Effective communication is critical in all aspects of running a business. For dental practices, communication is especially essential.
If you’re working hard to acquire new patients but don’t have proper systems in place, you may be working harder than you need to.
It takes far less time, effort, and money to keep an existing client than it does to acquire a new one.
“Acquiring a new customer is anywhere from five to 25 times more expensive than retaining an existing one.” —Harvard Business Review
All dentists should automatically flag appointment booking opportunities and past-due reminders for existing clients.
The idea of achieving more by doing less work may seem counterintuitive, but it’s not. Most of us have been steeped in the idea that to achieve something, we must work hard and struggle to get there.
But successful marketers and businesses know that you don’t have to struggle to grow and maintain profitability.
Here’s a quick analogy of how this applies to dental practices
When businesses invest thousands of dollars into marketing to attract new customers, they know it’s fundamentally cheaper to stay in touch with those customers and keep them engaged for repeat business. Attracting new customers is much more costly.
You’ve invested your time and energy to build your client base.
When you have an efficient system in place to stay in touch with your patients and send them timely appointment reminders, you maximize your potential for profitability through repeat business.
You expend less time and energy than trying to attract new clients to replace the ones who may have become disengaged or simply don’t show for repeat visits because they don’t get reminders.
The big challenge for many practices
Communicating with patients can be a big challenge.
You spent years studying science and the hard skills of dentistry, but perhaps not marketing. It is okay to feel like you don’t know the best ways to communicate with your patients. But now is the time to step up your patient communication.
Improving your communication efforts can help satisfy your current patients, making them more likely to schedule follow-up appointments and post-appointment care.
It is also essential to acquire new patients.
As your practice grows, you will need to carefully manage your communication to meet your patients’ needs and reduce the effort from your team.
As a dentist, it can be challenging to create strong and meaningful marketing messages that will resonate with your patients.
But you can get greater responses when your messages are timely and relevant.
If this is something your practice struggles with, we have solutions.
Let Prosites’ PracticeMojo do the hard work for your patient communications.
