Marketing Your Dental Practice During a Pandemic
Dental practices all over the country are thrilled, and relieved, to be open again. Hopefully, the backlog of patients who missed their scheduled appointments this spring is keeping your clinic busy.
Despite the impact of COVID-19, marketing remains important to the health of your business. Particularly in light of the current uptick in cases, many patients may hesitate to schedule dental care because of worries about possible infection. The following are some recommendations to maintain a steady flow of patients.
1 Create a web page that lists all the ways you’re keeping patients safe.
Mention that your practice is 100% aligned with CDC and OSHA guidelines. Provide a list of exactly what you’re doing to protect patients during their visits. Also, note that your practice has had zero cases of individuals contracting the virus from a visit to your practice.
2. Maintain visibility and connection with your existing patients.
Remind your patients that you’re still there and that you’re open for business. You can do this in multiple ways:
- Post information on social media. Use some of the content from the web page information just mentioned sharing brief posts on social media. You might also record a short video just letting your patients know that they’re in your thoughts, that you hope they’re faring okay, and that you’re here for them if they need any dental care.
- Email your patients. Let them know your practice is open and share the ways you’re keeping patients safe.
- Update email re-care reminders. Include some of the same information mentioned above in your re-care reminders.
3. Shift all of your paper patient forms to digital forms.
Obviously, sending and receiving digital forms reduces virus transmission.
4. Let patients know what the new protocols are for patient visits.
People like to know what to expect; they don’t like surprises. For example, let them know that they’ll need to wait in their car until called by the front office staff.
5. Develop a marketing campaign to recruit new patients.
Given that a certain percentage of your existing patients will remain too fearful to seek dental care, you’ll need additional patients to meet payroll and other expenses.
6. Access training on how to market your dental practice.
We’re in the process of developing a series of marketing courses designed specifically for dental practices that you may find helpful. Following is the first course in our series—Successfully Marketing Your Dental Practice: Planning & Infrastructure. This course will help you to start planning a campaign and laying the right foundation.
About NGT Academy
We are one of the very few turnkey-Learning Management System providers that specializes in the dental industry. Currently, with a library of more than 30 courses created for dental teams, our eLearning platform is one of the easiest to use. Simultaneously, eLearning typically costs at least 30% less than conventional training making for a truly efficient solution for your dental organization.
Do you want to learn more? Contact us for more information or schedule a demo