Deborah Bell, Practice Consultant at DPAS, shares some low-cost and easy to implement ways to attract new patients to your practice…
1. Become part of the community
Start getting out and about by networking in your local area. Research who are the key influencers that can help to spread the word about you – begin by making contact with with business clubs, sports clubs and societies. Not only will this help with getting your name out there and your face recognised, but it can put you in front of new audiences as these types of organisations often hold events that you may be able to get involved with, e.g. by delivering a speech on oral health.
2. Align with like-minded businesses
Find other businesses in your town that share a link with dentistry, e.g. health clubs, hairdressers and beauty spas, who are focused on helping people look and feel good. You can establish a quid pro quo system where you display their promotional material in your practice and vice versa. Everybody wins and it’s effectively free advertising.
3. Offer an incentive
Encourage potential patients to join your practice by offering a low-cost, time-limited incentive. For example, you could run a promotion where each new patient that joins the practice and has an initial health check receives an electric toothbrush that retails for £90, but may only cost £20 at trade price. Offering ‘a good deal’ may just be the thing that entices them through your door rather than the competitors.
4. Promotional leaflets
Why not promote your time-based incentive via a promotional leaflet? Most towns have a free newspaper delivered to every household that the leaflet could be inserted into, which will spread the word about your practice to a large amount of people in a cost-effective manner.
5. Go social
You can reach a huge audience of potential patients through an engaging Facebook or Twitter page. With so many users, you cannot ignore the power of social media and the opportunity to promote your practice for free. To make the most of your pages, assign someone in your practice – whoever has the most experience in this field – to take charge of providing relevant content through your social media.
6. A website that works for you
Google now processes 40,000 searches every second, so the chances are that someone looking for a dentist in your town will be doing so via the search engine. You need to make sure that when they land on your website from Google it does its job in terms of getting patients to make that appointment. A small investment in getting your site right – ensuring it is attractive, informative and benefits-driven – can reap big rewards.
7. A good sign
Take a walk outside, go a little way up the street and look back at your practice – is your sign clearly visible? Does it stand-out so that motorists and pedestrians will take notice? You’d be surprised at how many fade into the background. The other thing to consider is whether your sign reflects the type of practice you are? Make sure your signage is working for you, not against you.
8. Create a buzz through PR
You may be able to gain some free coverage in your local media. A press release, rather than a paid-for advert, will secure you space in the newspaper and help to get your name out there in a positive way. Think of some newsworthy topics you could create PR around, e.g. a recent recruitment drive, investment in technology, or an award win.
9. Hold an open day
Invite potential new patients to an open day – it requires little investment, except your time. You need to create a structure for your day, such as a tour of the practice, meeting the team, presentations/demonstrations, and know what you want to get out of it. You can publicise the event through some of the low-cost channels mentioned above, i.e social media, PR, your website.
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