Dental Practice Marketing: Successful Dental Practice Marketing Compared to Root Canal
A San Jose based dental practice marketing firm insists that a professionally managed, dental practice marketing program, while financially painful, is the only way to build a successful practice. The company contends that over-the-counter dental practice marketing solutions are no more effective than at-home-dental-repair kits. They may relieve the immediate financial pain, but they don’t solve the underlying problem. ND Communications specializes in dental practice marketing and only dental practice marketing.
San Jose, CA (PRWEB) January 22, 2005 -- "Successful dental practice
marketing is a lot like a good root canal," say Ninh Nguyen, Ph.D., president of
ND Communications, a San Jose based dental practice marketing firm. "Unless
you’re sedated, you know you’re going to experience some discomfort every time
you write that check to cover your marketing expenses every month."
Not
unlike the dental patient who puts off a visit until the pain finally exceeds
that which he associates with dental work, dentists all too often try to build
their practices using off-the-shelf dental practice marketing solutions that
over the long run don’t provide the desired result. "Affiliate programs,
business-to-business relationships, yellow page advertising, weekly throwaway
ads, newspaper inserts, hit and miss mailers, and large investments in websites
aren’t any more effective than the at-home-dental-repair kits you see in your
local drug store," Ninh says. "They may be less painful to administer but they
don’t produce the desired results."
According to this dental practice
marketing expert and business professor, Ninh states that all of the
aforementioned marketing methods have one common problem. "While they may
generate a few new clients, the number provided isn’t enough to build a
successful practice," he says.
While Ninh acknowledges that full and
half page yellow page display ads produce a predictable number of inquires each
month, the number of new clients a practitioner generates from those calls
doesn’t normally justify the expense. "Our research shows that long term yellow
page display advertising programs for most are, at best, break even
propositions," he says. "If you’re spending $5,000 on a full-page ad in the
yellow pages and get 5 new patients a month, then your cost of getting that
patient is $1,000. This is just not an effective method of
advertising."
Ninh attributes this to one major factor. "Like internet
search results, the value of an ad decreases as the consumer has to turn more
than a page or two to see it. If you don’t have a full page ad in the first
place, and if the name of your practice doesn’t start with ‘AAA’, and if you are
not paying an exorbitant premium for first placement, odds are the consumer
isn’t going even going to see the advertising you spend thousands of dollars on
every month," he says. "The same holds true for ads placed in throwaways like
the Pennysaver, newspaper inserts, and websites."
Affiliate programs and
business-to-business relationships, according to Ninh, don’t work any better.
"Anyone who has been in a service related industry will tell you that a referral
business is hard to come by. This is largely due to the fact that businesses are
not in the business of promoting the services of anyone but themselves, and
dentists really aren’t in a position to reciprocate or ‘pay anyone for
referrals’ on a meaningful basis," he says.
To put things in perspective,
Ninh asks two questions: "When it comes to crux of the issues, how many times
does a dentist come in contact with a patient needing a chiropractic, real
estate agent, attorney, new car, oil change, lender or stockbroker? Secondly,
even when you stumble on a patient in need of one of those services, how
inclined are you going in referring him/her to someone you don’t have any first
hand experience with?"
The solution Nguyen offers is two fold: targeted
dental practice marketing, which goes directly to the consumer that includes an
effective call to action that generates a response and a dental practice
marketing program that is easy and seamless to implement. "Our marketing program
typically generates 60 or more inquiries the first month and, when paired with a
staff training program, 30-50 of those are typically turned into high-quality,
fee-for-service patients, or insurance patients," he says.
As far
mitigating the anticipated pain that goes along with the expenses, Ninh offers
his clients the means to finance the expense but only after they have seen the
program at work. "In the first place our clients don’t pay for promises, they
only pay when they get results. Should they elect to enlist our marketing
services, we can make arrangements to reduce their monthly marketing expenses to
fit their budget through a unique dental practice marketing financing plan that
is only available to our clients and which is unheard of in the dental practice
marketing industry," he says.
ND Communication’s dental practice
marketing program is an outgrowth of personal experience and a culmination of
academic excellence. Dr. Nguyen’s wife, Jacqueline, is a practicing dentist in
one of the most competitive areas of San Jose, California. Facing an investment
of over $417,326 to get her practice started, he realized that he had to do
something to make sure they recouped their investment in the shortest amount of
time. Even before they opened her practice’s doors, her calendar was full and
remains that way today.
If you are a practicing dentist and wish to learn
more about Dr. Nguyen’s dental practice marketing program, you can call him toll
free at 1-800-737-9019 and schedule a free dental practice marketing conference
call. Dr. Nguyen’s business hours are Wednesday thru Friday 10:00am to 7:00pm,
and Saturday and Sunday 8:00am to 2:00pm.
Global Distribution: Dental
Practice Marketing
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Source : http://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/1/prweb200430.htm