Episode : #983: Outside-the-Box Summertime Marketing Ideas

Podcast Description

Kiera shares a ton of fun ideas on ways to attract and engage with potential patients in your community. These range from a killer referral program, to considering the locations of where you’re advertising, and more.

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Transcript:

 Kiera Dent (00:01.752)

Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera. And today I am just so excited to be chatting with you. I hope that your day is just going incredible. My day has been incredible. I have the opportunity to work with clients and just a fun coaching call day. And I always enjoy it. I enjoy helping clients. I enjoy helping you. I love to get on a podcast and I love to share. And with summer approaching, I thought it might be kind of fun to give you a quick tactical podcast where I talk about maybe some summer marketing ideas that maybe you haven't thought of. know

For a lot of practices, summertime can get a little bit slower or different things can happen for you. And so just maybe a quick tactical for you about maybe some ideas that you hadn't considered to grow your new patients during the summer. If you're planning and preparing now, that way you can have a more filled summer for you. As always, the Dental A Team, we are here to give you tactical practical tips, helping dentists and teams.

have an easier life, helping you have a better patient experience, helping you just have more fun in dentistry. That's what we're about. And that's what I hope you're about. And I hope you remember that you are truly in the best, most incredible profession you could ever be in, and that's in dentistry. If you love our podcast, I hope that you rate it, you review it, you share it, and you are able to just help us positively impact the world of dentistry in the greatest way possible. So in today's episode, it will be short. It'll be technical.

I'm gonna break it down for you of just like I said, some summer marketing ideas that I think are a little outside the box thinking. So one thing to think of whenever we're going into marketing is we always wanna make sure that we're looking to see who is our patient and where are they located. So if you're trying to attract for pediatric practices, they're trying to attract moms, that's their ideal patient. I know you might think it's kiddos, but guess what? It's actually the mom. In some of my other practices, their patient base is more of a geriatric patient base.

For others, it's a transient. So you've got more new families moving into your area. And so when you're looking at that, paying attention to what is your patient base and where are they going to be hanging out, that's gonna impact some of these summer marketing ideas. So I think one of the easiest things is having a really, really great referral. I see this in the waiting rooms, I see this in practices, but making sure it's targeted to your patient base. I have a practice and I think this is just a huge shout out to this practice. They picked a KitchenAid.

Kiera Dent (02:19.562)

That was what they're giving away to their patient base. And the reason why this is so impressive is because they know their patient base and their ideal patient so well that one of their patients was actually at their child's birthday party telling every person who came to please become a patient because she wanted to win this KitchenAid so bad. This patient A is a raving fan, B took it to their child's birthday party and C this practice picked up a ton of patients because what gift they were giving away actually resonated with their patient base.

So I have a practice in there in like upstate Washington and it's like more of a outdoorsy area. So like a Traeger or a Blackstone works really well in their area. A practice in Texas, concerts were really big. So they gave away these very limited concert tickets. It was like one of the top best ones. A pediatric practice gave away some like Lulu or Aloe gift cards. So that was something that was super, super powerful for another practice.

but really just knowing your patient and what's going to resonate with them. But I think like something to really know is making sure that your practice is focused on internal and external marketing efforts. So when we do referrals and raffles within our practice, that's more internal. Yes, we're attracting external patients, but what we're doing is we're only able to connect with the patients that are coming to our practice. So we really wanna make sure that we're not just like...

only focusing on the internal and then looking for some of the external opportunities. So I thought like that would be something fun, a referral program, bring a friend, share a friend, having cards made so that way people can get really excited. And with some of the practices we work with, a lot of them are like, gosh, I wish I just had a card as the dentist or as team members, because when I'm out and about, people always ask like, where can I get it? And like, I wish I just had a card where I could just give it to them. I could put my phone number on it. So if they had any questions, they could contact me.

So just really looking to see what are some of these internal ways that are so simple that maybe we're just overlooking that could really help us, especially with summer on the horizon. Some other things like, depending upon where you are, if there's a school around you, looking for possibly around fall time where you might do something with clear aligners or whitening. Think about those seniors who might be needing to get senior photos and proms and end of year. Those could be some really good promos that you could possibly run in your area. Again, depending upon your patient base and what's around you.

Kiera Dent (04:39.178)

And now for some external ideas that I think are just kind of fun of look to see again, where is your patient base? So for like geriatric, they might be hanging out in some retirement homes, in retirement communities, maybe the YMCA club, like that's where these people are going to really congregate. And so could we put flyers there? Could we go to the retirement communities? Could we put on a wine and cheese evening for them? Could we put on some lectures, some lunch and learns for them?

Could we offer our membership program that's special for their residents in their area so that way if they don't have insurance, they're able to access our membership program, you're able to bring in a huge patient base, and you're also able to help and support these communities as well. And I really think some of those areas, like if you can actually access them and get in touch with them, think about if you're the preferred dentist for that retirement community, especially if you place implants, you do all on fours, that might be a really incredible area for you to go.

to access, to incorporate, to be with them. I also am really big on community. If you wanna be a community dentist, if your community is tight knit, which a lot of them are, where can you access? Can you get into county fairs? Could you be at some of the sports games? Could you be in any of those other areas where maybe your community's at? And that is more for branding, not necessarily for ROI of patients. So branding is something super important for you to have as well, where it's not necessarily just.

like, okay, great. Like I spent $5. Now we got a patient in a lot of times it's just awareness. It's just being there. And I use the example of the chiropractor in my hometown. They're Ellison chiropractic. And honestly, this chiropractor was everywhere. They were all of our high school games. They sponsored a lot of the football games. It was Ellison chiropractic, which makes sense. You know, these, these football teams, they were there. Our community was very tight knit. had

our high school colors were orange and black. Their colors of the chiropractor place was orange and black. So they had it everywhere. They were representing our school. They were representing our community. They were on the city council. Like they literally were everywhere. They're the chamber of commerce and everybody knew and everybody went to this chiropractor in our community. And so I've thought about dental practices of how can you be the town's dentist?

Kiera Dent (06:54.744)

How can you be the one that everybody knows, that everybody sees, that no matter where you are, people are like, hell, that's the dentist. Like that's our community dentist. So looking to see, is there a festival that you can attend? Can you get your name out there? Can you be a part of it? Can you have swag? I know there was a practice that we worked with that made mouth guards for all the football players on the high school teams.

So that way, and it had their school colors, but it also had that office's logo on it. And I just think that's so clever because this is branding. These are opportunities, but you've got to make sure that you're doing this based on what your patient base is. So if your patient base is elderly, you don't want to be supporting the high school. They find out a lot of people there. You might want to do TV commercials. I have a practice and they do TV commercials and my in-laws actually saw one of our practices. Like I saw them on TV and I was like, yeah, because

my elderly in-laws are watching TV. They're listening to the radio. That's where that patient base is. So those marketing dollars are actually making an impact. So looking to see maybe mailers, maybe mailers work in your area. Maybe there's a new housing development that you could go get in and you could again offer a membership program to them. So if they don't have insurance, you could be there, throw some testimonials in there. Maybe talk about your in-house plan and how great it is for patients within your practice. These are all little ways where if you get ahead of the summer slump,

or the September or slam dunk September that we're going to be able to have it. We're really truly just going to impact your community and maybe just get you out there. You could do a block party. So your community is out there. They're having a good time. Have like hot dogs. I know there was a practice and every Friday they'd hand out donuts on the corner. So everybody knew this dental practice. Like literally they were the practice of all practices and people would drive by, they'd get their donuts. They had their

practice name on a napkin, and that's what they were known for within their community. So I think knowing your practice, knowing what you can do internal, so having like a great referral or giveaway during the summer to really get people excited, making cards just so your practice and your team can actually give those away consistently, and then looking to see what can we do externally. I also think back like when you were starting your practice, how often did you go see specialists? And if you're a specialist, how often did you go see general practices?

Kiera Dent (09:09.646)

Are you dropping off goodie baskets? Are you going to say hello? Are you, I mean, for March Madness, I remember I used to love all the ortho offices because they'd bring us cookies all the time as a dental practice. But how often are we going and actually connecting with the specialist in our area or vice versa, the general practices? And I know that seems like, Kiera, I did that back in the day. I don't want to do that now. I want to remind you that grassroots marketing and face-to-face and referral marketing is one of the best things you can do.

So I have a practice and they're incorporating sleep. So they went and met the sleep doctor. They started getting a ton of referrals and vice versa. And now this doctor is actually taking on this dentist patients and kind of moved that doctor, the dentist, moved them to the top of the line at the sleep doctor's clinic. And I just think the power of relationships and the power of being known in your community and the power of really making an impact. Dental A team's big.

Big mission is to create an impact in the greatest way possible. And so we do it with dentists all across the nation. So we don't really get a community opportunity, but you and your practice can. You can make fun things in your area. And I think being cautious of our dollar spends, making sure we're tracking what we're doing. There's two sides of marketing. There's the actual like getting patients in and then there's the branding and awareness of your practice. And I think it's really important to not just do internal marketing, but also external marketing in some fun ways like this.

where you really get to make an impact because this is a community where you live. This is a community where maybe your kids grow up or your kids go to school or if you don't have a family, it's where your employees, kids and families are going. I think really as dental practices, we have such an incredible opportunity to impact, to flourish, to grow these communities by looking out. So just wanted to pop in with some quick tactical things for you for summer marketing, really easy of one, having our internal, two, having our external.

knowing who our patient base is, knowing the actual appropriate prizes and giveaways and fun things that we can do for that. And then last but not least, it's always making sure that you are just an incredible practice, that you are really giving top-notch dentistry, that you are creating an incredible VIP customer and patient experience where your team truly, 100%, is giving these patients something to rave about, something to be excited about.

Kiera Dent (11:27.244)

And this is something I love to do with offices. love to do with teams. love to do it in our consulting where we help offices figure out what is their niche, what makes you special, what makes you the best practice for somebody to come to, and then really highlighting that and making it such a full team experience. So that's something that we're passionate about in consulting. Our job is to help you grow, to flourish, to have your best life, but to get that from a doctor and a team where you guys are working in tandem together.

I really do believe that dentistry and running a successful practice does not need to be hard. so Dental A Team, the question is, what if this could be easy? Because with Dental A Team, can. And so if we can reach out, we can help you if this resonates with you. Email us, ask us for more ideas. I'm happy to have a call with your practice and give you some free resources and advice for your practice just to truly help youth flourish. And if you're like, gosh, I just need some help, reach out. This is the time. I know it takes a lot of humility to do that.

But why, why struggle when we have done this successfully for hundreds and thousands of offices? Why not yours? So reach out, I'd love to help you. [email protected]. Let's make this summer an incredible one. As always, thanks for listening and I'll catch you next time on The Dental A Team Podcast.