Successful Dental Practice Marketing Compared to Root Canal

by Ron Scott

"Successful dental practice marketing is a lot like a good root canal," say Ninh Nguyen, Ph.D., president of ND Communications, a San Jose based dental practice marketing firm. "Unless you’re sedated, you know you’re going to experience some discomfort every time you write that check to cover your marketing expenses every month."

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Not unlike the dental patient who puts off a visit until the pain finally exceeds that which he associates with dental work, dentists all too often try to build their practices using off-the-shelf dental practice marketing solutions that over the long run don’t provide the desired result. "Affiliate programs, business-to-business relationships, yellow page advertising, weekly throwaway ads, newspaper inserts, hit and miss mailers, and large investments in websites aren’t any more effective than the at-home-dental-repair kits you see in your local drug store," Ninh says. "They may be less painful to administer but they don’t produce the desired results."

According to this dental practice marketing expert and business professor, Ninh states that all of the aforementioned marketing methods have one common problem. "While they may generate a few new clients, the number provided isn’t enough to build a successful practice," he says.

While Ninh acknowledges that full and half page yellow page display ads produce a predictable number of inquires each month, the number of new clients a practitioner generates from those calls doesn’t normally justify the expense. "Our research shows that long term yellow page display advertising programs for most are, at best, break even propositions," he says. "If you’re spending $5,000 on a full-page ad in the yellow pages and get 5 new patients a month, then your cost of getting that patient is $1,000. This is just not an effective method of advertising."

Ninh attributes this to one major factor. "Like internet search results, the value of an ad decreases as the consumer has to turn more than a page or two to see it. If you don’t have a full page ad in the first place, and if the name of your practice doesn’t start with ‘AAA’, and if you are not paying an exorbitant premium for first placement, odds are the consumer isn’t going even going to see the advertising you spend thousands of dollars on every month," he says. "The same holds true for ads placed in throwaways like the Pennysaver, newspaper inserts, and websites."

Affiliate programs and business-to-business relationships, according to Ninh, don’t work any better. "Anyone who has been in a service related industry will tell you that a referral business is hard to come by. This is largely due to the fact that businesses are not in the business of promoting the services of anyone but themselves, and dentists really aren’t in a position to reciprocate or ‘pay anyone for referrals’ on a meaningful basis," he says.

To put things in perspective, Ninh asks two questions: "When it comes to crux of the issues, how many times does a dentist come in contact with a patient needing a chiropractic, real estate agent, attorney, new car, oil change, lender or stockbroker? Secondly, even when you stumble on a patient in need of one of those services, how inclined are you going in referring him/her to someone you don’t have any first hand experience with?"

The solution Nguyen offers is two fold: targeted dental practice marketing, which goes directly to the consumer that includes an effective call to action that generates a response and a dental practice marketing program that is easy and seamless to implement. "Our marketing program typically generates 60 or more inquiries the first month and, when paired with a staff training program, 30-50 of those are typically turned into high-quality, fee-for-service patients, or insurance patients," he says.

As far mitigating the anticipated pain that goes along with the expenses, Ninh offers his clients the means to finance the expense but only after they have seen the program at work. "In the first place our clients don’t pay for promises, they only pay when they get results. Should they elect to enlist our marketing services, we can make arrangements to reduce their monthly marketing expenses to fit their budget through a unique dental practice marketing financing plan that is only available to our clients and which is unheard of in the dental practice marketing industry," he says.

ND Communication’s dental practice marketing program is an outgrowth of personal experience and a culmination of academic excellence. Dr. Nguyen’s wife, Jacqueline, is a practicing dentist in one of the most competitive areas of San Jose, California. Facing an investment of over $417,326 to get her practice started, he realized that he had to do something to make sure they recouped their investment in the shortest amount of time. Even before they opened her practice’s doors, her calendar was full and remains that way today.

If you are a practicing dentist and wish to learn more about Dr. Nguyen’s dental practice marketing program, you can call him toll free at 1-800-737-9019 and schedule a free dental practice marketing conference call. Dr. Nguyen’s business hours are Wednesday thru Friday 10:00am to 7:00pm, and Saturday and Sunday 8:00am to 2:00pm.

About the Author

The author, Ron Scott, is a seasoned internet publicist who provides affordable public relations services to local, regional, national and international businesses.

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