Welcome to the first segment of Accelerate My Practices' series on Dental Marketing, Dental Marketing 101. This series will help you as the doctor and your dental team with an understanding of Dental Marketing! By now you probably know that Accelerate My Practice typically addresses marketing towards the end of your program as opposed to at the start. Doing so sets us apart form most other dental practice management companies.

Why do we do this you ask? Well, because we feel it does you no good to acquire a lot of new patients if you don't first know how to build rapport, build value in your practice, present ideal treatment, gain acceptance from patients and get the bill paid! Assuming you're rocking and rolling in all those other areas, marketing would be your next focus. Accelerate My Practice will lead you through a bunch of marketing methods over the next few weeks whether that's print ads, online ads, pay per click, google, etc.

First, what is important about marketing? Although many doctors think it's methodology, it's not, it's the content. Take SuperBowl ads for example. Companies pay millions of dollars for a few seconds in an attempt to catch your attention. That content has to be intersting and grab your attention right away! One way advertisers do this is called Interruption Marketing. This method is designed to interrupt your thoughts and break your attention.

Sex and/or a sale/giveaway are the two most powerful topics for Interruption Marketing. Take the Go Daddy Superbowl ads that feature Danica Patrick as an example. Although sex is not a fit with our industry it's still important to realize their power in the marketplace. Perhaps marketing beauty would make a little more senes for the denta indsutry.

After you've got some content ideas the next step will be to do the STP of marketing.

The STP of marketing is 1. Segment 2. Target 3. Position.

Segment - To illustrate segmenting, picture the ntire population as a pie. Roughly 1/4 of the pie represents the portion of the population who only want the cheapest thing, these poeple are fishing for a deal. All they care about is getting the lowest price. Another 1/4 of the population only wants the best. These poeple would be turned off by a sale ad. The remaining 50% of the population can go either way.

Targeting- More or less you delivery method which we'll talk about more in the upcoming episodes of AMP TV.

Position - How do we position your practice to hit your target audience? What you want to think about here is what your value proposition is? What makes you different than everybody else in your area? Are you a technology office? A cosmetic makeover office? What are you passionate about?

If you don't know, here is your homework for the week - Answer the following:

What kind of practice do you want to have? What does your ideal day look like? Who is your ideal patient? What is your ideal case? Brainstorm with your team at your next office meeting.

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