Why patients want same day, high quality treatment solutions - Dr Manhem

As the new NHS contract is being piloted in the UK, it seems to be an apt time to consider how your practice can optimise its services to positively respond to change. At this point in time, dental professionals may look towards securing more private patients for high quality treatment. The reason for this is to align practices with key changes in national health service dentistry. Under the new NHS system, the preference towards preventative treatment and offering a minimalistic service will mean that more complex treatment will be done privately – this can expand the scope for GDPs to concentrate on more high-end, complex treatment.

Where there is a growing need for private dentistry that is dynamic, dental marketing can develop your clinical services to attract and secure new patients. Dental marketing can refine your services so that they are tailored to succeed in an increasingly competitive environment, since more NHS dentists are likely to move to the private sector and corporates have developed structures to win contract tenders.

Marketing involves a strategy that is carefully planned to get your services ahead in terms of building a brand that patients will trust and value. Although the concept of dental advertising is not something widely done in the UK, case studies from America and Canada show how practices have reaped the rewards. Our Chrysalis Dental Centres in Canada for example, generated an average of 35 contacts per day over a 6-month period through advertising campaigns. This same success story is part of United Smile Centres’ profile in the UK, where our expertise in same day dental implant solutions has been significantly promoted by effective advertising campaigns.   

If we look at United Smile Centres as an effective marketing model, there are some key approaches to advertising that you can apply to your services for a good return on investment. At the centre of all effective marketing campaigns is a good product. Working out how your treatment will be chosen over your competitor’s is fundamental to the success of your marketing campaign. United Smile Centres fulfil the criteria of having a good product by only offering ‘Fixed Teeth in a Day’, a full arch rehabilitation treatment that uses an innovative technique to remove the problem of failing teeth or dentures, replacing them with new teeth in one day.

Same day treatments grant an alternative to conventional implant surgery that can take over a year to complete, and can be both expensive and painful. For although the same day solution is not cheap, it has a high ‘value’ in relation to the impact it will have on patients’ lives. This solution builds up incomparable value for patients who are naturally time conscious. Cutting down on treatment time means that patients do not have to keep taking time off work. Same day treatments also reduce the number of surgeries needed, increase patient comfort, and optimise post-surgery aesthetics – but most of all, patients like it.

With all of this in mind, it is important to recognise your target market when planning to market a treatment. Once your target market is recognised, you can decide which ‘market segment’ you are aiming at based on factors such as age, geographical location and income – all of these considerations will help you to eliminate barriers to treatment and increase case acceptance. Essentially, your treatment needs to be marketed in a way that pushes advantages that are relevant to fears.

A carefully constructed website that caters towards inquiring patients and reflects what you do, is one form of marketing that can help overcome prospective patients’ fears. Your website is key to forming that much needed ‘proof’ of an excellent service and your online profile needs to represent you well. People are cynical, especially in the UK and the nation is cynical about adverts and dentists.  Including patient testimonials from completed cases adds legitimacy and builds the trust needed for new patients to invest. Using multimedia such as videos and photographs of happy patients will help patients to envisage the treatment. Providing useful information about the procedure could also alleviate fears and enable patients to envisage the procedure.

Having a website is not an advantage, it is a necessity. Web based marketing means your audience will instantly grow. This is an information age where endless supplies of material can be accessed online by a society that is accustomed to immediate results – 24/7. This is a blessing and a curse. Studies[1] have shown that 32% of customers will start to leave slow sites between one and five seconds. If we use this as a rough indication of your average patient’s attention span, the need to hook viewers straight in with content that is fresh, informative and engaging is key to getting them to stay on the page.

Of course advertising and a good website are but two parts of a much wider marketing strategy that you will need to consider, however the heart of your campaign will always rest on the quality of your product. In this modern time-precious world, patients have less time than ever before and so seek immediate solutions to their problems. If your marketing strategy is value driven and overcomes barriers to treatment, you can expect a return on your investment. Remember a tooth isn’t worth that much, but a smile has value.

For more information call United Smile Centres on 0800 8 49 49 59, email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., or visit www.unitedsmilecentres.co.uk