Rolling in the Deep – Your Role in Marketing Your Practice

If you ask a lot of dentists, they usually would consider marketing as hard, complex, confusing and probably would rather leave it to the experts like an MBA graduate or advertising firm perhaps.  Well it doesn’t work like that; even the simplest person without any masters can do it. When it comes to your own practice, the one who needs to be the marketing expert is You.  All you need to know are the fundamentals of marketing, the willingness to learn and how to implement on these actions.

One purpose of marketing is to be able to identify what is appropriate for the product you are selling or the service that you are rendering.  Try to identify where you want to render your service, look for a community that could benefit from your service and communicate with them in a manner of how you want it to be implemented.

You don’t need to be a genius to become a marketing expert.  Marketing doesn’t require a college degree. In order to develop your marketing inept marketing skills you need the following:

• Try to be updated with the latest marketing techniques and strategies - Try not to be generic or have a bland taste when it comes to marketing. In order to reach your target audience or market, you need a way to craft that message and get through your audience. In order to stay current with the emerging trends in marketing try to read at least one marketing book per quarter. There are a lot of marketing books out there that are addressed to each and everything you need for your practice. Also, try to attend a marketing seminar once a year. These seminars offer a lot of marketing ideas which you can pick up on a single or two day workshops. Try also to look for online websites that can help develop your marketing skills. There are numerous websites which can give you insightful ideas and tips and you can also sign up for newsletters for your email.
• Learn on Who to Target – Who is your audience and which market would you want to target? Try to study how media might help you in promoting your practice. For example, nowadays, women do most of the decisions throughout the household, and what do you think most women do or own? They buy magazines. So the more you know who you want to target in general, the more you need to learn ways on communicating with them in their own kind of language.
• Expand your Creativity – Expand your horizons. Experts say that new ideas come out from the outside industry. This doesn’t mean for you to stop reading journals and dental magazines, but to become more effective try to read on different fields where you can apply ideas that can work for your practice.
• You can study your competitors marketing strategy – But not copy it. Try to ask, if you were the client, will the product or service work for you? Does the marketing tool or strategy instill confidence for you to want to learn more about the product or service?  It’s not wrong to sign up on your competitor’s newsletters, visit their websites often, or even join their mailing list and try to pay attention on their way of advertising.
• Pay attention to what will work – Try to ask what advertisements and dental marketing schemes get your attention. What makes your respond and why? Try to pay attention to ads and campaigns. If you notice an ad which keeps running for a long time, try to study and identify what motivates people to respond to that campaign.
• Consistency is the key – Again, pacing is essential. Marketing is not a switch on/ switch off basis but requires patience, discipline and consistency. In order to reach that goal.
• Time to Act on It – Most dentist fail to translate their marketing ideas. Sometimes they have difficulty in implementing into concrete actions.

Put in mind that Effective Marketing is not an overnight effort. You have to open all your senses and keep your mind at work. Learn from outside the box, be receptive and most of all pay attention what matters most to your patients. Learn to know what they want and how they want it and then try to deliver those expectations in full swing.