8 min
205 How To KEEP Patients Coming Back to Your Dental Practice The Delivering WOW Dental Podcast
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- Business
Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of the Delivering Wow Dental podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Anissa Holmes. And today, we're talking all about how to keep your patients coming back to your dental practice. Now, this is something that's actually pretty important and I'm not sure if you've thought about it recently, in terms of how many patients are actually leaving out of the back door or how many patients are actually leaving every single week without being scheduled. And I can tell you this is something that you're definitely going to want to create a system for because it's really interesting. A lot of people are focused on new patients, new patients, new patients. But if you are focusing on new patients and you have patients who are not scheduling, then essentially your business is not going to grow. It's going to be flat. And so, today I'm going to talk about how you can really think about making sure that your patients are coming back.
So, obviously we can look at marketing and not marketing from the standpoint of getting new patients but marketing to our existing patients. And I absolutely love to think about this and to really focus a lot of attention on marketing to my existing patients. Why? Because they are already trusting us. They have already had great service. They know what our culture's like and they can be walking advocates for our practice. And so, as we start thinking about even external marketing campaigns, we want to make sure that we're always involving our patients.
So, what does that look like? Well, maybe you decide that you want to do a clothing drive. Well, you definitely want to make sure that you're posting that on social media but you want to make sure that if you're doing, for example, a Facebook live video talking about it, on your social media pages, you're also taking a photo of that. You are sharing that link to that video, to your patients in an email and they're seeing what you're doing to serve the community. And also, of course, you're inviting them to participate. You are putting up flyers so that your patients will see what you're doing inside of your community.
And what I love doing inside of my practice and what I love helping practices with is actually having these monthly community engagement campaigns. So, now you can go ahead and really be consistent with marketing internally to your patients.
And as we start thinking about how are we marketing to our patients, we want to make sure that we are 100% being consistent. So, that is looking at having a monthly newsletter where you are sharing what you did last month for the community and what you're doing this upcoming month. Sharing an educational article that is talking about a new service or a service that you want to focus on for that particular month.
And of course, having that link for people to go ahead and schedule online or sharing your phone number or asking that they email you back to go ahead and make an appointment. So, that's another thing that you definitely want to consider.
Another thing that you want to look at in terms of making sure that your patients were coming back is making sure that when they're there, they are scheduling their next appointment. And a lot of times, what I hear from teams is that they are giving patients an option to schedule maybe even for a hygiene appointment and the patient says, "I'll call you back." Well, what I need you to understand is that most times patients are saying that because they don't know where they're going to be in six months. And so, now if you can create a system that says, "Okay, I would love to go ahead and make your next appointment. We can do it at the same time of day on the same day, if that works for you. We'll give you a call a week ahead of time. And if that time doesn't work, we can always move you."
Now, your patients know that they're not going to disappoint you if they are not able to make it. Maybe they're going to be traveling for work. And
Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of the Delivering Wow Dental podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Anissa Holmes. And today, we're talking all about how to keep your patients coming back to your dental practice. Now, this is something that's actually pretty important and I'm not sure if you've thought about it recently, in terms of how many patients are actually leaving out of the back door or how many patients are actually leaving every single week without being scheduled. And I can tell you this is something that you're definitely going to want to create a system for because it's really interesting. A lot of people are focused on new patients, new patients, new patients. But if you are focusing on new patients and you have patients who are not scheduling, then essentially your business is not going to grow. It's going to be flat. And so, today I'm going to talk about how you can really think about making sure that your patients are coming back.
So, obviously we can look at marketing and not marketing from the standpoint of getting new patients but marketing to our existing patients. And I absolutely love to think about this and to really focus a lot of attention on marketing to my existing patients. Why? Because they are already trusting us. They have already had great service. They know what our culture's like and they can be walking advocates for our practice. And so, as we start thinking about even external marketing campaigns, we want to make sure that we're always involving our patients.
So, what does that look like? Well, maybe you decide that you want to do a clothing drive. Well, you definitely want to make sure that you're posting that on social media but you want to make sure that if you're doing, for example, a Facebook live video talking about it, on your social media pages, you're also taking a photo of that. You are sharing that link to that video, to your patients in an email and they're seeing what you're doing to serve the community. And also, of course, you're inviting them to participate. You are putting up flyers so that your patients will see what you're doing inside of your community.
And what I love doing inside of my practice and what I love helping practices with is actually having these monthly community engagement campaigns. So, now you can go ahead and really be consistent with marketing internally to your patients.
And as we start thinking about how are we marketing to our patients, we want to make sure that we are 100% being consistent. So, that is looking at having a monthly newsletter where you are sharing what you did last month for the community and what you're doing this upcoming month. Sharing an educational article that is talking about a new service or a service that you want to focus on for that particular month.
And of course, having that link for people to go ahead and schedule online or sharing your phone number or asking that they email you back to go ahead and make an appointment. So, that's another thing that you definitely want to consider.
Another thing that you want to look at in terms of making sure that your patients were coming back is making sure that when they're there, they are scheduling their next appointment. And a lot of times, what I hear from teams is that they are giving patients an option to schedule maybe even for a hygiene appointment and the patient says, "I'll call you back." Well, what I need you to understand is that most times patients are saying that because they don't know where they're going to be in six months. And so, now if you can create a system that says, "Okay, I would love to go ahead and make your next appointment. We can do it at the same time of day on the same day, if that works for you. We'll give you a call a week ahead of time. And if that time doesn't work, we can always move you."
Now, your patients know that they're not going to disappoint you if they are not able to make it. Maybe they're going to be traveling for work. And
8 min