Dental Economics Levin Group 2008 Practice Survey

Dental Economics and the Levin Group recently released their 2008 annual practice survey at a very critical time. Certainly dentists cannot be immune to the overall economic challenges that other small business owners are facing. Now we have some data to analyze and start to work on what to do to minimize it’s effects. The data also serves a a great benchmark to measure your performance versus other practices in similar situations.

Dentists certainly are feeling the effects of the downturn in the economy as seen by the following challenges;

• increasing accounts receivables 
• active patient count remaining flat
• 20% of dentists experiencing high levels of stress

On the positive side of things the survey found;

• median dentist compensation actually rose slightly
• practice overhead rates decreased slightly – to 60% of revenue
• median staff wages increased slightly in most categories
• more than 56% of practices have implemented a bonus plan

Overall it was a pretty mixed result with some negative news but plenty of things to remain positive about. All dentists should be concerned because things could get worse quickly, especially since this downturn is expected to last longer than previous slowdowns. Dr Levin also added that “Dentistry is often one of the last industries to feel the full impact of an economic downturn.”  

    <The full detailed report can be found here>

- Steve

Improve the Effectiveness of Your Dental Marketing

So what is the real purpose of your marketing anyway? Well, a short answer might be to simply ‘generate interest so that people consider utilizing your professional services’. If done correctly your marketing can help you to start ‘actively’ promoting your services instead of ‘passively’ waiting for referrals to come in. Besides just getting more patients, marketing can also allow you to; 

1. Smooth out your workload by providing a more predictable flow of patients
2. Increase the number of referrals from your existing patients
3. Reduce patient cancellations or no-shows
4. Facilitate patient treatment acceptance 
5. Improve your office morale and staff loyalty

So which marketing strategies work best to grow and build a successful dental practice? Obviously there is no simple answer that works for everyone.  Remember that the end goal of your marketing is to grow revenue and to do that requires you either 1) find new patients, 2) get more from existing patients, or 3) recruit past patients back to your practice. Any marketing investment you make should clearly focus on achieving one (or more) of these three goals and be measurable so you know if it’s working or not.

Whether you are building a new practice or trying to grow an existing practice, your marketing efforts need to address the following items.

Your Core Marketing Message – Before you spend a single dollar on any advertising you need to spend time and clearly articulate your core marketing message. Your core marketing message should include (among other things) 1) your targeted patient profile, 2) how you are unique and different from your competition, and 3) what specific services you provide and how those relate to your patients needs. Your core marketing message will be the basis for all your promotional activities.

Branding and Marketing Collateral - Everything you do, say, or print defines your practice ‘brand’ and is one of the ways patients differentiate you. This might include your logo, tag-line, color-scheme, brochures, office layout, operatory equipment, staff personality, etc. A professional looking website, brochures, new-customer folder, etc. goes a long way towards establishing your practice ‘brand’ to patients. Is your ‘brand’ saying what you want it to say about you and your practice?

Marketing Plan- As the saying goes – “‘if you don’t know where you’re going, any path will take you there”. Experts say that simply writing down your marketing plan increases your odds of successfully achieving your goals. A marketing plan doesn’t have to be long and complicated. In fact the best ones are short and to-the-point. What are you trying to achieve with your marketing? What promotional strategies will you try?  How much money can you budget for marketing? What specific actions will you take each month? This is usually the first step we take with our clients. For more information check out our Marketing Effectiveness Program.

It’s unfortunate but most dentists (and many other business owners) rarely address the above three items and instead jump right in with their favorite promotional advertising strategies (e.g. direct mail, print advertising, internet marketing, etc.) and hope for the best. A much better approach is to sit down with an outside consultant or adviser who can work with you to craft your message and strategies from an outsiders view. This is also a great time to include your staff since they are the ones on the front-lines promoting your practice when new patients call in for information.

Marketing can make a dramatic difference in the success of your practice – if done right. Many dentists, though, have an aversion to marketing and some even consider it unethical and only for those who are desperate.  Like it or not, patients rarely choose their dentist by the technical quality of their work. Instead they tend to choose dentists who are successful, who are pleasant to be around and who make the whole dental process as painless as possible. If you really want your practice to grow and prosper you need to step out of your operatory and promote the unique aspects of your practice as seen from the patients view and not necessarily yours. 

If you would like more information on dental marketing check out the videos on the following site;

   GoAskFred Dental Marketing Videos 

- Steve  (www.SPMsolutions.NET)

Dental Practice Marketing Tools

 I recently had the chance to attend the California Dental Association ( CDA) 2008 conference in San Francisco and found a number of really cool tools to help dental practices grow and develop. These are basically internet and computer based tools that fall into 3 different categories.

1. Patient Education – Many different chair-side programs now exist to help explain a recommended procedure to the patient in a simple and entertaining manner. Any procedure explanation can be printed or even e-mailed directly to the client to review at home. The assumption here is that a better educated patient has a higher treatment acceptance rate which translates to increased practice revenue. Check out Info Star’s SideKick patient education program which includes many high-quality, multimedia features.
2. Patient Loyalty - A somewhat new and unique program to reward your loyal dental patients so they keep appointments, refer your practice more often, and keep coming back. Patients receive a personal account number and are credited with rewards dollars after each treatment or behavior you want to reward (like referrals). Accumulated points can then be redeemed for brand-name products (e.g. clothing, travel, entertainment, etc). Check out Loyal Patient Rewards for their easy-to-use online program. 
3. Patient Communications- These tools integrate with your existing PMS (practice management systems like Dentrix, Eaglesoft, EasyDental, PracticeWorks, etc) and implement automated appointment reminders, newsletters, inactive patient reactivation, customer service surveys, birthday and holiday wishes, and other practice promotional communications. These programs also allow you to communicate with your patients using e-mail and text messaging (once you have their permission to do so) which is much more efficient and preferable by many patients. These low-cost, practical tools are ideal for keeping in touch with your patients, which maintains patient loyalty and makes it much easier for them to refer you to others. Check out Dental Senders for a free version (with some advertising) and Smile Reminder for a fee-based version with some additional features like a patient portal.

These tools are all great examples of how new products can still be developed that integrate with existing practice management systems to help market and grow your dental practice.

- Steve   (www.SPMsolutions.NET)

Take Advantage of FREE Business Listings

If you haven’t already done so, make sure to enter your business information in the free on-line business directories. You’ll need a business address and website to sign-up, since most of these directories actually check to confirm that you are a legitimate business.

The most popular business directories to use are;

1. Google Maps
2. Yahoo Local Listings
3. Yellowpages.com
4. Yellowbook
5. Superpages

After you have your business listed then the next step is to get some customer testimonials. I would recommend making it very easy for your customers to do this by sending them an email with the specific links to use.

Hopefully this will help you be found a little easier when customers are looking for you!

- Steve   (SPM Business Solutions)

Does Your Website Allow You to ‘Be Found’?

So how do you know if your website is effective at allowing people to find you when they are on-line and searching? Well, there is certainly the technical approach using web analytics to track how many visitors you get, which keywords people use to find you, how long they stay on your site and which pages they visit. This is the best approach but the job of a internet marketing expert or business coach. Alternatively, you can try this simple non-technical approach and evaluate your website effectiveness yourself.

First you need to determine the top phrases that people might use to find you. This is a little tricky since not everyone thinks alike so it’s always best to come up with your best guess and then ask others what they might use. Without making this process too complicated and time-consuming, I’d suggest the following strategy.

1. First determine the top 3 (multi-word) phrases that new prospects might use to find a business like yours (in your same city) with similar types of products and services .
2. Next determine the top 2 (multi-word phrases that your current customers might use if they were searching the web to find you (hopefully to refer you to someone else).

This will give you five key-word search-phrases to test out using the top search engines.

For example if you are a local dentist you might use;

1. “dentist family san jose”
2. “dentist invisalign san jose”
3. “dentist braces blueshield san jose”
4. “dr smith dentist san jose”
5. “my smile dentistry san jose”

Or if you are a local restaurant you might come up with;

1. “italian food san jose”
2. “italian restaurant romantic san jose”
3. “italian lasagna san jose”
4. “original luigi’s san jose”
5. “luigi’s reservations san jose”

Now go ahead and enter these ‘key-word’ search phrases in the top search engines and see how you come out. Luckily, the top three sites account for over 85% of the internet searches.

1. http://www.google.com/
2. http://search.yahoo.com/
3. http://www.live.com/

So did you or your business show up as expected? Ignore any ’sponsor links’ or ’shopping cart’ sites since these are usually paid for. Did you show up on the first page? Did you show up at all? If not, you should consider having someone investigate your site to see if it contains the right key words and is search engine optimized (SEO). If people can’t find you (when they are actually looking for you on-line) then your website is ineffective and should be improved. Otherwise you may not be achieving your true business potential. 

For more info on SEO you might <try this post>.

- Steve   (www.SPMsolutions.NET)