MMM [Pediatric] How to Ramp Up Patient Referrals in Your Dental Practice

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Minal Sampat and I have a weekly newsletter called Weekly Hacks. It's for pediatric dentists and pediatric practice owners only, and we share one effective growth hack every week to achieve big wins. no fluff, no spam, just your weekly dose of what you need to grow. Subscribe here to get this week's hack in your inbox! https://mailchi.mp/9d2a4644fd31/the-pediatric-dental-marketing-newsletter

On this week's Monday Morning Marketing episode, I'm flying solo with these main tips on how to ramp up referrals in your pediatric practice! In this episode, I'll be covering how to:

1. Provide an excellent patient experience

2. Leverage social media

3. Develop referral incentives

These are the three pillars of a successful referral system, and I'll walk you through multiple steps on each one. Providing an excellent patient experience is where you should start, making sure patients feel at home in your practice, with fun decorations, engaged team members, and positive reinforcement. Leveraging social media all comes down to ONE platform. So often we get caught up in the next best thing coming along, when focusing on one social media channel can really help you grow. Finally, developing referral incentives is a must-have for any practice looking for referrals. There are many ways to provide incentives, so get creative with gift cards, spa days, and promoting on your social platforms!

To catch these main pillars and my full breakdown of each, listen in on this episode!

Mentions and Links:

The Pediatric Dental Marketing Course Enrollment

Minal Sampat

How to Increase Referrals Article

Unreasonable Hospitality - Will Guidara

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Episode Transcript (Auto-Generated - Please Excuse Errors)

Michael: So we're gonna discuss how to increase patient referrals to your pediatric dental practice. Now, uh, this is very, very important because as a pediatric dental practice, you likely understand that the foundation of your practice success is built on the satisfaction and loyalty of your patients. So not only are your patients your most valuable, But their recommendations and referrals can be a powerful tool, uh, for growing your practice.

However, simply providing excellent dental care, uh, may not be enough to attract and retain new patients. So in this episode, we're gonna discuss three effective strategies for increasing patient referrals to your pediatric dental practice, along with examples of effective referral incentives and common mistakes to avoid, uh, whether you're a new practice or an established.

These strategies can help you attract new patients, build a strong reputation, and grow your practice over time.

Now the first and most important strategy for increasing patient referrals is to provide an excellent patient experie. A positive patient experience can make a lasting impression on impatience and encourage them to recommend your practice to friends and family.

Parents want to feel comfortable and confident in the care their children receive, and a positive experience can leave a lasting impression on both parents and children. So here are a couple tips to help you create a welcoming and positive patient experience number. Create a child-friendly environment, so make sure your office is clean, organized, and welcoming for children.

So consider providing toys, books, and games in the waiting room to keep children entertained and engaged. They wanna feel familiar with their surrounding, right, and they wanna feel excited about their surrounding too. So, An example of this is you can decorate your waiting room with colorful and kid-friendly decorations, such as maybe wall murals or posters featuring popular children's character, and maybe make it, um, changeable with the seasons, right?

Uh, I think something like that would be pretty, pretty good. So if it's like, okay, the, you know, the themes, Marvel movies are coming out, right? Then you wanna be able to put specific posters up or things like that, right? Things that they may be excited about, depending on your target demo. Number two is personalized care.

So take the time to get to know your patients and their families, address their concerns and questions and make sure they feel comfortable and heard a book I recommend to every single one of you and your. Team members is Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Gadara. It's a new book, fantastic book on how you can make your patients, the children, the parents feel at home.

think about this. The book says they can feel perfection. You want them to feel that, right? So you wanna personalize their. Every single week or every single month during your team meeting, there should be a way to increase personalized interest or personalized care. There's never a point in your where you're like, that's it.

We've reached the pinnacle of it. We show the most care and the most personalized. That's it. We can, no, you can always improve a little bit more. So every. Right. You wanna see, or every month, right? Or however you wanna do it. Uh, no more than a month I recommend, but like you wanna know how you can increase, show more personalized care.

An example of this is develop a patient intake form that asks questions about the child's interest, their hobbies, favorite characters. Then use this information to personalize the child's visit and build rapport with the family. Number three, offer convenient service. We live in a day and age where convenience is everything now, so provide convenient appointment times and offer services such as online appointment, scheduling and reminder systems if you're struggling to grow.

Right now. There's a trend I've noticed with a lot of practices who've kind of just skyrocketed. They were stuck and then they skyrocketed, and one of those things were that they offered convenient appointment times. They realized, look, I'm gonna have to be open on this day for this time. Maybe a Saturday, maybe a Friday in the evening or whatever, just to accommodate the family and the community.

And from that point on, they saw it scheduling. I mean, they saw it, right? Um, skyrocket. And then they adjusted, um, as they build that new patient base. But at the beginning, uh, that's what they did. So if you feel like you're, you're there, maybe do that offer co. Appointment times and services. An example is what the one I just mentioned.

Or you can also automate appointment reminders through texts and email to reduce the risk of no-shows and provide parents with a convenient way to manage, uh, their child's appointment. Tip number four, follow up with patients. Follow up with patients after their appointments to ensure they're satisfied with their experience and address any concerns they may.

So you wanna develop like a post-visit, maybe survey or questionnaire that asks parents to rate their child's experience and provide feedback on how you can improve. Quick tip on this. Here's a note on this example. If you do develop, which I recommend every single one of you need to develop or should have like something of a, how did we do write a type of questionnaire survey.

I don't think you should send it to them via digital, online, or email or anything? No. When they're checking. it should be as simple as like their 10 year old, eight year old kid can fill it out. Just have three questions on there on an index card looking type of questionnaire. And as they're waiting, they're, they're standing there.

You're asking them, oh, can you fill this out real quick while I pull up your information? It should be that simple. It should take less than 10 seconds from one to 10. How did we do write 10 being like the best they can circle. Have you given us a review or have you told us how you felt about your experience on Google Circle?

Yes or no? And then would you recommend this to a friend or family? Yes or no? If you had to and you wanted it even shorter, you can just do the first one. How did we do today? One to 10. Would you recommend this to a friend and family? Yes or no? When you see that they circle, yes. Just grab it. And I say, oh, wow.

Thank you so much. Who, who would you recommend and stay? And let them speak, then that's your opportunity to gain that referral right then and there just with this physical post-visit surveyor questionnaire. So that's what I, uh, recommend when it comes to follow up with the patients, right, right after, right, um, to gain that referral.

But at the same time, you also wanna follow up at, at, with a phone call or email, right? Or text message a couple days later too. Tip number five, train your. Train your staff to provide exceptional customer service and make sure they understand the importance of creating a positive patient experience. Now, the book, unreasonable Hospitality.

Let them read this and think about this point. Train your staff. When you train your staff, I think you should gift them that book as well, because that is going to show them, okay, I have to go. Above the above and beyond for the team here, for the customer. The patients here as well, and they're gonna feel it, right?

Uh, a good example of this is you wanna conduct regular staff training sessions that focus on customer service skills, such as active listening, empathy, and problem solving. Every single one of your team members should be having this, right. If not, you can lead them and guide them to do it. And if they're still fighting you, it also kind of does fall on you because they shouldn't be in there either.

They shouldn't be on your team anymore, they should be doing another industry, doing something else or some whatever, right? It's up to you to build this type of team, but every single one of 'em should have active listening, empathy, and problem solving to provide a really, really good patient experience.

Tip number six is use positive reinforcement. Now, uh, you wanna do that to encourage, Behavior and help children feel proud of their dental care. I don't care if they have a million, so many cavities, all these things. The parents did a horrible job at bringing up their teeth or brushing their teeth or whatever.

You should be able to find a compliment every time you see them all the time. Hone in on that, right? Make the children feel proud if you shame. Or say what's going on? So they will remember that feeling and experience and so will the parent. And then that's when the downfall starts. Like, oh, I gotta go to the dead.

Oh, we got, but if you are proud, right? You feel proud for the child, uh, despite whatever thing you're saying, find something to compliment them on. They will remember that feeling too. primarily so do. Example, provides stickers or small toys as rewards for children who behave well during their appointments or demonstrate good dental hygiene habits.

Uh, so do that right now. Strategy number two. the one we just reviewed right now, that was strategy number one, provide an excellent patient experience and we provided six tips on how to do that. Here's strategy number two, leverage social media. Now, social media guys is an effective way to increase patient referrals to your pediatric dental practice.

It allows you to connect with parents and caregivers in your community, share valuable information about your services, and promote your practice to a wider audience. So here's a couple tips to help you leverage social media effect. Number one, choose the right platform. So determine which social media platform your targeted audience is using and focus your efforts on that one platform.

So Facebook and Instagram, they're popular choices for pediatric dental practices. Now, I'm much rather you choose one platform and stick to. And give it all you got with content, with engagement, with all these things. Then shiny object syndrome, and you're like, okay, there's TikTok, it's coming out. Oh no, and now there's a Instagram something else, right?

It's coming out, A clubhouse is coming out. All the no. Pick a platform, stick to it, grow it. Make sure it serves its purpose, where it's like we are now effectively getting the results that we want from this platform Times. Then once you're there and you feel like you're a pro at it, yes you can maybe expand to another platform, right?

Let's go to Pinterest. Now, let's go to something. But it starts off with choosing the right platform, right? So if you're targeting parents of young children, then Facebook may be more effective, for sharing information and engaging with your audience. Cause remember, your target audience isn't the children.

Uh, it's the mom and the dad, the parents, right? That's your target audience. And. Maybe you can join these Facebook groups, right? Dedicate seven, 10 minutes, uh, once a day if you want to just fully be in there, engage with people. And that leads to tip number two, share engaging content. So share informative and engaging content related to pediatric dental health, such as tips for preventing cavities or videos explaining dental procedures.

We have a couple members in our pediatric dental marketing course who do this. Explain, uh, dental procedures in a fun way, but simple. And it eases the parents cuz they're like, oh my God, how is this gonna look at my par? How is this gonna look at my child? How is this gonna affect, how many minutes is this gonna take out of the day?

How will they look after the child? And they simply explain these videos real quick. I'm talking about like one day they'll sh they'll uh, share a video of how. A post-op procedure looks right for a child, or Invisalign for ortho, right? For a child, or the first step, the second step, the third step, right?

How does a free consultation look? It's things like that that you can share and they'll feel comfortable with it, right? Tip number three, encourage engagement. So encourage parents to engage with your practice by asking for feedback or opinion. Responding to comments and messages and sharing user generated content.

So an example of this is post a photo on Instagram of a child smiling after a successful dental visit, and maybe ask your followers to share their own success stories in the comments. Remember, when you were a child, how did it go? Ask them right. Number four, utilize paid advertising. So consider utilizing paid advertising on social media platforms to increase your reach and attract new patients.

An example is maybe you wanna create a Facebook ad campaign targeting parents in your community who are interested in pediatric dental health. Now you get so specific with paid ads now on Facebook. So it's very, very important you know, how to utilize, um, and leverage social media effectively, especially paid because you can go down like a, a weird type of like rabbit hole.

you're not targeting the right audience anymore. So it can get logistical, can get, um, very specific. So Manal Samat is fantastic for that. In our pediatric dental marketing course. She teaches all the members, everybody else exactly how to utilize paid advertising from Facebook all the way to, uh, Instagram and, and other platforms, right?

She's a social media. Person on our team, and she's the one who, you know, offers comprehensive training on social media marketing, specifically tailored to pediatric dental practices. Uh, we give you step by step instructions and practical tips. I mean, the course can help you develop the social media strategy that engages your target audience and promotes your practice effectively.

You're gonna gain incredible, valuable insights and skills that will help you leverage social media to increase patient referrals. Attract new patients to your pediatric dental practice. Also in the courses, all ground marketing stuff, everything, all my strategies are in that course as well and I continue to add to it as well.

So I wanna put a link to the pediatric dental marketing course in the show notes below. Now we just covered, uh, that was strategy number two, leverage social media. Now, strategy number three. The final one, develop referral incentives. Now, referral incentives is an effective way to encourage existing. To refer new patients to your pediatric dental practice, referral incentives can take many forms, such as discounts on services, gift cards earn entry into a prize drawing.

So here are some tips to help you develop effective referral incentives. Number one, make it super easy for patients to refer friends and family by providing referral cards, maybe email templates or social media. An example is develop a referral program that provides patients with referral cards they can hand out to friends and family members.

The referral cards could offer a discount on services or a prize drawing entry for each new patient referral. Let's make it super simple, right? You've seen it on Facebook, you've seen it on Instagram. Share this, right? Have them share it. Follow us for this, right? Follow. Make sure they your they're friends and everybody follow you.

Mention your name right? Then they can just mention their name, but make it super simple. Number two, offer valuable incentives. Now, incentives need to be valuable to your patients, and you want these incentives to motivate them to refer others to your practice. So you can offer a discount on services or a gift card to a popular local restaurant as a referral incentive.

Now, great way. For you to hype this up is a month before. Let's just say today is April, right, or we're in April. If you wanna do this in May, start now. As soon as you're done with this episode, if you have an Instagram, go on your Instagram story or your Facebook and make a poll. Would you want a $200 gift card or a hundred dollars gift card to this restaurant or a spa treatment for the day?

And then just ask them which one to pick, right? That. Which one would you prefer? And you will see people boom, boom, boom, involved in that poll. People who've never liked any of your posts involved in that poll. And then now you know I'm gonna use that as an incentive now, and then you can promote that incentive, which goes with our number three tip on this.

Promote the incentive, promote the referral incentive on your website, social media pages, and in-office marketing materials to increase awareness and encourage participation. Now that you've done your research the month before and you're like, okay, 90% of people wanted that spa treatment, guess what? For the first person to refer three people or whatever, you will get this.

You're entered to win on this spa treatment, or you'll get this spa treatment for the first person to refer three people, right? Make it like that so people are on it, and then boom. You will see people are like, oh. And then you do that the next month too. You say, you make another poll and say, Hey, would y'all want, um, you know, this restaurant or this other experience?

And then people are gonna start to catch on and then they're gonna say, oh, I'm gonna pick that. And I know this is a referral incentive, so I'm gonna already have three people on my mind ready to go. Um, and then boom, boom. That's how you can. That's part of promoting it, right? You can also promote it on your website, social media, all that stuff like that.

once the incentive, um, is decided and you want to go live with it. And number four, you wanna follow up with patients who refer new patients to a, to your practice to thank them and offer additional incentives for future referrals. So maybe send them a personalized thank you note to patients who refer new patients to your practice and offer them an additional incentive for each of sequin referral maybe.

Maybe one. One incentive is like, um, a spa treatment, right? And then, you know, they get the spa treatment and you're like, what? I got another spa treatment for you and your significant other, or somebody else. Oh my gosh, that's fantastic. They're gonna love you even more. They're gonna be your ambassador at that point, just always talking about you.

So over deliver if you can. So these are the three strategies you can do it. And I'm gonna put a link. In the show notes below that, dive deeper. On the incentives that you can create, because incentives are important, right? You wanna make it easy. And in the article that I'm gonna put in the show below, I, I'd give you more incentives like a family fund, pack, the zoo, and things like that.

Gift card to local businesses, raffle prizes, examples. Uh, we also talk about, um, valuable incentives, such as like the exclusive content that they can get from your practice. Discount on services. Maybe some people care about social media, shoutouts, stuff like that. And then how to promote the incentives.

Well, we discussed that in the article too as well. But all this guys, all this can be found in the pediatric dental marketing course. Uh, so I'm gonna put a link to that in the show notes below. We will be opening up enrollment to that course coming up here pretty soon, so I'm excited to let you guys know that.

But at the same time, I'm excited to see many of you who've been on the wait list ready to come on. And at the same time in that article, I also provide you with a chart or like a table that you can use to track your progress and adjust your referral strategies. Because remember, you can't really grow what you don't measure.

So you wanna measure what's working. Is a referral program working? Is a social media program working word of mouth, patient reviews, what's working, what do I need to put more effort and invest more time, maybe more money in? And then what is not working as much where I can just, you know, scale it back a little bit.

Put more energy in something else. So go make sure you download that. It's gonna be in the article as well, and give it a once over in that article, as well, because that's a really, really important article that provides you guys with much, much more information. Um, but if you want all the information than, like I said, join the pediatric dental marketing course.

Uh, so yeah. Thank you guys so much for tuning into this Monday morning marketing episode, and I'll talk to you in the next episode.