How to attract new patients to your dental practice: grow your practice

To grow your dental practice, it is important to go further and offer not only a good dental service, but to create a relationship based on trust with your patients. A close and personalized treatment can make the difference in building loyalty and attracting more people through recommendations from those who already know you.

Dental clinic profile

The first step in attracting more patients is to define what makes your dental practice different, and to do this you must take into account certain factors that directly influence the choice of the best strategy. With all this information, it will be easier to adapt your message and increase the number of consultations.

Type of treatment

It is important to position yourself according to the type of treatment, i.e. whether the treatments offered are general or whether the clinic specializes in a particular one, such as orthodontics, implants or teeth whitening. Patients who are not looking for a generic dental clinic but are looking for a specific procedure will be more likely to go to a dental practice that is an expert in the field they are interested in.

Patient profile

It is also important to position yourself in terms of the potential client. That is to say, to know if the profile of most of the patients who come to your practice is of all ages or if it is mainly made up of specific age groups. For example, if most of your patients are older, experience will be your best letter of introduction, as well as keeping track of check-ups to keep their dentures and dental health in good condition.

On the other hand, if the majority of your patients are children, you can create a more fun and educational environment in which they feel comfortable and learn from a very young age how to have a good dental hygiene routine.

Consultation time in the area

You need to consider how long your dental practice has been open: a practice that has just opened is not the same as one that has been in the neighborhood for a long time with a solid base of regular patients. If your practice is new, it is imperative to attract clients right away, while if it already has a strong patient base, you can focus on improving the quality of service and patient experience to keep them coming back.

Internal marketing: build patient loyalty

A well-defined internal marketing strategy will make it easier for your dental practice to grow in the long term. Its goal is none other than to focus on current patients and keep them engaged. It's about building lasting relationships with those who rely on your services time and time again, making them feel valued and well cared for at all times.

Reactivate inactive patients

Statistics indicate that about 90% of dental clinic patients who have been inactive for 18 to 24 months do not return unless they are contacted. Therefore, it is very useful to implement a reminder system that alerts your team to contact, for example, patients who have pending checkups. This can be done by phone or with personalized e-mail messages. Thanks to this strategy, a clinic with 5,000 patients can recover about 10% of inactive patients, which is not small.

Make follow-up calls

Calling your patients after a treatment to find out how they are doing is a detail that will improve the overall experience of the dental practice. You can call the day after a surgery or contact the parents of children who had a bad time in the office to find out if they are calmer and if they are recovering well. These small gestures help create emotional bonds that build loyalty and increase the chances that they will recommend your practice.

External marketing: attracting new patients

Although external marketing can be more difficult to control, it is very useful for attracting new patients to your practice through small investments to gradually build a community connected to your dental practice. You can sponsor children's and youth sports teams in your neighborhood, as well as offer them free checkups or discounts on treatments such as orthodontics.

If you offer a good service, these actions will make it easier for your patients to recommend your dental practice to others, such as their own relatives or classmates. It is advisable not to allocate more than 2% or 5% of the annual turnover to external marketing, as the return is not guaranteed.

Other marketing strategies

In addition to the marketing actions mentioned above, it is key to ensure that your dental practice appears in the top positions of Google to attract new patients passively. This is achieved through SEO optimization of your website, which involves creating relevant content that improves your long-term visibility, and SEM campaigns, i.e. paid search engine advertising, that generate immediate traffic.

It is equally important to stay active on social media with posts that reflect the experience of your dental practice and the community you have created to build trust. Posts with before and after treatment cases, as well as practical dental health tips, tend to be the most effective. For this, it is ideal to have a community manager or train someone from the team to keep the networks up to date.

Finally, don't forget to manage the reviews of your clinic, both positive and negative that may arise. If you respond to them with professionalism and empathy, with a willingness to resolve any complications, you will be able to maintain a good online reputation.

Beyond offering a good service, it is key to build relationships with your patients based on trust and adapt your marketing strategies according to the profile of your clinic. In general, it is usually better to focus resources on internal or digital marketing strategies for more immediate results, although external marketing actions can be an effective complement to connect with the local community and become the trusted dental practice in the neighborhood.

If you want to know more details about this topic, we invite you to participate in the UniKIN course where Fran Caro, consultant and specialist in dental clinic management, together with Prof. José Nart, talk about these practical tips on how to get more patients in the dental clinic and explain in more detail everything discussed in the article.