Are you an orthodontist? Do you own a clinic that offers orthodontic treatment? Are you looking for strategies to attract orthodontic patients?
If you are looking for strategies to attract orthodontic patients, follow in this article everything you need to know about marketing in dentistry and the development of an effective strategy to attract orthodontic patients to your clinic or dental office!
How to get orthodontic patients?
The capture of patients is a set of commercial and marketing actions. Marketing and sales need to work together if you want to get orthodontic patients to your clinic.
The role of marketing in dentistry is to identify the demands of a specific audience, to develop a service offer (product, price, audience, promotion, etc.) that meets and exceeds the expectations of that audience.
Sales in dentistry, on the other hand, work in a subtle way and if you have done dental marketing correctly, the patient will be the one who will come to you to buy your service, and you just need to meet your needs with excellence.
In order for you to understand how to effectively capture orthodontic patients, you first need to answer a few questions in minimal dental marketing planning.
Answer the following questions:
Do you want to work with patients who are children, teenagers, young adults or more mature people?
Do you intend to act locally (in your neighborhood, in your region, in your city or in several locations)?
What is the social profile of your target patient? Are they people of high purchasing power? Are they working people? Where they work? In the trade near you? On the banks? In large companies? In small businesses?
What are the characteristics of housing in your region? Search the rental properties that work in the region for the average rental price and sale of properties.
Is your clinic on a peripheral street? In a shopping center? Are you at a point of great movement? On a floor of a commercial building?
What is the behavioral profile of your target patient? What does he try to solve when seeking orthodontic treatment, besides obviously aligning his teeth? Is he bothered by function or aesthetics?
How does your target patient traditionally locate your clinic today? By the facade? For Google? Why social media? By reference? By appointment?
How is your target patient informed? Does he access Facebook? Instagram? Searching for information on Google? Is there a newspaper or magazine in your neighborhood? Any digital influencers particularly influential in your region?
Who are your direct competitors? What differentials do they have? What are their strengths? What are your weaknesses? What do they do today better than you? What do you do better than them?
Who are your indirect competitors? Who competes for your target patient’s pocket? Electronic stores? Travel agencies? Academies? Language courses?
Is your target patient little, average, or very price sensitive? In addition to price, what else does your target customer value? What is value to your target customer?
Now that you have honestly answered the questions above, you already have a clear picture of WHO your target patient is, the one your clinic is most likely to capture.
With the profile of your target patient in your hands, knowing what he values in terms of services, it is possible to draw up a plan to attract orthodontic patients that will bring clients with the selected profile to your clinic.
How to create an orthodontic patient enrollment plan with the information you have collected
You know, nothing in life that has value happens without effort and without hard work, or better, intelligent work.
The better your sources of information that help you answer the questions asked above, the easier, more effective and the faster your clinic will get orthodontic patients.
If you did the homework proposed in the previous item, you will be very clear about some factors:
What is your ideal audience (age, sex, income, training, etc.);
What kind of expectations move them to hire an orthodontic service (Health, aesthetics, pride, beauty, status, etc.).
How many options do they have in the local market (competitors).
How much are you willing to pay to solve your orthodontic problem.
What type of communication channel do they use to search for information about services like yours.
Which channels they use to search for information.
What places they frequent.
Passive and active uptake of orthodontic patients
Knowing who they are, what motivates them and where they access information and places they frequent, it is easy to create strategies for attracting ortho patients who should be divided into two fronts:
Passive uptake of orthodontic patients
Passive actions to attract orthodontic patients are:
Institutional website
Instagram Posts
Facebook posts
Blog articles
Videos on Youtube
Leaflets left at reception
Flyers and business cards left at the reception of business partners
Sponsored Ads on Google
Billboard
Busdoor
Etc.
Benefits:
Relatively low cost, it is not necessary to understand and practice sales actions and almost all the expectation of funding falls on the publicity and advertising actions.
Disadvantages
The main one is that the vast majority of its competitors are doing the same type of funding action, generating a lot of noise and decreasing the strength of this type of action.
Another relevant problem with this approach is that the passive uptake of orthodontic patients only affects those patients who are already ready to buy or very close to the decision moment. And research shows that these are not even 3% of the total audience.
There is also the problem of message dispersion, that is, your message reaches many people who are not part of your target audience, even if your segmentation is well done.
Actions of active recruitment of patients in orthodontics are:
Participation in sector fairs and congresses;
Commercial mapping of territories and opening of accounts;
Visiting companies;
Visiting schools;
Lectures in unions, clubs and associations;
Lead list capture webinars;
Active partners with other companies with exchange of customer database and cross-marketing actions;
Etc;
Benefits
It allows the clinic to actively pursue the client not expecting him to be impacted by an eventual marketing message.
It usually attracts more qualified patients, as a commercial job of identifying leads has been carried out previously.
It reaches from the popular public to high performance dentistry and specific niches, such as dental tourism.
Disadvantages
Cost of setting up an active business strategy is often prohibitive for smaller clinics and small offices;
Domain of commercial management or hiring someone who understands sales territory mapping, commercial approach, opening and folow-up of accounts, etc. is required.
Higher management cost.
Conclusion
In this article you saw that it is necessary to do a previous work of market mapping and understanding the profile of your target patient so that the recruitment of orthodontic patients is more effective.
This is a very disputed market with a large offer of professionals and clinics with low differential perceived by customers.
It is therefore essential to develop dental marketing strategies that involve the entire marketing mix, that is, the assembly of a relevant, adequate and desired service offer by the clinic’s target audience.
At Senior, we use geomarketing tools to map the local market of our customers and identify the best customer profile available in their region, then drawing a plan to attract orthodontic patients, or any other specialty according to the characteristics specific to each market.
If you liked this information, share it with those who need to know more about strategies to attract orthodontic patients.
Senior Marketing