How to spread word-of-mouth about your practice?
In past, it was believed that word-of-mouth & Public Relations play crucial role in building a successful dental practice. That basic principle remains the same even today; all it needs is a fresh approach. In this technology-driven era, use of smart phones has gone up significantly and people have literally shifted themselves to online world and that’s why there is a need to build PR in the virtual world.
Relationship Marketing is useful for two things. Firstly, it helps in retaining your patients and, secondly to establish a brand value.
How to use Relationship marketing?
Relationship marketing can be done in many ways. Consider these points while you do the brand building and relationship marketing exercise.
1. Increase the touch points with your patients.
Here’s how you can do it…
- Send birthday wishes, personalised greetings on special occasions.
- Send appointment confirmation and reminder SMS
- Send post-treatment care messages
- Send recall message for dental check up if they haven’t visited you for 3 or 6 months.
- Patients who need more frequent dental care (smokers, tobacco chewers) should be recalled more frequently.
2. On every touch point, reinforce your own name or clinic name in patient’s mind.
Here are some inexpensive ways to carry out branding with reinforcement…
- All your SMSes should go with your own sender ID.
What is Sender ID?
It is the six-character name of sender. For ex. when you book a railway ticket, you get SMS from “DM-IRCTCi”. When you withdraw cash from ATM, you get an SMS from your bank’s sender ID.Notice that the sender ID represents IRCTC or the bank, not the name of the software used by them!
This looks like a small thing but it makes a big difference. Most doctors send out thousands of messages every year and each of these messages can reinforce the doctor’s name. Obviously, if the patient receives SMS from “DM-DrAjay”, it strengthens Dr Ajay’s branding. When the SMS arrives, the patient just sees the SMS notification on top and instantly knows it’s from Dr Ajay, even without reading the SMS!
3. Don’t let your existing patients compare you with other doctors in the same area as you. Do NOT ask your patients to use the portal/platform/software which shows them other practitioners in your area.
Remember, big brands like Coca-cola spend billions of dollars every year to promote their own name, not their software’s!!
4. Use your clinic’s Facebook page to acquire new patients. Will explain this in detail in separate blog.
At bestosys, we are completely dedicated to building your brand. We not only help you implement all the ideas shared here but many more which help you build a rock-solid patient-loyalty. We show you how to acquire new patients using social media, especially 
. To request a personalized session to understand how we can help, please click here