How Top Dental Practices Increase Profits Through Marketing & A Sales Process

Published: 06/03/2022
Author: Michael Tomasiello
Practice Growth Consultant

Progressive Dental Marketing is a full-service consulting firm that specializes in helping dental clinicians increase acceptance rates for targeted high-dollar procedures. We are more than just a marketing company; we are a company dedicated to dental practice growth. Over the 13 years we have been in business, we have helped thousands of practices to increase their profits through marketing, a sales process, and much more.

What can Progressive Dental Marketing provide for our clients?

This is a question that we receive daily from growing practices nationwide. What can you do for me and my dental practice?

The dental industry has changed, and just like in any other changing environment, if you don’t adapt, you get left behind, or worse, go out of business. Look around, on your drive home, and look at how your towns and cities have changed over the past couple of years, when was the last time you went to the mall? Commerce and consumer trends have changed dramatically, and yes that also includes the dental industry. We are lucky that no one has created a system for do-it-yourself dental work at home, otherwise, we would all be out of business. Take in-office braces and clear aligner production for example. Since the introduction of at-home clear aligners, how has your production dropped? Smile Direct, one of over a dozen at-home clear aligner companies, has successfully treated over 1 million patients in their short history. How many of those patients could have been yours?

What do we provide for our clients? We provide them the services to keep them relevant, keep them in the modern age, and keep them engaged with consumers who are using modern techniques to find the right practice for them. Consumer trends are constantly evolving, just like the dental industry itself. As a practice owner and clinician, you have enough on your plate to keep up with the newest technology, techniques, and procedures. Spending countless days away from your practice for continuing education courses to make sure that your craft is up to date. Let us make sure your business is as modernized as your skillset.

What Services Do We Provide?

At Progressive Dental, we provide many services, so I have broken it down into two different blogs. This is the second blog which mainly focuses on phase two; advertising and sales.

Personalized Marketing Analysis and Strategy

As someone who has worked for many years in the marketing industry and working in many different agencies and industries, I can say that the key to success is personalization to your practice, your location, and your goals. Most companies will give you different packages they offer and make you choose a templated marketing plan. We are different, any time a client asks me about marketing, my first question is “what are your goals?” Every marketing campaign is different, even if we have clients in the same city or same zip code, every marketing campaign is different because every client has different needs and goals. We tailor-fit all our marketing campaigns based on your goals and capabilities. Whether your monthly budget is $5,000 or $50,000, our experienced practice consultants will use your feedback to create and fine-tune marketing campaigns to help you achieve the goals and vision you have for your practice.

Social Media Advertising and Community Brand Awareness

How is Social Media going to help me and my practice? If your business isn’t using social media, then you might as well close up shop. Why do you ask? Well, here are some of the stats. 55% of consumers use social media to learn about new brands, 43% of consumers increased their social media usage just to find new brands and businesses for their needs, and 78% of consumers will buy a product from a business after having a positive experience with their social media account, not only that, but 91% of executives will increase their social media marketing within the next 3 years.

What’s the most important and effective form of marketing? Word of mouth, social media, is the new word of mouth. Your social media presence is your online identity, if you don’t have a presence, your patients won’t share your account, won’t talk about their experience, people won’t learn about your business, and the new guy across the street, with less experience and lower quality, will outperform you because their brand is all over social media and yours isn’t. Social media is one of the most important tools for brand awareness and interacting with your patients. If you aren’t participating, you might as well be as dead as the yellow pages.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

I am a huge advocate of SEO. This is probably one of the most underappreciated, overlooked, yet most important aspects of your marketing. SEO will give you a higher ROI than any other form of marketing. Most people, especially the demographic that we are targeting for implants (55+), hate being sold. My grandfather will do everything possible to avoid ads, when searching on google he makes it a priority to avoid the first couple of ad listings and will look at the organic results. SEO, Search engine optimization, will make sure that you are on the first page of Google's organic listings based on certain keywords searched. 70% of consumers will not click on anything below the 4th listing. The highest converting patients are those researching organic listing, they avoid the ads and look at the websites google deems most appropriate for the search terms. You want to make sure your website is optimized to ensure you are on the top 4 listings in your area. This is what we call full circle marketing, making sure you show up on google ads, at the top of the list on google organic, and your brand is flooding the social media market.

Google Search Pay Per Click (PPC) Ads

Google pay-per-click ads will be one of the best sources for lead generation that you can participate in. Google ads only show when people search certain keywords. For implant marketing for example, when someone searches anything related to implants, whether it be full arch, dental implant cost, dental implants near me, all on 4, or any of the other 200+ keywords we target our ads for, you will show up. Google PPC ads will bring in leads, potential patients, that have a higher dental IQ, second opinions, and leads that are further along in the buying cycle than any other form of marketing. Those searching for dental implants are different than the social media leads who are usually interested in learning more information about the procedure we are marketing for. Google PPC will deliver leads who are more informed, and further along in the buying cycle.

Traditional Marketing Techniques

Besides digital marketing, we also provide our clients with traditional marketing as well. Some of the other services we provide are billboard, radio, print mail, and commercial marketing. As I mentioned at the beginning of this blog, we are a full-service dental practice solutions company. These more traditional forms of marketing are usually used to supplement digital marketing, to push our clients to the next level. This form of marketing will make sure to reach more of the population that we weren’t able to reach through digital means.

The Closing Institute

We can create the best performing marketing campaign for your practice, we can provide you with hundreds of leads per month, but it doesn’t matter how good the marketing is performing if you can’t close the leads. Most practices are used to referrals and word of mouth to close these bigger cases. These are hot leads, easy to close, and well-informed. It’s hard not to close these leads, but direct to public unattached leads are a completely different monster. Your treatment coordinators need to be sharks. They need to have a certain amount of salesmanship to close these leads consistently. The Closing Institute will train your team to be closers! This is a continued education course to make sure your team is as equipped as possible to close these bigger cases. Our biggest and most successful clients closing 20, 30, and 40+ arches per month are involved in our sales training program and it serves as insurance to your marketing investment to make sure we can close the cases provided through our marketing efforts. Don’t let your marketing investment go to waste, make sure your team is prepared to close these cases for the best returns possible.

Senior Practice Consultants

Lastly, and most importantly, our Practice Consultants. Our Practice Consultants, or account managers, have extensive knowledge of the inner workings of the dental industry and how a dental practice operates. They are the most important position in the partnership between a practice and Progressive Dental. Our Practice Consultants are much more than just your typical marketing managers, we are your one-stop-shop for anything related to your practice. Your Practice Consultant will train your staff. We train your lead managers to make sure we are efficiently managing and scheduling leads, we train your treatment coordinators to make sure we close more cases, we manage your marketing, and ensure we are performing as well as possible, to give you the best opportunities possible. We also offer advice on productization to make sure we can make your products more affordable to larger segments of the demographic, if there is a part of your business that can be improved, through our strategic partnerships, we can advise on technology and different products to use, how to decrease overhead and increase profits, we’ll even help you with hiring the right employee! The goal of a Practice Consultant is to be an extension of the practice and elevate the practice as a whole through any means necessary.

Conclusion

There was a lot of information provided above. I will go ahead and summarize the information above to make sure that you the reader, the doctor, wanting to elevate your practice, can get the major points that set us apart from other marketing agencies, and make us the only real choice for a true partnership to build your practice.

Marketing

Marketing isn’t a one size fits all model. Every campaign is different, and every client's goals are different. The secret to our success is that we treat every campaign and every client as an individual. Most companies will sell you a package and put your practice in a box, they use the same templates for multiple clients and hope it works. That’s not us, here at Progressive Dental, we start any marketing strategy call with a question, “What do you want to achieve, and what are your goals”. We build every campaign based on the needs and the goals of each client. No two campaigns are the same, and we pride ourselves on making sure that everything we do is customized to each client, to ensure we can reach their goals. Whether that’s a digital marketing route, or if we want to use traditional marketing, we have various avenues to ensure we can provide the results you are looking for.

Your Practice Consultant

Your practice consultant is the most important asset for your business. Whether your team needs more training or if you want advice on how to increase production and profit, your practice consultant is your most important resource. This is what sets us apart. We don’t just manage your marketing we can advise you on your business as a whole. Our goal is to increase growth for all of our clients, and we go above and beyond the normal marketing account manager position to ensure that all areas of the practice are optimized and performing to the best of their ability to make you more successful. We are business consultants, marketing managers, sales trainers, and operations managers all in one. As I said, we are much more than just marketing managers.

So, Why Progressive Dental?

Progressive Dental is more than just your typical marketing company, we are your one-stop shop for all of your dental practice needs. We will make sure that your practice gets visibility, and recognition, and always stays ahead of the curb digitally or technologically. Our marketing strategy will always be tailor-made to ensure that we can help you achieve your goals and vision for your business.

I’m sure you have plenty of questions, bringing on a marketing company can be daunting, and is a big decision to make. If you are considering becoming a part of the Progressive Dental family, give us a call. One of our team members would be more than happy to discuss your goals and how we can help you achieve them.

Are You Looking For A Clear And Concise Marketing Partner For Your Dental Practice?

Interested in learning more about closing high-dollar cases? Attend The Closing Institute and learn how to predictably scale implant production by implementing advanced marketing and sales strategies from the leading experts in the industry! With courses in Clearwater, FL and Las Vegas, NV, this isn’t just theory. This is a tried and true method to grow your full arch production and develop your team to strategically and consistently close high-revenue, dental implant procedures.

Dental specialists interested in learning more about Progressive Dental Marketing's award-winning services and continuing education seminars are invited to contact the dental marketing company in Clearwater, FL. Progressive Dental Marketing can be reached by calling (727) 286-6211 or by visiting progressivedentalmarketing.com. Or feel free to explore our website and the several case studies we have!

If you are interested in hearing more from Bart Knellinger, come to one of our upcoming dental continuing education courses. Visit theclosinginstitute.com today to reserve a spot for you and your team!

Progressive Dental is more than just a marketing company, we are a company located in Clearwater, FL dedicated to dental practice growth. Our team was founded on creativity, collaboration and hard work. We are constantly evolving and are passionate about providing the best suite of dental marketing services for our clients. They are the reason we jump out of bed!