The potential risk of a coronavirus pandemic is gripping the country (and the world). Grocery stores are rationing or running out of supplies like face masks and cleaning agents. The media is providing constant updates to the public about the latest number of infections and deaths from the novel strain of the virus and those numbers are climbing.
While the actual severity of the COVID-19 virus is still to be determined, there is no doubt that the fear of this unknown pathogen is impacting prospective patient motivation and willingness to explore elective procedures. You need to be prepared for how this fear may affect your practice and what you can do about it.
Here are a few tips for the coming weeks and months as we better understand how coronavirus will play out:
1. Understand the mindset. People are afraid of the threat of a pandemic. As of the time of this article, the media is painting a worst-case scenario for the public, stirring up anxiety and fear. This is affecting the mindset of your potential patients. Anticipate lower show rates at public gatherings, like seminars, and a greater sense of concern in general.
2. Consider a shift from seminars/workshops to a direct-to-office campaign. We have already witnessed prospective patients cancel attendance at a seminar for fear of the coronavirus. I expect this will continue until we better understand and contain the coronavirus outbreak. If possible, transition to a direct-to-office campaign, either individual appointments or small groups. This can either be in addition to, or instead of, seminars/workshops.
3. Produce digital content. Prospective patients are still seeking solutions to their health concerns, regardless of whether coronavirus is out there or not. Now is a perfect time to educate them through digital content. There are many formats you can use – short 60 second videos on a particular aspect of a condition or treatment up to full-length webinars. While digital content online can’t replace the relationship built up through face-to-face discussions, they can be quite effective at educating prior to an office visit and building trust in the practice. Also, from an advertising perspective, video ads are 2 or 3 times more effective at driving patient engagement, click-through-rates, and conversions.
4. Practice the team’s sales skills. Since there may be fewer patients coming into the office for elective procedures over the coming months, it’ll be critical to make every opportunity count. Practice your skills, especially scheduling/confirmation over the phone and building emotional buy-in during the consultation. Those are the two areas where we see most practices have room for improvement.
Will the coronavirus end up as impactful as it may initially seem? No one knows for sure yet. But by taking some proactive steps towards ensuring the steady stream of motivated patients into the practice, it’s possible to thrive even in the face of this uncertainty
If you’d like to learn more about how we can help your practice connect with motivated patients (coronavirus or not), let’s connect. We’d be glad to walk you through our cutting-edge marketing strategies and how they deliver results for our clients. Our newest approaches has been yielded the best results we’ve had in years!
As I talk with dental practices daily, the conversation inevitably turns to securing more dental patient leads. How many are there, how qualified are they, where are the coming from, etc.
I thoroughly enjoy these conversations, but I want to change the discussion a bit. Instead of focusing on dental patient leads, I’m focusing on new patient starts with our clients and prospective clients. Leads are important for sure, but if no one starts care, then what’s been accomplished? That is why I’m directing the team at iVelocity Dental Marketing to focus on our clients’ new dental patients starts and I wanted to make sure I’m sharing our perspective with you, as someone who might be interested in working with us.
To that end, here’s what we are doing to better support the dental practices we work with as they look to start more new patients. If we worked together, you would have access to these, as well:
1. Expanding Advertising Platforms / Advertising Campaign Types. Marketing is dynamic and so are the platforms and campaigns we use to advertise. Our recent work combining search engine marketing, social media, and email campaigns for high-dollar cash procedures has been nothing short of jaw-dropping. It’s the new way to market and if you don’t have a multi-channel approach, other practices will pass you by.
2. A Dedicated Sales Coach. We have been blessed to have one of the most talented practice managers / sales coaches in the industry on the iVelocity team. Starting in 2020, Lisa Berthelsen will be 100% dedicated to helping our clients close patients on care through dedicated one-one-one support of offices and monthly trainings on phone techniques and in-office sales procedures. I am extremely excited about this new, complementary service and believe it will be transformative in how we serve our clients. Just in the few weeks since she started in this role, she’s made major impacts on a number of practices. To learn more about how exactly she helps practices close like never before, schedule some time with our head of business development, Jason Hellem.
3. A Greater Focus on Stats / Closes. At iVelocity Dental Marketing, we measure our success on our client’s ability to provide services to patients. To accomplish that, we are working with our clients to know how our efforts online are converting into patients receiving care in their practice. This helps everyone – the practice can chart their performance over weeks, months, and years and it allows us to make rapid adjustments to campaigns to ensure top performance.
4. Expansion of our proprietary Marketing Maximizer Email/Text system. Email and text messages are a great way to build rapport with potential patients. We have been building out the communication that gets sent out from our client’s practice with content created by the iVelocity team. The results have been great.
If you are hoping to make 2020 a great year for your practice, let’s talk about how all these things combine to create dramatic success in your practice in a short dental practice marketing assessment. During that time, we’ll walk through your goals and give you a little more information on how we might help.
Patient financing is one of the greatest challenges for dental implant practices. Unfortunately, there is a correlation between a patient’s need for implants and the ability to pay for care – those in greatest need often have the fewest financial resources. This is a source of consistent frustration for many offices. In fact, every day offices get to the finish line presenting treatment plans and have things stall out when numbers enter the discussion. If things go sideways when discussing finances, it’s terribly difficult to rekindle the conversation. Typically, the patient leaves without signing up for care and the office is out the time and effort it took with that patient. It’s a lose-lose situation.
But don’t lose hope. A practice can make that scenario a thing of the past through three easy steps:
Get permission for a soft credit pull early in the process.
Build the emotional buy-in.
Have the right patient financing partners.
Get permission for a soft credit pull early in the process.
There is no excuse for not requesting permission to make a soft credit pull on behalf of a patient early in the process. It is best done in the new patient paperwork, but it can also be done at other points in the process. Simply have it as a check box on an intake form with a brief explanation why it is to the benefit of the patient.
Most prospective implant patients know they’ll be paying out of pocket implants. An early credit pull does them a service by allowing the practice to have all the information available during the Report of Findings (assuming the practice uses the standard two-day sales process). Additionally, it allows the practice to present a cash option, a short-term in-office financing option (6 months or shorter), and a more traditional patient financing option during that presentation. It also allows the office to eliminate any of those options if the credit score doesn’t warrant it. Finally, it avoids surprises and embarrassing conversations if the credit score is below what the patient believes it to be.
Build the emotional buy-in.
Far too often, practices don’t spend the time really getting to the root of the motivation of a prospective patient prior to presenting a $50,000 treatment plan for two full arches. Then, they are surprised that the patient doesn’t move forward with care.
It is critical to know that patients do not explore dental implants because of the tooth or teeth that are missing. They explore dental implants because they are embarrassed to smile in pictures, because they are afraid to go out in public, because they didn’t get that job they wanted, or some other reason. Every patient has their “Golden Why.” A good patient consultation spends the time necessary to understand the patient’s Golden Why, to present a Better Future for the patient once they have implants, and paints a picture of how the patient can transition from the current state to that desirable potential future.
Why is emotional buy-in a topic in an article about patient financing? Simple. A motivated patient finds a way to get the care they need. If it means cutting luxuries, saving up, utilizing a patient financing company, or getting loans from family or friends, they’ll do it. The more the practice spends building the emotional buy-in upfront, the more engaged the patient will be in figuring out finances. If the office already has the right financing partners in place and is still consistently struggling getting patients to move forward with care, it should look into how well it is building emotional buy-in through the process.
Have the right financial partners.
There are two tiers of patient financing: Traditional and Poor Credit.
Nearly all offices will have at least one relationship with a company in the Traditional category. GreenSky, CareCredit, and LendingUSA are among the most common providers of Traditional patient financing. Typically, these lenders will all fund patients with credit scores 620 and above and have comparable interest rates. GreenSky does seem to be a preferred lender for many implant offices based on the interest rates it charges patients, ability to finance for up to 7 years (lowering the patient payment significantly), and its willingness to finance up to $65,000 for some patients. That said, it is important for an office to have at least two option in the Traditional category to ensure the best financial package for patients with good credit.
Very few practices have relationships with companies that offer patient financing for individuals with poor credit. This is a major mistake. There are a significant number of patients who need dental work but do not have the credit score to qualify with a Traditional patient financing firm. Rather than turning those patients away, savvy practices have options. While there are many options available, the two that will be highlighted are ClearGage and Denefits.
ClearGage operates like a Traditional patient financing option in that funds are remitted to the office shortly after the patient agrees to move forward with care. Anyone can be funded but the amount paid out is discounted based on the patient’s credit worthiness and the term of repayment. The firm will fund up to $7,500 in case value with some restrictions, so it is more ideal for a patient receiving a single implant or other similarly small procedure, but it’s better than not being able to move forward with care at all. It is important to note that there is a monthly charge to have a relationship with ClearGage that is waived each month that a patient is financed through the firm. Obviously, there are some characteristics to the relationship that are less desirable than a traditional option but if a practice sees a lot of low credit score patients with case values less than $7,500, it can be a good option.
The second Poor Credit option to consider is Denefits. Denefits essentially operates like a third-party guaranteed in-house financing option. Unlike Traditional patient financing options and firms like ClearGage, Denefits does not fund the care upfront. Instead, the office is paid over the course of the payment plan. The main benefit of using Denefits over just financing in-house is that Denefits will guarantee a percentage of the payment if certain criteria are met. All patients are accepted and the practice is the ultimate determiner of who will be financeable through the firm.
While not all patients will be financeable with the Poor Credit options laid out, it certainly increases the number of patients who can receive care versus simply having one or two options from the Traditional category.
In the end, there are many individuals who would benefit greatly from dental implants or other restorative procedures. These procedures are expensive and require a patient be able to pay for these elective services. All too often, practices find themselves engaging with prospective patients only to have patient finances derail the treatment. That shouldn’t be the case. While there may be a small number of patients who still cannot be served after implementing these three tips, nearly all should be. By having the right financial partners, engaging to understand credit worthiness early in the process, and really building the emotional buy-in, practices should be able to see their patient financing issues a thing of the past.
Airway dentistry is the fastest growing field in dentistry today. One of the keys to building and sustaining a successful airway practice is to create a steady stream of new patients seeking care. To do that, the practice needs to develop multiple channels of patient recruitment.
There are three types of patients that can be recruited into an airway practice. Each type of patient requires a different type of marketing and careful attention must be paid to ensure the right messaging is reaching the right patient type through the right channels.
The three types of patients include:
Existing patients – These are patients that have a pre-existing relationship with the practice. Typically, they will have been hygiene patients within the practice or have been in as a patient for restorative dentistry. There is mounting evidence that tooth grinding may be associated with airway challenges, so a practice with a heavy restorative focus may be well suited to build a successful airway practice.
The best option to connect with existing patients is during chair time. An easy screening tool like the Stop Bang screener (Found here) can help to identify current patients who may be at high risk of having sleep apnea or otherwise benefitting from airway therapy.
Unfortunately, most patients are only in the chair once every six months, which means that if a practice is only focused on using face-to-face interactions to drive current patients into airway consultations, practice growth will be stunted. To overcome that challenge, it is imperative to utilize email newsletters and targeted email campaigns to spread the word and increase interest in scheduling an appointment to explore potential sleep apnea treatments.
Common email campaigns focus on patient case studies, education on treatment options, and general awareness campaigns on the risks of airway challenges. Using an email system, a practice can automate much of the work required to successfully execute on these campaigns.
Active seekers – These are prospective patients who are aware of their need for a solution to sleep apnea / sleep-disordered breathing / snoring. They may or may not have been officially diagnosed with sleep apnea and may be using a CPAP or oral appliances and are defined by the fact that they are looking for a solution to their airway issue.
Referral patients are generally considered active seekers, since they have made the decision to find treatment for a condition from which they suffer. The other source of active seekers are the search engines, like Google and Bing.
For a practice starting into digital marketing, search engine marketing is the most obvious first step. Patients searching for airway-related keywords are doing so from an interest in finding a solution to a problem they, or a loved one, are experiencing. If a practice competes effectively on the search engines, it is possible to draw a healthy percentage of those prospective patients seeking care to their practice instead of having them move to another. These individuals tend to be farther down the decision-making journey than patients identified through other sources and can represent a fruitful source of new patient starts.
There are two ways to engage in search engine marketing. The first is pay-per-click (PPC) advertising – paying the search engines for the opportunity to advertise for certain keywords. PPC advertising is an auction, so multiple parties are competing for placement for those keywords. When performed well, PPC advertising is an incredibly effective way to connect with new patients. When performed poorly, it can result in a lot of wasted money. Proper bid strategies will ensure the results the practice is looking for.
The second way to compete on the search engines is through a process called search engine optimization. This entails tailoring the practice’s website towards targeted keywords so that the site will rank highly organically (without paying for advertising). This process is time-intensive and takes months or years to yield results but is incredibly impactful once the site ranks highly.
Engageable Afflicted – With the prevalence of sleep apnea estimated to be greater than 6% of the US population (some estimate it to be greater than 40% of adults, but that is debatable), there is a very large population of prospective patients who have a compromised airway, but are not seeking a solution for that issue. This is the largest percentage of patients in most airway practices.
The most prevalent way to connect with the Engageable Afflicted in today’s world is through social media marketing, especially on Facebook. Facebook’s ubiquity ensures that properly designed advertising strategies on its platform will reach prospective airway patients.
One of the key benefits of Facebook advertising for airway is that allows a practice to reach out proactively to targeted audiences (as opposed to needing to wait for someone to search a keyword on Google) and it allows practices to retarget individuals – serving advertisements only to people who have previously performed a certain action, like watching a certain length of a video online or visiting a certain website.
Retargeting is an incredibly powerful tool. It allows practices to educate prospective patients over weeks, months, or years. As prospective patients interact with the office’s ads on Facebook, the number of people being educated and motivated increases, yielding a higher number of patients engaging with the practice over time.
Airway dentistry is virtually exploding right now. Over the next decade, it will become more and more mainstream. The practices who will be the go-to sources for airway treatment are those who can establish a brand and a track record of success now. By leveraging a series of marketing tools, both physical and digital, a practice can build its pipeline of interested, qualified patients into a growth engine for the practice.
