Last week we launched our first of a four-part webinar series, taking doctors through the 4 most important phases of the funnel. Dr. Brian Harris and Elijah Desmond discussed ways to attract the right cases to your practice.

Some of you may know Elijah as the dental hygienist who created Smiles at Sea – the dental conference on a cruise ship. Others may know him from Driven Dental Implant Marketing or social media in general. We appreciated Elijah’s insight into anything related to what’s new and what’s happening in dentistry, and how to attract the ideal patient.

When you’re looking to attract more of the right leads, what do you need to do to get your house in order? 

 Identify your ideal patient. Take out your pen and paper and start jotting down the type of patient you are looking to target

 Example:

• Mid 20-40s
• Client facing ie. fitness instructor
• Present and active on social media
• Has a decent following
• Your ideal patient essentially embodies someone you’ve seen in the past that you love to work with and advocates for you!

Make sure you have the capacity. 

• Everyone loves new patients, but also be conscious of your time. Don’t overload yourself or your practice. If a patient truly wants to work with you, they will wait until you have the right amount of time for them. 

Now that you’ve identified your ideal patient, what are the best practices to drive them to you?  

 Don’t try to be everything to everyone. Go an inch wide and a mile deep. 

• Pick one thing that you love doing & make that your marketing message. Love doing cosmetic cases? That is the message you’re going to put out on social media, newsletters, print ads, etc. Those are the patients you’ll be bringing in.

Be open to experimenting. Fail fast, then adjust.

• Things. Are. Changing. Marketing is an ever-changing field, and you have to be willing to try new things. Sometimes, they may fail, but that’s okay. Now you know it doesn’t work for you, so you try the next method that will most likely work better for you. 

Go to where your patients are – Social Media.

• If there’s one takeaway from this, it is to figure out social media. Social media allows you to connect with people on so many levels. Between Instagram and Facebook, you can hit all your key demographics.

Use super-targeted ads.

• Take a look at your current patient list addresses and take note of recurring zip codes. Those zip codes are marketing gold. When creating ads on Facebook or Google Display Network, you can use those zip codes to target the people in those specific areas.

These are just a few of the things you can do to adjust your marketing tactics and reach. Brian also recommends reading the linked Forbes article on why you should change your current marketing strategy; it’s a totally different way to think about how to sell (and adapt). With Brian’s and Elijah’s suggestions, you’ll be attracting more of the cases you love in no time!