Marketing in a Recession- (Part One)

Part one in a six part series

It may seem the ‘stereotypical” subject for my first article of the year, however, having now spoken with many of my clients already this year, how the recession is going to effect the dental profession is very much top of mind.

Irrespective of the spin our Prime Minster and Treasurer want to put on the current economic outlook, for all intents and purposes we are already in a recession. To think that rising unemployment and all the doom and gloom peddled by the press on a daily basis is not going to have an effect on patients’ spending money on dentistry would be foolish.

However, with the exception a few unfortunate souls, your patient’s potential change in spending pattern is not going to be driven by what is in their bank account but rather their perceptions and priorities. So the key objective of your marketing this year is to keep dentistry on your patient’s high priority list.

Without sounding too sceptical, luxuries such as regular hairdressing visits, cigarettes, alcohol etc. will remain firmly on your patient’s priority list this year. These non- essential items will not be affected by the recession and if history is anything to go by then spending in these areas usually increases in an economic downturn. So how do you keep your services a high priority for your patients in 2009 and beyond?

Over the course of this year I will introduce to you effective ways of not only maintaining your practice during the recession, but also building your practice. The actions we take now with our businesses will not only safeguard us during economic turmoil, but when the economy recovers, which it inevitably will, our businesses will be more efficient, cost effective and better placed than ever before.

The first part to this series is to “Check your marketing fundamentals”

There is little point in looking for new ways to market your practice if tried and tested marketing fundamentals are not being performed on a daily basis, so you may wish to review the following activities to make sure they are happening within your practice, before signing the cheque for a big ad or discounting your fees.

Regular Newsletter or e-newsletter

Why do you want to see your patients every six months or at least every year? Of course you know the answer, but are you sure your patients fully understand why you ask them to attend the practice regularly. A quarterly newsletter can promote all the reasons why it is important to stay in good oral health, explain the correlation between Perio and Heart Disease, how you can save them money by diagnosing treatments early and so the list goes on. These messages help keep your services on a patients priority list as well as promoting more elective services you provide and keeping your patients up to date on any changes, such as courses you have attended and equipment you have purchased.
Sending a newsletter via e-mail is by far the most cost effective method, but if your database is not up to date with your patient’s e-mails then a traditional paper based newsletter works well and in my experience is still significantly more cost effective than most advertising.

Updating your website

Once you have a website it is easy to forget it’s there and the months and years can go by without reviewing both the content and also the technology that drives the effectiveness of the site. Most of my clients now report that after personal referrals their number one source of new patients is their website. If your website is not producing a significant level of enquiries or even worse you do not have a web presence, now is the time to review you internet strategy.

Proud Smile

Asking for referrals

Don’t cringe! It is easy to ask for referrals and not be pushy or unprofessional. Over 70% of personal communication is non-verbal (if you are not convinced spend sometime with a teenager, my 16 year old can say nothing yet I know exactly what she is saying). So eye contact, a smile and the tone of your staff member’s voice is vital to getting a genuine message across. Get all of this right and what is said is less important, but words along the lines of “we would love to see more patients like you, would you mind passing these on?” (whilst passing them two copies of your up to date practice brochure) work well and will instantly boost referrals.
Remember to send a handwritten card thanking the person who has referred a new patient and you have a genuine, heartfelt system that is totally professional and highly cost effective.

Reactivate patients with outstanding treatment plans

What is the value of all outstanding treatment plans in your practice? If you are unsure then it’s worth taking some time to find out as you may find that it runs into hundreds of thousands of dollars. Even getting a small percentage of unfinished treatment plans or unstarted treatment plans back into the practice can create an immediate boost to turnover.
A well crafted letter explaining all the heath benefits of finishing or going ahead with work now gets your patients thinking about the treatment again. Then, in addition to this you need to give them an incentive to do the work now. What you offer them as an incentive will vary from practice to practice tremendously, but this incentive is not designed to turn you into a “discount” dentist but genuinely give people a reason to go ahead with work today. You have already invested time and money into these patients so by offering them 10% off their bill is still far more cost effective than advertising for new patients.

Where lab work is involved, talk to your lab about doing a joint promotion and get the lab to provide the discount which keeps you one step removed. There are numerous ways of tackling this and I would be more than happy to talk to you about your individual situation, my contact details are below; feel free to use them.

Keep an eye out for opportunities

This year more than ever before it is worth keeping an eye out for opportunities. This may be buying or amalgamating a local practice, negotiating harder with suppliers or trying an overseas lab with some veteran affairs cases to see what the quality is like.
Finally if you are going to buy any major items to remember that your dollar should be more valuable than ever. I you are not convinced on this last point, look at what is happening with car and boat sales at the moment. There are some significant deals to be had and my prediction is that luxury purchases will become even more affordable during the course of this year.

If the threat of the affect of a recession makes us review and improve how we run our businesses, it could be the best thing that has happened in years.