Top Dentist Dental Marketing FAQ: What should I do?

by Dental Consultant Dick Chwalek

Most dental marketers have this answer– to the what-should-you-do question––what "we" specialize in. There is quite a bit of conflict of interest in this response, but often they are correct by default. Doing "something" -- even their thing -- can work. However, the results these one-legged solutions create are often short-lived.

The market changes, consumers evolve, and competitors compete. Therefore, the second stage Top FAQ becomes: What do I do now? A question I hear a lot more frequently.

While there are many dental marketing companies that have a good answer for the first question, the second stage becomes very challenging for one-trick pony marketers. After ten years in dental marketing, I have seen the evolution of this concept. Rather than being one in 50 dentists asking me this second stage FAQ - it is now very close to 1 in 2.

When I started, some dentists were marketing outside of the Yellow Pages, but few were doing anything else consistently. In the intervening 10 years, more and more dentists have been proactively getting their message out. While the level of "dentist versus dentist direct competitor marketing" is still not overwhelming, if one or two dentists in the general area have been getting their message out in some way, your local market gets squeezed.

Your "new" entry into the market is then going to compete with that pressure. Added to this is the price pressure your competitors have created by presenting FREE and discounted dental service concepts. With the value of dentistry already greatly influenced by insurance reliance and general oral health ignorance, price-marketing makes presenting anything beyond the basic dental services seem outlandish.

Consumers do not want to pay a lot for anything. Once your competitor says they can pay less (which suggests the consumer was paying too much before), you seem to be put in a position only to compete on lower price. The other extreme that was the dream 10 years ago, which has been largely dismissed, is the high-end cosmetic practice. In a tough economy, this concept is severely pinched and probably not viable in more than a dozen markets.  Department stores have dropped significantly in their popularity and the "dental-mart" concept is also hitting its height of effectiveness.

These consumer and market pressures and realities restrict the value of any one dental marketing strategy. Everything that once worked great now has limitations. The "middle place" is where success is now located.

Here are a few trends I have noticed from "inside" the dental marketing industry…

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Sincerely, Dick Chwalek
Niche Agency Director & Dental Consultant

866-453-1026