Why Most Dentists Are "Missing the Boat" With Their Marketing.

by on in Uncategorized

Share
Tweet
0 Shares

Last updated on November 20th, 2025 at 01:31 am

Last updated on November 10th, 2025 at 04:34 pm


Portrait of Chris Menkhaus, a dental consultant.

Traditionally, dental marketing has one target: new patients.

While this is of course needful, limiting themselves to this single objective is where the majority of dentists miss the marketing “boat.” With all of their marketing resources stretched in an effort to bring new people in, patients of record get nothing more than recall reminders or (if they’re lucky) an occasional canned newsletter.

From a marketing perspective—calling this a “shame” is letting it get off lightly! Why? Many dentists spend a considerable amount of money to get a new patient. Only to turn around and spend nothing to keep them! While customer service is a key to this, marketing also plays a part…

1. Survey Your Patients

Illustration of the word 'Survey' with checked boxes below.

In any marketing activity, it’s vital to survey your target audience (in this case, the patients you already have) on their needs, wants, opinions, etc. regarding dental care and your practice…

  1. Patient education and communication via blogs, social media, newsletters as well as internal office displays and images.
  2. The strengths and weaknesses (if any) in patient care and customer service…

As an example, one practice found after surveying that patients thought the staff was friendly and upbeat…

2. INTERNAL: Promotion Inside Your Dental Practice

  1. Make your patients aware of everything you offer
    Animated images of brightly colored teeth, smiling people, and a large tooth being painted.Put up attractive displays in your lobby and other areas of the practice where patients can see them…
  2. “Starting” the conversationIn addition to posters of your services, small witty displays that invite dialogue…
  3. RESULTS, RESULTS, RESULTSPromote excellent results from your practice to boost patient trust…

3. EXTERNAL: Newsletters and Other Direct Mailings

A word cloud in the shape of a ball featuring advertising words, with 'newsletter' as the central term.

Here are a few relatively low-cost ways to externally market to your patient base…

Quarterly newsletters — While the presentation in your newsletters should always be attractive…

4. EXTERNAL: Web Marketing

  1. Strive to interest patients in following your blog and on social media
    1. Writing online blog posts increases patients’ knowledge…
    2. Consistent new content helps with your website’s visibility and SEO.
    3. It ties into social media campaigns to get more exposure…
  2. Social MediaPost regularly (1–2 times a day) with posts that create some kind of response from patients…

We hope this article helps. If you want to have more control and fantastic results with patient reactivation, internal marketing, as well as get more new patients in the door, do the MGE New Patient Workshop. Call now (800) 640-1140 or (727) 530-4277 for more information!

Best of luck!

Share
Tweet
0 Shares