How you utilise your patient database is crucial to ensuring a successful marketing campaign. Gillian Heron of Pink Inc. explains how to pinpoint the right patients with the right treatments

In the last few issues we have taken the steps necessary to put your new brand and website in place and are ready to move on to the next stage and start using these tools to promote your dental practice and treatments.

Online materials and offline materials go hand in hand when promoting your dental surgery and there is no right answer to what will work for you. However, everything depends on one thing: your database. How you utilise this is paramount to your dental practice marketing.

Ask yourself the following questions:
1. Do you currently have all of your patient details on file including their email address?
2. Can that list be segmented to show you which customers attend regularly and which ones have dropped off?
3. Does your database show you the treatments that each patient currently utilises?

Having this information to hand with as much detail as possible on each patient will help you target and effectively market your dental services to the right customers at the right time – or as close as possible!

Let’s look at an example of how this may be approached. Take the patient that is new to cosmetic treatments. Most patients will take a leap in to cosmetic treatment through a low-cost and instantly gratifying product such as tooth whitening. This customer can be profiled as having an interest in cosmetic treatment and will probably invest in their appearance.

By segmenting your patient database to show only clients that have undertaken tooth whitening, you can run a targeted campaign, focusing on other cosmetic treatments which may be of interest to that patient.

A good example of this may promoting invisible straightening. Recently lauded by celebrities, this presents that perfect opportunity to promote your services in this area.

So how do we get the message out?
There are several ways that you can run a marketing campaign, but in our experience we find that a combination of online and offline materials works best and pushes the message to the patient through different media.

Some of these means of promotion may be as follows:

1. Send out an email campaign, e.g. target your tooth whitening customers with an exclusive offer.
2. Mail out a letter and money off voucher. This will encourage patients to get in touch and book their consultation.
3. Announce your offer or new treatment on Facebook.
4. Get some local press cover with a good promotional offer
5. Running an open night for free consultations.

Before you run any marketing campaign make sure your website has the relevant information on invisible straightening so that your patients can read more about the treatment if they would like to. It is also a good idea to have some live case studies and testimonials of patients who have enjoyed the benefits of this treatment.

These are just some ideas you might use to promote a specific service to a specific type of customer but have a look at your database and see how creative you can be.