Referral Marketing

Successfully Market Your Pedo Practice to a Comeback in 2011

By Martha Kreiner
Senior Consultant, Levin Group

Effective marketing is critical for pedo practices to bring in new patients. With the economy beginning to turnaround, this is the time to update your marketing efforts. These five marketing essentials will help you jumpstart practice growth this year:

1. Assign or Hire an Internal Marketing Coordinator – When it comes to marketing your pedo practice, you can’t do it alone. Have a point person who handles your marketing efforts. Levin Group recommends a PRC—a part-time staff member (4-6 hours per week) who handles 95% of the pedo practice’s referral marketing activities. This staff member works with the pediatric dentist to develop the marketing program, establishes and monitors calendars, timelines and deadlines, and acts as a liaison to develop strong relationships with referring GPs, pediatricians and their teams.
2. Know Your Referral Sources – Develop a pipeline. Create an awareness of your practice, build a positive reputation, strengthen referral relationships and ultimately attract new patients.
3. Develop Your Annual Marketing Strategies and Marketing Calendar – Create and implement consistent referral marketing strategies for GPs, pediatricians and patients. The most successful pedo practices target all referral sources through a structured referral program. Use an annual marketing calendar to successfully manage your referral marketing strategies. The target for referral marketing is a minimum of 15 custom selected strategies targeted for each referring doctors, parents and patients.
4. Utilize Available Marketing Outlets – Pedo practices should maximize available marketing outlets whenever possible, for example: update your website (if you don’t have one, get one), utilize social media, establish a presence in the appropriate online social networks, contribute to your community newspaper and partner with local schools or sports teams.
5. Implement Value Creation Scripting to Increase Patient Referrals. Your team’s verbal skills often determine how they (and the practice) are perceived by parents and patients. Train your team with powerful scripts that build value for your services and the entire patient experience. When parents and patients like your practice they are very likely to refer their friends, neighbors and family members.

Ongoing, Consistent and Effective
Marketing is all about maintaining and attracting referral sources and their patients. Making sure patients have a great experience and following up with referring dentists and pediatricians are critical to your long-term success. The target is for 40% - 60% of patients to refer at least one patient per year. To guarantee pedo practice growth, a strong marketing program is a necessity, not an option. Pedo practices that consistently and effectively engage in referral marketing will become the production and profitability leaders in their area.