Dental Office On Hold Messaging: Case Study
Dentistry is highly competitive landscape! Therefore for many recent dental graduates opt to purchase an existing dental practice versus a start-up. However rather than conforming to the traditional way of doing things, instead Dr. Camilla Ferrara decided to open her own dental practice from scratch. While Dr. Ferrara was excited to begin the journey, she was face with many traditional challenges of marketing a dental practice as well as a lot of competition in the area. In fact, there are over 90 dentists within a five-mile radius. Dr. Ferrara needed to stand out from the competition to grow her practice, and she needed to do so quickly and affordably.
The Challenge:
• Grow the practice with limited staff and financial resources
• Differentiate the practice from competitors
• Generate a steady stream of new patients and referrals
• Reinforce other marketing efforts
The Solution:
To solve Dr Ferrara’s challenge, here’s what we did to accomplish her marketing goals.
While dental providers focus on a wide variety of marketing and advertising efforts, a secondary opportunity that many practices miss is the time their callers spend on hold. Once a potential patient has picked up the phone to schedule an appointment, an on-hold messaging program is a low-cost way to continue the momentum of external marketing efforts by sharing unique selling points of the practice to that caller.
We researched the competition in the area to develop an inbound on-hold marketing program that would accomplish her marketing goals by distinguishing the practice from competitors, capture its unique value proposition, and help to attract new patients, as well as keep existing patients informed of the latest developments within the practice.
We crafted messages that would talk about state-of-the-art equipment, comfortable waiting room, friendly staff, convenient financing options, new patient specials, advanced dental treatment options – anything that will convince a patient to book their appointment during that call.
Additionally, the messages also talk about referral programs to make a personalized connection that would encourage already satisfied patients to refer their friends, family members and co-workers to help grow its base of patients.
As a start-up, Dr. Ferarra has a limited staff, so the messages are also designed to answer frequently asked questions to reduce patient hold-time such as office hours, insurance, and convenient on-line appointment requests. In many cases, this information is the reason for a patient’s call, and sharing it through on-hold messaging answers that patient’s question without taking valuable time from staff members and other patients with more involved questions.
The Outcome:
Dr Ferrara says: “The Original On Hold is an amazing tool for all business owners. I believe that it’s a great asset to market your business. They fully understand the importance of patient engagement, and we receive numerous compliments about the on-hold messages. We can attribute an increase in patient referrals as a result of promoting our referral program to callers on hold, as well as increased sales of our lesser known services. It’s a must have for practices wanting to improve patient education and satisfaction, as well as increasing revenues.”
