.png?width=1628&height=518&name=CC_Academy_logo_white.png%20(updated%20version).png "CC_Academy_logo_white.png (updated version)"){kind=logo}
Effective marketing does not attempt to reach everyone.
Instead, it focuses on serving a specific group of people exceptionally well.
This requires a deep understanding of who you are trying to serve. It is not straightforward, however, given that our customers are usually quite complex.
Take Colin, for example. Colin is a dentist, a father, a husband, and a business owner. He enjoys cycling, has a passion for movies, loves reading books, and coaches football. These characteristics define his identity and dictate how he behaves and responds to marketing.
So, the point here is that a deep understanding of your target market is central to any effective marketing plan. What do they desire? What motivates them? What are their goals? What triggers their decisions?
Understanding these factors enables you to craft more effective marketing messages and improve patient relationships. Remember, successful marketing doesn't just sell services; it communicates directly to the individual, showing that you understand their needs and are uniquely equipped to fulfil them. This is the key to building lasting relationships, loyalty, and word of mouth.
A good marketing plan measures its performance.
A great marketing plan looks at its performance relative to the competition.
What are they doing well from a marketing perspective, and where are the gaps?
Begin by assessing how they build brand awareness. Are they a constant presence in the community? Maybe they sponsor local sports teams or have had a considerable billboard on your town's main high street. Are they using pay-per-click ads or publishing on social media regularly? Do they have a robust SEO (search engine optimisation) strategy that is helping them rank highly on Google for their most important keywords?
Next, consider how they convert that brand awareness into leads and customers. Do they boast a modern, user-friendly, 'all-singing, all-dancing' dental website? Do they have an exceptionally well-oiled sales funnel (the best way to find this out is to enter it yourself as a secret shopper!)? What is their pricing strategy?
There is absolutely nothing wrong with stealing like an artist. Learn from your competitors, find out what works well for them, and then adapt that to your marketing with your brand and twist.
As Kobe Bryant once said...
"There isn't a move that's a new move. There's nothing that hasn't been done before. I seriously have stolen all of these moves from all these great players. I just try do them proud, the guys who came before, because I learned so much from them. It's all in the name of the game."
This might sound like an obvious one. But it's a step that is often skipped.
What are you trying to achieve with your marketing?
Your goals should be SMART and help determine the direction of your marketing.
Maybe you want to boost brand awareness to get more patients, introduce dental implants into the practice, or improve the overall customer journey to enhance patient retention, loyalty, and referrals.
You get to decide your goals, but you do need to define them clearly and then measure your performance against them so that you can streamline your marketing and make sure it is helping to drive your business to wherever you want it to go.
.jpeg?width=1201&height=675&name=Bootcamp%20Presentation%20(1).jpeg)
This is arguably the most crucial section of this eBook.
With dentistry and healthcare, success is driven by word of mouth.
Word of mouth is driven by providing an exceptional experience throughout the customer journey.
It is simple to understand but much trickier to implement. It involves you and your team turning up day after day, month after month, year after year, and providing an exceptional service that people want to tell their friends and family about.
Our data demonstrates that leads acquired from word of mouth have far greater conversion rates than other, more expensive tactics. They usually already trust you, as their friends or family have said, 'You should see this practice.'
They are also often aware of how much something will roughly cost, meaning that finance, which is usually the most significant obstacle, has already been overcome or at least partly overcome.
Before focusing on anything else, your priority should be your current patients and word-of-mouth system.
Ask yourself if my business is worth talking about and how I am making it as easy as possible for the word to spread.
Read More: Ideas that spread win: Implementing a word-of-mouth system for your dental practice.
Essential Digital Marketing Tactics
Sometimes, when I speak with dental business owners, they tell me, 'I don't think I really need a website' or ' I've not updated my website in 10 years, and we're doing fine'.
Granted, you do not have to have a website. You can ultimately exist without one.
But I will tell you who does want you to have a website: Your customers. Your customers want to be able to go onto Google, type your name or your practice name, and learn a little more about you.
If you don't have a website or if your website is old and dated, you are only putting yourself at a disadvantage over your competitors.
Your website is your 24-hour-a-day sales employee. It needs to be 'sticky'. It needs to stop people from entering your website and leaving immediately (this is bad for many reasons) and instead stay on your site, look through it, visit different pages, and, hopefully, leave an enquiry or book an appointment.
SEO is all about improving the ranking of your website in search engines.
There is absolutely no point in building a fantastic website if people can't find it.
SEO is becoming more complicated and less controllable. Therefore, your leading SEO strategy should always be creating good content for your target audience.
Google aims to provide the searcher with the most relevant and helpful content. So, if you focus on creating a website with excellent content about your topic, you will be well on your way to achieving a good ranking.
Remember, SEO (like word-of-mouth) is about playing the long game. Don't expect to see results overnight, but it is a great long-term strategy for new patient enquiries and, hopefully, new customers.
If you don't have the budget available for an agency to help you, there are many things you can do internally with reasonably limited experience or knowledge. The link below provides more information.
Read More: The Importance of local SEO for dental practices: Tips to boost your online visibility.
Today, everyone looks at reviews. It is such an essential element of the buying process.
Consider each time you book a restaurant or are looking for a hotel. The number and quality of positive reviews (often Google Reviews) significantly impact your buying decision.
Are you more likely to pick the restaurant with 150 reviews or the restaurant with 30 reviews?
I'll rephrase...
Are you more likely to pick the dental practice with 150 reviews or the dental practice with 30 reviews?
Email marketing is great for marketing for two reasons.
Firstly, it's a valuable tactic for nurturing leads who are considering treatment. If you can do this automatically with automated workflow, that would be even better!
People are not always ready to buy. But if you can keep them 'warm' through a series of automated emails that gives them a friendly little nudge every few days or weeks, then this should help them pick you if they decide to go ahead with treatment.
Secondly, email marketing is great for engaging a community and building a tribe.
It permits you to contact your database every month, updating them with what is going on at the practice and reminding them that you are here to help if they or their friends and family need support with their dental well-being.
This falls into 'Advanced Digital Marketing', as I do not necessarily think having a social media page is essential to a dental business. We use social media, and I would advise your company to have one, too, but you need to post engaging content reasonably consistently. Otherwise, there's not much point.
If you look at how much time people now spend daily on social media, then you are missing out on an opportunity to get your business in front of people by not being there.
It can humanise your brand, serve as a channel for storytelling, build a community, and generate leads.
The importance of social media to your marketing will depend partly on the treatments you provide.
If you are a cosmetic practice targeting twenty and thirty-year-olds looking for that 'love island' smile, then investing in a robust social media strategy to target these people would probably be a good idea!
This can be expensive and needs to be measured and monitored carefully to ensure that money is not wasted.
It is an easy tactic for creating visibility online. The problem is people do not go onto social media to be advertised to.
So, it would be best to find a way to stop people from scrolling, usually a combination of the offer and the assets.
If you want to see whether your competitors are using paid ads on social media, you can go to Facebook Ad Library and type their name in to find out.
If you are considering trialling paid ads, I'd suggest PPC first 👇
I recommend PPC before paid ads on social media based on 'buying intent.'
With PPC, 'buying intent' is present. This is because people are interested in the market for whichever keyword they have entered. So you can put your service or product before people search for it.
Google Ads, therefore, capture demand that already exists.
Moreover, if your SEO is not the best, these ads can help you gain visibility near the top of the search results.
Content marketing is about marketing with a magnet rather than a megaphone.
It is about positioning yourself as a leading authority in your industry. It is about building trust with people by producing content that primarily seeks to provide value, often through educational or entertaining material, rather than directly promoting a brand or product.
Examples of content marketing could include a blog, a video series on YouTube or Instagram, a podcast, or even a guide like the one you're reading now!
Community and offline marketing often serve as the backbone for local engagement and brand visibility. These traditional forms of marketing can provide a direct channel to establish and nurture relationships with the local community. Participating in local events, sponsoring school activities or sports teams, or supporting local charities are impactful ways to demonstrate commitment to community well-being while raising awareness of the services offered by the practice.
At The Campbell Clinic, we give 1% of turnover annually to charity. Moreover, we sponsor the local football team, the UK's most extensive youth football setup. Both of these examples are things we are incredibly passionate about and proud to be a part of. From a marketing point of view, they help strengthen our position and visibility amongst our community and target market.
To craft your sales strategy, you must ensure your pricing structure allows the business to grow. This profit can then be used to invest further in the business, ensuring long-term success.
To set your pricing, you must first understand the market.
Research your competitors' activities in your area. This will give you an idea of what the market will tolerate.
It may help you decide that you want to conform to the market. Alternatively, it may help you decide that you want to position yourself as the best in your area and, therefore, need to price accordingly (and create a service that justifies that price).
Critically, you must also understand your costs, including the fixed, variable, and specific costs of items such as implants, crowns, clear aligners, etc.
To help you determine your pricing strategy, we would suggest you carry out this small exercise. A few years back, Colin developed an idea called Prethics. As you can see from the image below, it is a linear analogue scale with profit on the left and ethics on the right.
It would be best if you simply positioned yourself on the scale.
If you're too close to profit, then you're a crook, and you're extorting money from your patients for your benefit with no regard for their needs. However, if you lean too close to ethics, you are putting your practice in danger. Profit to a business is like oxygen to humans. It's not the meaning of life, but it is essential for it.
Remember, turnover is vanity, and profit is sanity.
Read More: Colin Campbell's blog on Prethics.
A CRM system is crucial for any dental business. It brings all your leads together in one place, enabling you to manage them more efficiently and ensure they are not lost or forgotten.
For years, we used a spreadsheet, notes scribbled down on bits of paper or even worse, kept a log in our head. But as we continued to grow, it became apparent that we required something more efficient and sophisticated.
We now use DenGro as our CRM for The Campbell Clinic and HubSpot for The Campbell Academy.
The most significant advantage of DenGro for us is that it clicks in straightaway to Dentally's cloud-based system, and they integrate almost seamlessly. It allows us to take all our contacts digitally from our marketing software, and so when a patient fills in a contact form, it creates records on Dentally straight away, and there is no leakage of data and no duplication of effort.
Arguably more important than the CRM you choose is the Treatment Coordinator (TCO) role. The TCO plays a vital role, aiming to remove 90% of non-clinical dentistry from the dentist's schedule, allowing them to be more productive. TCOs are typically promoted dental nurses; therefore, they have excellent knowledge of dental procedures, great customer service, and the time to build unique relationships with patients even before attending the practice.
Read More: The Implementation of DenGro at The Campbell Clinic
The consultation is entirely about sales; it is about building trust with an individual.
The consultation is not about getting your patient to take up the most profitable treatment for your business regardless of their well-being. It is about finding the right solution for the patient, whether that is to be treated or not.
Our consultations are 1 hour long and broken down into four 15-minute slots:
Part 1: Building the bridge to trust
Here, we do not discuss dentistry; we talk about the patient. Their interests, their life, their fears. We discuss personal information, and we build a bridge to trust
Part 2: The mechanics of a consultation
The technical part of the consultation, including examination.
Part 3: Solving the problems
Demonstrate features and benefits of treatment options
Part 4: What happens next
You need to present treatment plans fantastically, as this demonstrates the quality of our work. The following section below covers this further.
Learn More: About our one-day Consultation Masterclass with Colin Campbell.
Following a consultation, you need a consistent follow-up process that maximises conversion from consultation to treatment.
At The Campbell Clinic, we send an email containing the treatment plan and any further information on various treatment options and costs. Importantly, treatment plans must be written in a language the patient can understand. Do not bamboozle them with too much dental jargon. It will only confuse them and make them less likely to take up treatment.
Aim to send these out within a couple of days to ensure they feel cared for and aren't starting to feel forgotten about. The TCO should also call them to ensure they have received and understood everything.
Critical to this is the next step. Where do the patients go from here?
Some people will say, 'Great, how do I begin?' while others may want further information and time to think.
One of the things we do here is book an options meeting. This is a follow-up a couple of weeks later, giving patients a chance to go through the plan and answer any questions or concerns. This is complimentary and can be done via a video meeting, which is efficient for you and the patient. It also provides the bonus of a recording if the patient consents.
To download our Marketing and Sales Toolkit, please follow the link below. By downloading this Toolkit, you will receive:
✅ CRM Excel Template, which you can use today for tracking and analysing your sales pipeline.
✅ A copy of our Marketing Plan Template, helping to set up your marketing strategy.
✅ The Campbell Clinic Treatment Information Brochure.
Thank you for reading our Guide!
In conclusion, developing a comprehensive marketing and sales strategy for your dental practice is about attracting new patients and creating a sustainable model for growth and patient satisfaction. You can build a strong presence in your community by understanding your market, setting clear goals, and leveraging both digital and community-based marketing strategies. Remember to regularly assess your strategy, adapt to changes, and strive to improve patient care and experience.
If you have any questions, please just let us know 😀