Improving the brand image of your dental practice.

Your prospective patients will be searching for you. It is up to you to show them what you offer so that they can find you, and be happy with their experience with you.

How do we go about that?

First you need to work out what it is that you DO offer, and what kind of clients that you want. This will make the second part easier, which is to build up a good reputation.

How to be found?

People looking for a dentist start by searching for what is most important to them.

So choose your words carefully to precisely describe the experience you can offer them, and speak to exactly the kind of patients that you would like to keep.

Most people start with location, so make sure you state what your local area is. For general work, people prefer a close, local dentist, though they may search wider for a specialist.

But this is certainly not the only factor most consider. For those with families, it may be how good you are with children. Other people are looking for someone who speaks their language or has a similar cultural background to themselves.

If this is you, and ONLY if this describes you, make sure that you include those words that tell the patient what you do, and how you do it.

Why? Because if they feel they have been misled, then at best you would have put in plenty of effort for a customer who will not return. But when people do get what they expect, they boost your reputation.

How to make an image for yourself:

How to be a ‘Good family dentist

If your practice genuinely does put plenty of effort into caring for children and making them feel welcome, then by all means include this in your description. Then deliver.

To make sure you are doing this, write out a description, step-by-step, of the journey that a family would have with your practice. Try calling for an appointment, parking, listen to how patients are being greeted, how long and what they see in the waiting room, to the session itself, and the parting gift.

Improve what you can and you will earn a better reputation for your claim of being ‘family-friendly’. Be sure that you can live up to a promise before you make one.

Good Communication

What makes communication ‘good’ is subjective to each person.

One person might think that good communication is a constant chit-chat, making sure they are happy and reassuring them of their concerns. Perhaps even how the phone was answered and information provided.

Another might enjoy humour and banter in the process of a procedure, keeping them at ease while working on their teeth.

Yet another might consider good communication to be only that the procedure is outlined ahead of time along with the costs.

With all of these interpretations of communication, it means little to describe your practice as having ‘good communication. Rather, listen to people tell you what your type of communication is, and describe that.

Are you ‘friendly and personal’? Or ‘caring for children of all ages? Or ‘informative and up-front’?

Respect their budget

Patients like to know how much time they need to spend with you, and how much it will cost.

If they come in for a check and clean, but you discover other issues that need attention, they won’t be too happy to have to come in for a second visit.

Even if you were able to act as a one-stop shop of check, clean, drill and fill in the same session, then they won’t have emotionally prepared for a regular $160 checkup to suddenly jumped up to something in the $300s.

Fortunately, when your patients have the Smilo.ai app, they can submit to you their photos, and Smilo.ai’s analysis of their teeth so that you can see what you need to do for the patient ahead of time.

This means you can message them to let them know what you propose to do, how much it will cost, and you can book them in for a session long enough to perform all that they want done.

The result is that you will be much more able to fill your schedule efficiently, to better work on time without stress, and your customer will be so much happier with your service, in that it could happen in one session with all fees already agreed to.

 

They may tell their friends or write a review, and your reputation rises, leading to ever more happy customers.

Smilo.ai is a wonderful tool for dentists and their patients. It allows patients to check their own teeth regularly through taking a photo, enables direct communication between patient and dentist, and enables efficient booking, billing and reminders.

Take a look at Smilo.ai, and book a demo.