It’s a fact in business: new patient flow is required for a practice to stay viable or grow.
Why? Attrition. People die, move, and sadly, yes, you may even fall out of favor with them for any number of reasons, many times, beyond your control (like they switch insurance cos.!!).
Patient Attraction isn’t a “want” for dental businesses, it’s a “need.”
Putting Butts In Ops and attracting more patients to your practice is what we’ve been doing for over 14 years.
Over to the right are some choices where you can start.
The strategies I recommend (and use myself at SofTouch Family Dental), to attract the maximum number of patients in the most economical fashion depend greatly on the age (maturity) of your practice – new, 2 years old, 6 years old, 20 years old, and the size of the current patient base.
If your practice is brand-new, internal marketing is less of an option merely due to numbers. Is it effective? Yes, but, you’ll not see enough business from just word-of-mouth to grow quickly and profitably. You’ll miss payroll, lease payments, practice payments, etc. How do I know that? I’ve been there.
You need a surge of patients NOW. Quickly. AND, the more motivated they are to get their their dental problems fixed, the better for you.
I won’t paint a B.S. pie-in-the-sky picture that I’ll fill your ops full of patients demanding cosmetic services, either. Those elective procedures will come with time and trust. Perhaps you’ll get lucky now and then, but getting Invisalign or 4 units of veneers out of the chute is generally a pipe dream.
You need solid bread-and-butter new patients that are eager to see you and have you SOLVE their problems.
Butts In Ops delivers those kinds of folks.
I always recommend existing practices start with maximizing referrals from current patients using tools such as printed and delivered patient newsletters. To learn more, click on Patient Retention, above.