order to make certain that the patient remains with your practice and is a source of new dental patients.

Internal dental marketing is all about building strong lasting relationship with your patients. It is far less expensive to do what is necessary to retain an existing patient than it is to attract a new dental patient through external marketing.

Some examples of internal dental marketing best practices are:

• Greeting dental patients with a smile
• Answering your phone in person on the first or second ring
• Placing signs in your dental office showing referrals are appreciated
• Training your staff to ask for referrals
• Sending thank you notes for new dental referrals
• Calling a patient at home after a difficult or long session to see how he or she is feeling
• Displaying testimonial letters from other dental patients
• Sending birthday cards to patients
• Publishing a patient newsletter

Internal dental marketing is great customer service. We recently spoke with one upscale dental practice who upon completion of a significant cosmetic case “throws the patient a party” by serving wine and cheese at their last session.  Patients love to tell their friends about this — creating a buzz that is sure to generate new dental patients for this practice.

You don’t need to serve wine and cheese to your dental patients but there are so many easy and inexpensive – even cost free – things you and your staff can do to enhance the patient experience.  Just start with the little things and you will begin to build a culture in your dental practice that will make your patients feel good about you and more likely to stay with your dental practice.