In a recent The Wealthy Dentist survey, the respondents pointed to internal marketing as their most important dental marketing vector.
As dental practices have been forced to focus on increasing dental practice revenue, one of the key components, it seems, has been internal marketing.
Internal marketing relies on dental patient referrals. If the dental practice lacks in quality customer service, or does not build strong dentist-patient relationships, then any attempts at internal marketing will likely fall flat.
In the most recent the Wealthy Dentist survey we asked dentists what is the most important marketing vector for their dental practice.
67% of the dentist respondents answered that internal marketing is their most important dental marketing vector. 19% responded that Internet dental marketing is their most important marketing vector. 7% felt direct mail marketing was the most beneficial, while another 7% felt traditional media like newspaper, TV and radio were the most important.
Here are some of the comments we received from dentists on this survey:
“Internet and internal marketing are neck-and-neck, followed by direct-mail marketing.” (Arizona dentist)
“Internal marketing and word-of-mouth clearly bring in the BEST new patients for us. We receive the most new patients from Internet and direct-mail marketing. Printed dental phone book marketing is fast becoming one of the least important marketing vectors for us because the return on investment is getting smaller and smaller.” (Ohio prosthodontist)
“How do you define important? The internal is the the most important, but the Internet brings most of our new dental patients.” (General dentist)
“Direct mail marketing but with more of a focus on growing online marketing.” (Minnesota dentist)
“Word-of-mouth marketing, with the Internet a close second.” (North Carolina dentist)
“Internal marketing followed by our dental website.” (Pediatric dentist)
“If you treat your dental patients like you would treat your family, then the best ‘marketing’ or good word-of-mouth takes care of itself! We really only market our dental practice by being active in our community and being very good to our patients and we get about 30 new patients every month.” (Alabama dentist)
“The newspaper works well in conjunction with our website and TV advertising.” (California dentist)
“Internet dental marketing, but it should be referral from other patients and that does not seem to be happening.” (Illinois dentist)
“Word-of-mouth is always number one and under that would be focused direct mail marketing, although Internet marketing is catching up but the quality of dental patient seems to be always less.” (General dentist)
“Our website.” (California orthodontist)
While there are many dental marketing vectors, they have to be utilized properly to get the desired results. Remember, quality dental marketing combined with a quality dental practice are critical to implementing a successful dental marketing program.
Together, they will grow your dental practice, which ultimately leads to more dental referrals and greater profitability in the long run.
Check out The Wealthy Dentist’s full internal dental marketing and communications campaign for a 4-phase program designed to add 10 additional patients per month to your practice.
