Are you throwing money at marketing without seeing any results?
Eight years ago, Founder and CEO of Progressive Dental, Bart Knellinger, noticed an opportunity to help dental practices succeed. His father, Dr. Dan Knellinger, owned a practice that was preparing to bring on two additional doctors. This presented a problem – how could they get more patients in the door to support two more doctors?
His practice was insurance-based at the time, and he had a strategy in place to attract more patients, but not a specific type of patient. This meant his strategy was actually a goal, and he had no idea who he needed to target, in terms of types of cases or what sort of volume, to compete with his competitors. With no proper strategy in place, he was spending money on ineffective marketing that did not bring him closer to his practice goals.
What was he doing wrong?
1. Dr. Knellinger was working with 6-7 different insurance vendors. This proved problematic because each vendor had a different strategy and they didn’t talk to each other; in fact, they were competitors. This made it difficult to set clear goals and have measures of success.
2. He was targeting cosmetic dentistry, like everyone else was at that time. When everybody in the market targets the same thing, you spend more for less return. Lack of strategy in this competitive market meant he was paying more for less response.
3. In attempts to get a response, he resorted to dropping his prices. This meant he was pulling from a pool of price shoppers, versus standing above the competition based on quality.
4. He was modeling what other people were doing, which meant he wasn’t unique.
5. He wasn’t tracking his numbers for call or website conversions. With no set expectations, he had no way to measure his level of success.
Investing in Solutions
With Bart’s help, Dr. Knellinger discovered where there was demand in the market with little competition. In this case, they found that 50% of the market had periodontal disease, but nobody was positioned toward it. The perio market offered opportunity for growth, so Bart recommended the practice invest in a dental laser. With a clear strategy in place, he found a niche with perio patients, and added value to the niche with the dental laser, his new competitive advantage. This allowed Dr. Knellinger to target a higher volume of patients at a lower cost. We also found that in many of these targeted cases, the new perio patients needed more work than they had initially called for, such as gum reconstruction, occlusal concerns and tooth replacement. Ultimately, this lead to more return from just one patient than the patients he had been targeting previously.
The Result
Eight years later, Dr. Knellinger’s practice has experienced 350% growth and they are 100% fee-for-service.
Who is Progressive Dental?
Progressive Dental, or PD, works with over 1,000 practices in specialty markets, such as laser (perio), dental implants, full mouth reconstruction, ortho, and full arch, throughout the United States, Canada, Europe and Australia. We have lectured on practice growth strategy and ways to differentiate practices to build strategies to acquire targeted patients for some of the industry’s largest organizations, including:
The Pankey Institute
Dawson Academy
Patterson
Straumann
California Implant Institute
To help dentists further their training and knowledge of business, we offer our own practice growth event, Catalyst, a continuing education course. The day and a half course offers attendees 16 credits that have been approved and recognized by the American Dental Association Continuing Education Recognition Program as one of the first non-clinical dental CE courses and the Academy of General Dentistry’s Program Approval for Continuing Education.
Our customers take advantage of flexible marketing options that help grow their business, from website creation to staff training, call tracking and analytics, SEO, PPC, seminars, photo and video, TV and radio, and direct mail. To learn how we can help you and your practice grow, contact one of our practice growth specialists today at 727-286-6211.
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