The following dental marketing commentary is a repost of a blog written a few years back. Some of it has been updated to fit the current environment.

RANT REDUX PART DEUX Covers… 

• Your Image After Discounts & FREE STUFF!
• Dumbed Down Dental Design & Message Value
• Where Are The High Value Dental Consumers?
• Selling The New Smile Line or Continue Servicing Used Smiles?
• Conclusion: Value-Added Dental Marketing

Your Image After Discounts & Free STUFF!

Discounting is great for the dental patient, but it can play havoc with many areas of your dentistry business model. I know my expertise is usually worth half the price I am asking (NOT!), but how many of your patients think that about your dental skills?

Discounting your image and your expertise is a bad start to an already shaky consumer relationship. Consumers already think every dentist and dental office is the SAME.

With ‘discounting’ you are adding to the perception that your continuing education, ceramist and technology should be paid for by selling Girl Scout cookies or Amway on the side.

So maybe you get past this and sell some ‘beyond insurance coverage’ services or even cosmetic dentistry to a few of these patients. Great!

However, this is like successfully shoveling water up hill. Why not install a pump and pipe to move it up the hill?

This advanced plumbing concept costs more, but the damage to your back (creating a low-skilled work image) and the work it takes to move this stuff up hill (overcoming their refusal to do more than one-tooth a year) can cost even more in the long-term.

Basically, you're choosing between more dental patients or developing a clientele that utilizes your entire expertise repertoire.

Dumbed Down Dental Design and Message Value

If the design or message does not change much, it is difficult to upgrade their understanding of dental expertise value. Once again, this is how they save the dentist time and money: they print ten postcard mailings of 10,000 each, which are often exactly the same, all at once.

An example of value decline is the overuse of such terms as cosmetic dentistry, which is generic and often seen as negative.

Cosmetic is not associated with health or frugality, which in various ways is held dear by a large segment of the dental consumer population. But generic, simplistic fliers usually want to employ this term a lot because it is ‘understood’ quickly by consumers.

Unfortunately, a larger segment is lost entirely because of this simple word choice: cosmetic. Many consumers might want these cosmetic dentistry treatments at some point, but the presentation of them in this format could make the dentist that is sending them out the last dentist they would contact: because it looks cheap!

A huge number of generic mailings with DISCOUNTS dumbs down the dental language. The dental marketer employs large numbers these because they want to get results immediately to prove their worth as a marketing group.

Yet, over time – the results will dwindle because a large segment of the ‘high value’ audience is pushed away by the ‘low value’ being thrown at them.

FREE can also be an example of ‘dumbing down’. Review the following comparisons and determine which one is down dumbed or advancing a grade or two of value building. 

• FREE dental stuff (toothbrushes, etc.) versus complimentary smile care products

• Our dental patient receptionist versus our client concierge

• Complimentary Smile Consultation (offering an informal introduction) versus FREE Dental Exam (giving away your expertise)

Marketers often talk about how you need to speak and write at an 8th grade level so you can communicate effortlessly to the consumer. While marketing only to readers of The New Yorker magazine is hardly ever appropriate, speaking to everyone in yesterday's dental language (because its easier to understand) reduces the chance of upgrading value.

The goal is to avoid encouraging the status quo (what's covered by my dental insurance) while promoting the acceptance of higher value services such as dental implants or cosmetic dentistry.

Many dentists want a quick result: many patients in the door tomorrow. Unfortunately, this often means creating incentives that devalue dental expertise and dentistry services: the HALF OFF dental exams postcard slam.

Where Are The High Value Dental Consumers?

Dentists are not going to get high value dental consumers from the hammer them with a lot of dental postcards marketing alone plan. Direct mail is a very integral part of marketing because of its unique attributes: getting in the hands of head of households. However, postcards and such can only do so much. 

With the only weapon in the campaign quiver being ‘hammer them’ with generic, cheap postcards, the dentist rarely gets more than some of his/her text crammed into the direct mailing piece and maybe their dental logo slapped on. Little about the dental practice branding strategy is discussed, developed or implemented.

This brand of dental marketer is able to contain costs by limiting the marketing device (mailers only), the design styles (this or that image/pic) and minimal dentist client input. Their one size fits all dental marketing plans push low cost and turnkey implementation as a very effective elixir to encourage ‘fast acceptance’ by the dentist.

With the ‘success record’ these dental marketers tout, and the dentist not needing to think or pay as much as a real plan, he or she has little to hold them back. "We'll get you hundreds of new dental patients, cheaply and easily.”

This syrupy marketing elixir is hypnotic in its appeal. I am even ready to sign up my dentist clients after seeing or hearing it.

But, what happens when the postcard marketing results start to dry up? 

Answer: The dentist's actual goal and the results diverge when these dental marketing techniques are tried in the area of upgrading value. The dentists I work with want patients to purchase their expertise not their services.

Expertise includes everything the dentist is, which CANNOT be wholly replicated by competitor dentists. Services are what EVERY dentist can sell and replicate.

Think for one moment about some of the most ‘popular’ services being promoted by dental practices -- Invisalign braces, Lumineers, CEREC one visit crowns, ZOOM! / BriteSmile -- chair side smile whitening. What happens when every dentist has these services?

Consumers once again start to think every dentist is the SAME. This means no uniqueness can be promoted. It's like two Ford dealers competing for the same business with only price and convenience as selling points.

And as every dentist knows, smile whitening services are not going to increase in value: fees have had to go down along with margins. Most are now giving them away free because Crest White Strips at Wal-mart are nearly costless.

Now how do these dental practices differentiate themselves? These dentists need to develop their individual image and justify their dental expertise beyond the services (or products) they offer.

Selling The New Smile Line or Continue Servicing Used Smiles

Free giveaways and discounts are not a bad thing in and of themselves. However, they create conflict with dental expertise and any image built around it.

Comparing your expertise with a consumer product is not very appropriate, even if the consumer ‘responds’ to this marketing technique. Currently, they think of dentistry as the service department at the local car dealer.

Dentists would be better served if they compared them to the cars themselves. This is especially true now that many dentists want to do more than maintain ‘used’ smiles. The advanced dentist wants to give them, when needed or wanted, a new smile via a modern, restorative and/or cosmetic dentistry makeover.

Sadly, most dental offices are set up and have a dentistry image based on the ‘service department’ mode. They see many dental patients who want work done on their used smiles and then try to sell them a new smile.

Very few dental practices have patients coming directly into the ‘new smile department’.

But let's say a dental office has many patients coming directly to the new smile department. These patients often come in with no idea about the cost of the ‘new smile line’.

Since these patients have a ‘dental service department’ mindset, they are often hit broadside by the cost of the new line of smiles. This is because consumers have never been marketed to (educated) effectively about the new line.

Only the dental service (smile maintenance) department has done anything consistently.

The modern dentist office wants to sell his/her new smile line more often needs to increase the ‘value upgrade’ marketing and probably eliminate the discount and cheap methods from their current dental marketing.

At the very least these dentists should avoid offering discounts and money off promotions that reduce the cost of anything related to high value services or expertise.

To see how well this ‘theory’ of value or discounts, do two types of marketing at the same time. The marketing should be in two distinct formats direct mail postcards or a newspaper advertisement. If a dentist is only utilizing one marketing element, results are much less likely to have the effect.

Of course, because value is not easily translated into traffic (new patients) this dental marketing campaign method needs to last an appropriate and effective amount of time:  4 to 6 months is probably a minimum. The object of this test is to avoid presenting both images (discount and value) to the same people as much as possible.

Conclusion: Value-Added Dental Marketing

Before starting to market in an external source for enhancing value-based patients, remember to build up your image somewhat with a new dental logo and internal dental image materials and/or some type of upgraded dental brochure.

A dental website is also helpful in verifying value. Value requires proof; it needs to be presented in various ways. 

Dental marketing in today's environment to increase more than ‘one tooth treatment’ acceptance and of course smile makeovers, requires more than hammering the consumer with ‘special’ offers. Most dentists know their expertise should have more value than half-off.

Select the type of dental marketer that can assess your image and develop dental marketing products that work the way you need (more patients) and WANT (more than the lowest common denominator of treatment).

However, keep in mind that dental marketing products are only answers to minor questions. Many dental marketing firms base what they do on their products (sometimes just one product). This is wrong headed. I believe success is centered on your dental and smile enhancement expertise.

With your help, Niche Dental finds the product or products that will best suit your goals. That's what my company has been doing since 1996: distinctive dental consulting.

Niche Dental consulting won’t be FREE or discounted to the price of dirt. But if your expertise deserves more than a discounted image, can you continue to go low priced on how you attract new patient?

Dental Marketing Commentary

by Dick Chwalek

Dentist Marketing Coach

& Dental Communication Consultant