Dental Practices have two goals: serving their patients and making money. Dentists not making money will not be able to serve patients. Everything stops without the dollars. Dental logos, no matter how artistically pleasing, are not cash machines. Dental branding on the other hand can be your PIN number to success.

Maybe you have asked yourself this question: Do I really need a logo? Actually, no dental practice needs a logo. Yet every business needs a brand.

The right dental brand helps the consumer make faster, more accurate decisions:

• Is this the dental practice that I should consider?
• How should I think about their dental expertise and services?
• Are the fees this dentist charges commensurate with the value provided?

Yes, some dental practices can build brands with heavy lifting, sweat equity, and elbow grease. Others locate in an area with economy on cruise control (growing, upscale, many families). Finally, you also have the dentist as selling machine.

What about the dentist that lacks oodles of time, a cruise control environment, and/or sales prowess?

• Dentists who have built their practice with referrals, but referrals are dwindling.
• They change their dental treatment approach, and patients are not accepting this strategy.
• Revenues are slowing and the practice realizes this is a real trend, not a fluke.
• The area has changed, and patients have different expectations, and other options (new dentist competitors).
• It is a startup dental practice, and many things have to go right to be successful.
• Finally, the area has some cruise control elements, but dental consumers are unaware of YOU!

How Can You Get Things To Move In Your Direction?

• Do some advertising in the local newspaper?
• Mail some dental postcards?
• Get a friendlier dental team?
• Turn your practice into a dental spa?
• Relocate or remodel your dental practice?
• Lower your fees? Offer half off smile whitening?
• Run PPC Online Adverting or SEO to your dental website?
• Get a dental logo?

The answer to this dental marketing question is yes and maybe no.

FIRST, Do Something Consistent And Unique

Doing something consistent is vital, but which ones and why do them? You figure this out by determining what your dental brand is. To many people and dentists, branding sounds like pure marketing hooey. Sadly, it often is. Not because there is no value in branding, but because few dentist develop their brand adequately, using rationale data and appropriate examination of their business goals.

Many companies disappear before most of us know who they are because of a weak idea. Other “great” marketing ideas have a short lifespan: the pet rock for example. Then there are companies Wells Fargo and Proctor & Gamble with brands that were built over time rather than through a "branding process".

Dental practices using fall somewhere in the middle of the previous brand building examples. Waiting 5 years to build their dental brand is an eternity and usually don’t outlive the first dentist to develop it. The services dentists provide are needed, but consumers need to know where the dental practice is and/or it is accepting new patients.

Many dental practices start up much like a new family owned restaurant. They have good food (clinical skills), a nice interior presentation, and excited people ready to serve. They can thrive for a while on this energy and with a healthy referral base. "Come to my dentist - she just opened a practice and is looking for new patients. She is very friendly and gentle."

A few years later the schedule is full and “accepting” new patients are less of an issue. Maybe the dental practice is on cruise control on the wrong road and does not know it. The community changes – younger competitors shake things up and newer suburbs pull people away. Dental treatments, techniques, and strategies evolve. These complex concepts become a harder sell or just bewildering to present in a cohesive way. Financing and dental insurance add more issues and complexity to the relationship.

New dental patient referrals start diminishing. And face-to-face referrals often cannot provide the right mix of “education” to move consumers up the ladder to higher-level dentistry. Patients still think you are very nice, but ,000 for a restorative or cosmetic case requires more than nice. Patients and other local consumers start seeing other dentists marketing and begin thinking the competitor has something you do not have.

As you figure out how you will garner your portion of these dental patients, others are stumbling onto to these consumers by just doing something. These dentists slap together dental logos, ads, PPC advertising, SEO keyword content, DVDs, mailers and dental websites. With shear force of doing something (and often being the first to do it), these doing something dentists find some success.

While you could jump into this fray with your own something here, something there dental marketing campaign (or possibly you already have) you stop short and say to yourself: "This is not for me. There should be a way I can have success, but still present the image I want." This is where dental branding is required!

Rather than "advertising" and hawking your dental wares, you want to communicate a different level of dental value and expertise. Your dental brand could be an upscale image or just an upgrade in expectations and results. A real dental brand cannot be pulled from the shelf.

Make It Happen With Dynamic Dental Branding!

• It’s an approach with more depth than artwork alone (a dental logo)
• Determines who you should be (moving beyond the generic dentist concept)
• Refines your image so you speak directly and efficiently to your target patients
• Provides an effective background story to build memorable and genuine rapport

Communicating relevant aspects of who you are (your dental brand) helps consumers make quicker decisions about "what to do" as your patient. It prompts or cues them to more easily accept what you emphasize.